Life With Ella

We all had a great day on Ella’s birthday.  Ella had school and Sunny and I had the day off from work.  We spent the last hour of Ella’s school day in her classroom.  It was so wonderful to be able to spend time with Ella and her Octopus class.  We were going to go with Ella to get her ears pierced after school but she decided that she didn’t want to.  We are not going to push her into getting her ears pierced.  She’ll do it when she’s ready.  At night, we had dinner at Nama with Phyllis and Naomi and then the Kim/Arenas came over for the best cake in the world.  Check out the photos below – Sunny outdid herself with a Minion Cake!

Ella’s first picture as an 8 year old.

This was on the board in Ella’s classroom.  Ella answered a bunch of questions and her teacher Colette put it up on the board as a graphic organizer.  Ella’s classmates used this graphic organizer to make individual pages in Ella’s amazing birthday book.

 We brought in a mash-up of madelines and brownies for Ella’s birthday treat.

 Mommy – the pastry chef began her masterpiece by making minions out of twinkles…

 The amazing minion cake!  It was delicious as well as gorgeous.

 Ella had her dinner presented to her with dry ice.

 Happy Birthday Ella.  We love you so much!

Dear Ella –  Happy Birthday!  We love you so much.  We are in awe of you.  You are a beautiful, amazing person with the kindest heart.  We love getting to know you more and more, every moment of every day.  Can’t wait to celebrate with you in your class and at Disney!  We love you forever.  Mama and Mommy

Now that Ella can read, we hope she’ll get into checking out her blog.

I have a lot of catching up to do so I’ll do it in photos.

 This was from a Black Widows game a few weeks ago.  Ella was an amazing goalie.  She was a bit like a human wall and didn’t let anything go by.  She did get hit in the face with the ball, cried a tiny bit but stayed out there!

 Last weekend we were so lucky to have papa come stay with us for two nights and a day.  We loved having him here.  Ella and papa had a lot of fun at the Exploratorium together.  Can’t wait to see grandma and papa for Thanksgiving.

 Ella has been celebrating all weekend with her buddies.  She had a sleepover on Friday night movie night with Emmi, Cecilia, Stella and Juliet (Emmi and Cecilia slept over) and then a Saturday night sleepover with Stella, Juliet and Rosie.  Tonight, we went to Benihana with the girls, Debby and Toby.

The Black Widows won their final game on Saturday.  The Black Widows remained undefeated during the whole season!  These girls are one tough team of girls who have such sweet hearts.  Go Black Widows!

Ella had an amazing Halloween.  It started at CDS with the Halloween parade, followed by a trip to ACC to hang out with Becca and her first mate Pineapple and then we ended up going to 18th Street with the Kim/Arena clan.  Everyone had fun and all the kids scored a lot of candy!  I am just going to post pictures now because I have no more time to write!

Later on in the evening, Becca became Ella’s “Matey”!

Here are some pictures from Ella’s adventures over the past 2 weeks.  On Columbus Day, we went to the Aquarium with Hannah and one of her friends, and they went bungee jumping afterwards.  Last Saturday, we took Ella and her friend Emilia to a fund raiser for ACC.  The girls spent some amazing time with Pineapple.  Ella’s soccer team, the Black Widows are undefeated.  They one five games and have tied two.  Ella is one of the goalies and usually plays 1/2 game.  She said that she doesn’t like being goalie because of the pressure, but she is terrific and we are encouraging her to stick with it.

 Fun at the aquarium!

 Ella did front and back flips.

 Pineapple and Ella have a great relationship.

 Ella highlighting her Mary Poppins script during breakfast the other day.  Ella got the role of Mary Poppins.

 Ella and some of her knitting buddies made it into the CDS online newsletter.

 The kids goofing around tonight after dinner.  Friday night movie night is the best!

Ella is doing great!  I have been so jammed up with school and work that I have not had time to even take a picture of Ella!  I put my mind to it, decided to make a change and here we are.  Here are some pics of Ella over the weekend.  Life is busy and beautiful.  The pic at the end is a surprise from Sunny to me…Ella actually presented it to me.  Hmmm.

 Ella and I took a fun scooter ride today.  We went up and down the little ramps.

 Ella after her game on Saturday.  The Black Widows are still undefeated!  The game on Sunday was against this team that is hard core.  The score was 0 – 0.  Ella played goalie for one of the halves.  She said that she feels a lot of pressure playing goalie.  I think a little pressure is good for her!

 Gifts from Panda.  We come home to some type of shoe configuration every day by Panda our love puppy.

 Our beautiful goalie.

 So…what should I say?

Grandma and Papa arrived on Thursday night and we loved every minute of having them here!  As usual, we didn’t want the weekend to end.  Grandma and Papa got to see Ella play soccer (the Black Widows are still undefeated), we hung around and had fun, grandma and Ella took a great 4 mile walk today, we saw Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs Part 2 and mommy and papa played golf!  On Saturday night, Sunny and I went to see the Carole King show Beautiful.  It was great.  Thanks grandma and papa for the date night!  We love you guys and can’t wait for Thanksgiving.

Ella teaching grandma the Cups song.

 Cool sculpture downtown by Roy’s where we had a great dinner.

Love on the soccer field!

 Having too much fun.

 A little more serious.

 Best cheerleader for the Black Widows.

 Happy papa – serious grandma.  Must have been a serious play going on.

 Cutest goalie in the world.

 Fun at the movies!

Sunny and I went to Ella’s back to school night this evening.  It was terrific!  Her teachers are terrific and I think that Ella is going to learn A LOT this year.  Here is a letter that we received from Ella when we sat down at her table spot…

 Ella is beautiful and has a lot of courage.

 Here’a a shot of a poster in the classroom.  ELla can recite and explain many parts of the brain.  She blows me away!

The Black Widows had their second game on Saturday and won 11-2.  Ella subbed as goalie at the end of the first half and then played goalie the entire second half.  She is a natural defender of the goal.  She gets right in there and grabs it and her throws were quick and well thought out.  After the game she told me that she didn’t want to play goalie next week because she played it twice already.  I was trying to explain to Ella that she was a great goalie and that teams needed that.  Without someone protecting the goal, the Black Widows wouldn’t win!  I don’t know if I was able to convince her to stick with it.  I think that goalie is a great position for Ella.  Here are some pics from the game.

 This was all so much fun to watch.  The team is becoming a pretty good team!

On another note, Sunny and I received this great e-mail from Ella’s teacher Colette:

Hi Sunny and Lauren,I just wanted to send a picture of Ella’s octopus oil pastel drawing today. It blew me away, how focused she was and her attention to detail. The rock cave, the shafts of light, beautiful! She’s quite an artist.

I hope you are having a good week so far!

Take care,

Colette

Here is the picture that she was talking about…

Ella had her first Black Widows game this weekend.  This is the first year that they area actually keeping score.  The Black Widows won 6 – 2! It was fantastic watching the Black Widows take the ball up and down the big field.  Ella was goalie for the 2nd half.  Although she let two goals get by, she saved about 12.  She was fearless as she got in there and grabbed the ball.  On Saturday we went to the ballgame.  It was Strike Out Violence Day.  This was the first time that Sunny wasn’t on the field because she doesn’t work for the SFSD anymore.  It was a meaningful ceremony and even better, the Giants won in the 11th inning!  We bumped into Ella’s friend Emilia at the game and Ella loved hanging out with her.

 Ella was quite flexible at TaeKwonDo taking a little rest in a cubby hole.

 Lou Seal was dressed as Darth Vader.

 Ella and Emilia having a blast.

 Here’s another picture of beautiful Ella on the first day of school.

Some very exciting news…Pineapple, the bird, has learned to say “Ella”.  It’s really cute.  She only says it when Ella walks away.  Ella is really serious about being a pirate for Halloween and bringing along Pineapple on her shoulder or arm!

We decided to get away from SF for a little weekend adventure this past weekend.  We went to San Jose, mostly because it was cheap, sunny and the hotel let us bring Panda.  We went with Becca and her 2 dogs.  We had a lot of fun, did tons of swimming and completely relaxed.  We all needed it (at least Sunny, Becca and I needed it – Ella has had a pretty amazing summer!).  Here are a few cool shots of Ella playing in the fountains across the street from our hotel.

Lastly – today was Ella’s first day of school.  She went in smiling ear to ear and had the same smile on her face when I picked her up at 4:30 to go to musical theatre.  So happy that she’s in love with school.