Today's post might be a little disjointed and all over the place, but I have so many thoughts to preserve about this time in our lives, so just stick with me, okay? It's hard to believe that elementary school is officially over for Ella, but believe it or not, it happened! She's been talking about this day for years and was so excited (and maybe a little bit nervous) to wake up on graduation day. Because of the way her birthday falls, she's almost an entire year older than some of the kids in her class. We didn't have the option of starting early for her and, at the time, I had no idea how this would affect her down the road. I'm guessing it will be a little easier to navigate in middle and high school, since we can better tailor her classes to her interests and intellect, but ...
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Ella’s Golden Birthday Session
I am the luckiest girl in the world to have this pretty girl as my daughter and this one as my sister and best friend. Armed with a knockout model and the best photographer in all the land, I get to have annual photographs that look like this! My sister was sweet enough to take Ella on a little adventure after school, so that I could finish preparing for her surprise party last month. It was the perfect excuse to get her out of the house for a few hours and to have my sister work her magic. It has been several years since we did individual photo sessions of the girls and I wanted to capture this little moment in time. Ella is right on the edge of being more than a child, but not quite a teenager. She has the most hilarious sense of humor and the greatest laugh (as evidenced in a few of ...
To My Golden Girl
Dear Ella, How can you be eleven years old? We've been talking about (and planning for) your golden birthday for a whole year, but it still blindsided me a bit. You've grown leaps and bounds in the last year and I have to do a double take when I look at you sometimes. There have been years when you changed very little -- the scales didn't budge and your little feet squeezed into the same pair of shoes, two summers in a row. Then there was this year -- you got so tall and you're raiding my closet and your face looks less and less like a little girl every day. I could let myself get overwhelmed, or worry about the teenage years right around the corner, but instead I let myself enjoy these days. With every year you grow, we have more in common. There are fewer things to bicker over and ...
Recital Recap | Eight Years
Just like that, eight years of dance is in the books. I have to do the math sometimes and Josh and I regularly argue about exactly how long it's been, but Ella just completed her eighth season of dance and her fifth year of competition. Like every year before it, recital week is exhausting and tear inducing and one of our favorite weeks of the entire year. She danced a minimum of four hours a day for the week preceding recital day and then managed to pull off eighteen dances in eleven hours across three performances. It makes me tired just typing that. Of course, every year I think we can't add one more thing and on the way home from dress rehearsal on Friday she told me she'd like to try the beginner's clogging class. Here we go again. Since she performed so many times and I took ...
Weekend Update | May
Would you believe me if I told you I packed my camera for our weekend trip, but didn't take it out of my bag a single time? There is always a pull to document every single moment of every important event, but there is an even bigger part of me that just wants to relax and enjoy our time together. Although Ella and I spend many days together because of dance, it is a rare occasion for us to take a road trip without any other companions. We did split a hotel room with two other dancers and their moms and, obviously, we were with a huge group for most of the weekend -- but we spent more one on one time together this past weekend than we have in a while. It was nice to have no other obligations or responsibilities and just enjoy watching her dance and letting her have control over our ...
Kind is Cool | an Ella update
Although I'm pretty good at capturing events in our girls' lives and even writing yearly birthday letters, I've realized this week that I'm terrible about documenting the small things. Mannerisms and quirks, preferences and aversions, personality traits and friendships. I'm hoping to share more frequently about them as people, both as a way to document their growth and to share a better glimpse of who they are. Ella is ten and a half, going on thirty-five. She is analytical and organized and very concerned about sticking with the schedule. She asks a million questions about the itinerary, the weather, and our contingency plans. She is not a morning person. This is not a secret, she would agree with me unequivocally. She needs at least thirty minutes to feel like a whole human ...
Lights Up at The Summit | 2016
I know it isn't even Thanksgiving yet and I should probably keep my holiday shenanigans to myself (at least for another week), but I couldn't help myself! Not to mention the family posts have been few and far between for the last several weeks (thank you moving and unpacking), so I thought it was time to pop in with something a little more family-centric. For the second year in a row, Ella's dance team was invited to perform in a parade at our local outdoor shopping center to usher in the holiday season. They have a huge lighting ceremony right before Thanksgiving, along with a parade, faux snow, and fireworks. She has had plenty of extra practices the last several weeks and was finally ready to show off all of her hard work this past weekend. It made for a crazy Friday afternoon, since ...
What Ella Read | Part 2
Disclosure: Affiliate links appear in this post. Any purchases made using these links will earn Taz + Belly a small commission. You can read more about our affiliate relationships here. We got such a great response from last month's kid-friendly book review post, that we thought we'd make it a regular series. Aren't you excited?! In case you missed it, Ella (my ten year old daughter) thinks she'd like to start her own blog, so we're giving it a test run by letting her guest post here occasionally. I'd love to tell you that the book series will occur monthly, but it might be every other month, depending on the number of books she completes each month. Ella will be using the same Goodreads scale to rank her books each month. 1 star // she did not like it 2 star // she said it was ...