Adventures with Ella: 3/1/14

Catching up on lots of pictures from January and February --

Alyssa, Ella's after-school babysitter, bought a Baby Alive doll for Ella's birthday, and Ella has been inseparable with the baby doll for weeks. This is a high-maintenance baby doll - she eats and drinks, goes to the bathroom, and requires lots of diaper changes...all of Ella's favorite things!

Ella started Daisies at the beginning of January! Here she is before her first meeting.

She joined a troop of a mom I've befriended from church, and she loves it so far. There are 8 kindergarten girls in the group. The girls all get along so well and have so much fun together, and I've really been enjoying getting to know all of the other moms.

Selling cookies!

There are a lot of rules around the cookie selling, and there was an official start time of 9am on a Saturday morning. Around 9:15 our doorbell rang with the first duo of older girls selling cookies. Ella hadn't had any desire to go door-to-door until the big girls came by and then she was set on it. So we went out on Sunday afternoon around the neighborhood. I assumed she'd have about 5 houses in her and we'd head home, but she got really into it and ended up selling a bunch to our neighbors, we were out for several hours. It was a good experience for her - she would ring the bell by herself, say a little speech, and then thrust the 'sign-up sheet' at them! She was so cute, I was proud of her. Of course now we have to distribute and collect the money for close to 100 boxes...so I have to admit I'll be glad when cookie season is over :)

She had an outing to the fire department a few Saturdays ago and the girls got a really detailed tour of the station by the firefighters.

Playing on the playground

One night we had corn for dinner and Ella was completely thrilled with this amazing triple corn she found.

She asked me to take a picture of it and she wanted to save it.
And her very excited explanation of the piece of corn:

After watching the movie Frozen, Ella really wanted to make an 'ice factory' outside in the backyard. I explained that it needs to be 32 degrees or colder in order to make the ice and it doesn't really get that cold here. We have had a really cold winter though and on our first night that was going to be below freezing, she set up an ice station in her playhouse outside. First thing in the morning she ran out and was very happy to find...ice cubes!

And then a few weeks later, she had her first "snow day" - they canceled school the day before with a forecast of snow and ice for the next day.

Snow day project

After all of our winter storm excitement, there was no winter storm. Once it became apparent that the snow wasn't coming and the roads would be fine, Steve headed into work. He works less than 10 miles from our house, but they ended up getting freezing rain / ice that afternoon, even though we had just a little bit of drizzle at the house. Ella wasn't happy that we never got any snow, but was thrilled when Steve came home from work with some ice in the back of his truck. They had a mini "snow-ball fight" in the backyard with the ice and here is her bucket full of dirty car ice :)

Not a proud Mom moment but one I won't forget anytime soon -- It's really rare that I talk on the phone when Ella is awake but I really wanted to catch up with Kelly on a Sunday afternoon and Steve was out at the store. Ella told me she was all set and was going to 'work on a project.' I heard her bustling around and then she settled into the craft table and worked for a while and I was able to talk to Kelly. When I got off the phone and came to see what she was up to, this is what I discovered! She had raided the recycling bin for her project supplies -- this is actually pretty common but all the beer cans were a new touch! She was trying to glue it all into a giant tower...luckily I got off the phone just in time.

On the other hand, this was a legitimate proud Mom moment!

We were making cookie bars for a Superbowl party and Ella said to me out of the blue "You know, when I grow up, I think I'm going to be a famous chef AND have children." It made me so proud that I've modeled for her that she doesn't need to choose between a career and children, and that she can have both if she wants to and that her options for the future are whatever she wants them to be!

See-sawing at the playground with Katie

Celebrating Steve's birthday on Jan 30th

Adorable picture of Ella and Cory

Ella's 100th day of kindergarten. She needed to make a shirt with exactly 100 items on it. I did the iron-on letters for her and she did 93 puffy paint additions! She was really excited for 100th day and that morning couldn't stop talking long enough for me to take the picture...but this sums her up pretty well!

And a cute picture from her classroom blog that day

Fun in the backyard on a warm afternoon

She asked me to take a picture of her in a 'wacky pose' one morning before school

Traffic light project at school

I volunteered to co-host Ella's class Valentine's Day party - the party was on Thursday and unfortunately Ella had gotten pretty sick with what turned out to be strep. After all our planning, I wasn't sure if we'd be able to make it to the party and she was home Monday through Wednesday. Fortunately her fever broke and she was able to make it on Thursday. The party was a lot of fun and I'm glad I was able to be there!

Ella was super excited for Valentine's Day morning and woke up before her alarm clock, so that she could be waiting for me in the bathroom when I came out of the shower, with a special surprise!

My beautiful Valentine's flowers!