Bath time!

I have plenty of pictures of my boys in the tub, but not really any of Ellie. Mostly because, until very recently, she HATED her baths. She would scream and scream the whole time. Lately, she has learned that she likes to splash and so now bath time is fun! Even getting her hair wet has been made bearable by the chance to soak the entire bathroom with splashing.

So, the other night, I was finally able to grab my camera and snap a few pictures.

Post-ponytail hair

Birthday

Ellie's birthday was mostly a normal Saturday. We were out and about bright and early to pick up our bountiful basket. The exciting thing in the basket this week was cherries!



Ellie got into the potatoes from the basket and carried one around with her most of the morning. Silly girl.



We went for a run and then let the birthday girl out of the jogging stroller to walk around.



We will be doing most of our celebrating while we are visiting family soon, but Ellie did get her presents on her birthday. I was surprised at how quickly she picked up on the concept of ripping the wrapping paper off. She was a bit unsure at first, but as soon as she figure it out, she dug right in!







She got a dolly (which she really couldn't care less about), a purse with things to put in it (which she likes to carry around), and a stroller. She LOOOOOOOOOOVES the stroller. 





If anyone else touches it, she screams at them. Sometimes she even gets mad at the doll for sitting in it. Somehow, even with no previous experience with birthdays and presents, she still knows that these toys  are HERS. Little stinker.

After presents, Ellie went to bed and we all enjoyed a Redbox movie and a doughnut in her honor. :)

Ellie is ONE!

Today, our sweet little Ellette Michelle turns one.

I think this last year was the shortest year of my life! It was definitely a good one, but it went by way too fast. This sweet little girl showed up and instantly melted our hearts and wrapped us all around her tiny little fingers.



She grew up into this sweet, sassy, adorable, loving toddler who has changed our home and our family for the better.



Her brothers adore her, and she thinks they're pretty awesome as well. I love to hear them play together and make each other laugh.



 Ellie is quite the chatterbox. She walks around talking to anyone who will listen, including strangers at the park, or the library, or wherever. She still doesn't say a lot of words that actually mean anything, but she sure has a lot to say. The extent of her vocabulary is still just "ma" (more) and "uh oh", but she's using these words more frequently now. When she is crying about something she doesn't like, she cries "na na na na", so it's possible that her third word might be "no".



Ellie will fold her arms for prayers, sit down by the front door if you tell her it's time to put shoes on, give kisses, throw a ball, turn the TV (or Wii, or Xbox) on and off and on and off and on and off, push toy cars around making car noises, and attempt to comb her hair if she gets a hold of a comb or brush.



Running is Ellie's new favorite thing. She loves to do it just because it's fun, but she has also started running away when she does something naughty.



She also LOVES the park. She hasn't gotten brave enough to climb on the toys (which is fine with me!), but she loves trying to walk around on the wood chips.



Food is another one of Ellie's favorite things. She will eat pretty much anything and she has an appetite about as big as her brothers'.





Last, but not least, here are the rest of the birthday pictures I took the other day.

Happy birthday, sweet baby!

Goofballs

My camera is back! Of course that meant I had to take it out for a test run. :) I actually decided to get Ellie dressed all cute and do a birthday session with her to test out my newly repaired camera. You'll have to wait 'till Saturday to see those, but I wanted to blog these pictures I took of my goofy boys. I just love these two. They make me smile. :)





I had nothing to do with these poses. Evan started doing silly poses and Asher followed along. It's their favorite thing to do in front of the camera these days. Silly boys.

This one, on the other hand, WAS prompted by me. I think they're kinda cute. :)



After pictures, we spent the lovely, sunny evening playing on the playground.




I can't believe how big these two are looking lately. Ben and I watched Evan saunter down the hallway the other day and couldn't help noticing how TALL he is these days. They're growing up right before our eyes.

MMMmmmmmm...... corn!

I was holding Ellie after dinner the other night and she was begging for food (She says "Ma!", which means "more") even though I had finished all mine. I offered her my corn cob and she dug right in! She was really going to town on that thing, so I told Ben to grab the camera and snap a few pictures.



Look at that determination.


This expression cracked me up. It's like, "Whatever Dad. I'm busy." (A look we might be familiar with in about 16 years?)



Messy corn face.


She was sure mad when I finally took it away. Silly girl.

Chairs!

We moved here a year and three months ago and we have been without a dining room table and chairs ever since. Until Mother's day! My present for Mother's Day was a dining set.

We had a dining set picked out at the furniture store, but as we were getting ready to buy it someone from church called to let us know they had a table they were getting rid of for free if we wanted it. Talk about great timing... and you can't beat free! All we needed was chairs.

We decided to buy the unfinished chairs from IKEA and finish them ourselves. As is the case with most IKEA furniture, the chairs came in pieces, so they had to be primed, painted and assembled.



After much deliberation, I decided on aqua for the color and, in the spirit of making our decor more interesting, we decided to do each chair a different color for sort of an ombre look.



Ben and I both love this painting by Ben's Sister, Aariel, so that's what we used for our color inspiration.



I love how they turned out and I really love the colors! I was worried I wouldn't like having the four different colors, but I love it.





Yay for having family dinners again! Happy Mother's Day to me. :)