We had a wonderful holiday weekend; it was full of food, fellowship and fun. We spent the day at my parents Friday and Saturday, swimming and stuffing our face. Friday, we pretty much had the pool to ourselves, but Saturday it was teeming with family. We ate and talked all day long. We were so tired by the end of the day. But that didn't stop us from inviting more fun. The closest big city has a wonderful fireworks display and we packed a picnic dinner, blankets and our favorite family members and headed off to the university quad. We spent the evening running around in the grass, chasing the ice cream truck and watching a beautiful fireworks show. There were lots of families cooking out, playing frisbee and having a great time. It was a wonderful end to the weekend and we slept GREAT ...
weekend
Working Girl
Recently, Ella has started asking a lot of questions about where I go each day. She talks about how I "work" while she's at school. She knows the name of the company I work for and where it's located. She knows it's called an office. Anytime we are driving she'll point to random buildings and ask, "Is that your office?" On Saturday, I had to work a few hours despite the fact that there was a VERY large music festival on all sides of my office building. Since I wasn't planning on being there all day, I knew it was a good opportunity to show Ella where I worked. We packed a picnic lunch, colors and coloring books and off we went. She was fascinated by the size of the buildings. I'm only on the seventh floor, but that must seem pretty high to a little girl. She was nervous about sitting ...
Two Ellas
On Saturday we had the pleasure of attending a birthday for one of my Ella's best friends. Her name is Ella, too and we lovingly refer to her as "Big Ella" since she's four months older and instead of calling my daughter Ella she calls her "Dean Fields." No confusion there. Her party was at Build-A-Bear, which we've never been to and boy was it fun. The kids got to pick out a bear, name it, give it a heart and stuffing, bathe it and dress it. Our bear's name is Peanut and she is wearing a cute polka dot bikini (unfortunately we left her at Garan's this afternoon, so there isn't a picture of the finished product). The photos below are my favorites from the day and there is a link at the bottom of the post for the entire album. I hope you don't mind that I'm not blogging on the ...
Weekend List
Friday we ate Mexican for dinner, bought some books at BAM and took a stroll around Wal-Mart because Ella wanted to go to another store. We didn't buy anything there. Saturday we did the lunch date with Ali. You saw that here. Then we went to Ross and bought really big throw pillows for $5.99, bought a yard of fabric at Hancock for another project, got Ella a tiny table from Homegoods and a pedestal table from Wal-Mart (you can see both of those in Friday's post). K & Cory came over for dinner Saturday night. We had lasagna, salad and yummy bread and watched Seven Pounds. Excellent movie, I highly recommend it. Sunday morning I got us ready for church and Ella had a major belly-related come apart. It was better not to subject the general population to her drama, so we put our pjs ...
Ali-U Are So Much Fun
My first year of college I met Ali. It has been eleven years since we moved into the dorm with two other girls we couldn't have had less in common with. We didn't know each other before school started and that made it so exciting. We had a four bedroom, two bath dorm room with a decent sized living area. Of course, Ali and I were on opposite sides of the suite, but that didn't stop us from spending every waking minute together. Of our other two girls, one spent 23 of every 24 hours in her room and the other spent 23 of every 24 hours asleep. We had lots of time to ourselves and drove the other two crazy. If you know me IRL then you know I'm loud and I never shut up. Well, so is Ali. One of my favorite memories is that although our doors were 20 feet from one another we would call each ...
Back by popular demand
Well, sort of. I've gotten asked a couple of times this weekend where I've been and why I haven't been blogging. The honest answer is sometimes there just isn't anything to say. Add to that the fact that I hadn't folded laundry in about ten days, I had an itch to spend a little money and we were having my parents and Kamin & Cory over for dinner and you can pretty much forget about it. I've been looking for matching rugs for my living room and dining room for months, but I've really focused on that for the last 6-8 weeks. I cannot spend upwards of $1000 on a single rug, since I need two. My living and dining rooms open to one another and act like one large room. I had a rug that I liked in the living room, but was having a hard time finding something coordinate. I've been looking at ...
Resident Artist
You got a sneak-peek of these on Sunday, but I thought you might enjoy the process. This girl just loves to paint! ...
Happy Mother’s Day
I used to dream of being a mother without knowing if that would ever happen. I still dream of making more babies without knowing how that will turn out. Either way, I cannot imagine my life being any better than it is today. My house may be small, but it's cozy and old and it's where we brought our sweet Ella home that very first time. My floors may be dusty and the laundry not folded, but my daughter is snuggled on the couch, happy and healthy. We may not have a lot of money or a lot of things, but I have a wonderful husband who provides for me spiritually, emotionally and financially. My day got off to a great start. Ella slept with us last night, so I got to snuggle her early this morning. She & SD made me pigs in a blanket for breakfast this morning. This is funny because Ella ...