Our Disney Vacation!!

We've been back for over a week and I'm just now getting to blog about this! It's hard getting back in the swing of things!

We had such a great vacation! God is so good and really answered a lot of prayers! Things went very smoothly for the most part, we were all healthy (HUGE answer to prayer) and the weather was-well, good enough I guess :) The next time we go (definitely going back when Ella's a little older), it might be a good idea to go in the spring or fall when it's not so hot! It was in the mid 90's and so so humid every day! Luckily there are lots of air conditioned little shops to duck into and spend lots of money at!

We left on a Tuesday night. Rusty, Rachel and I left our house around 5:30 and headed to Rusty's Mom's to pick up Ella. We got on the road around 6:20. Here's Ella-ready for the long road trip! Other than hitting some bad weather, the drive to FL went pretty well. Ella fell asleep around 10 and slept until 2:30 when we stopped for gas. She didn't fall back asleep until 4ish and then slept until we stopped for breakfast at 7. We got to Disney around 11:30.

Once we got all checked in, we all took naps and then headed out to Magic Kingdom! As you can see, Ella is just super excited to be here! :)

We didn't do much that afternoon. Rusty and Rachel went out to ride some rides while I stayed with Ella and rode some kiddie rides. She really liked the Pooh ride although it did scare her a little.

The next day (Thursday), we went to Epcot. Despite the horrible heat, Ella managed to fall asleep for over an hour. (she's holding on tight to the pooh and Eeyore we got her at magic kingdom-she held on those and played with them every day!)

While Ella was napping, we walked through a lot of the different countries. And we had a Snow White spotting!

Once Ella woke up, I decided to go ahead and wait in line to get pics taken with all the Mickey's Clubhouse characters. We had to wait for about an hour but I'm glad we got the pics! Here's Ella waiting in line. She was pretty good!

She doesn't look it in this picture, but she was actually VERY excited about seeing Mickey Mouse! She saw him while we were waiting in line and had a mini meltdown because she wanted to run to him and give him "pats"-which is what she does to show love, it's very sweet! More on that later...

I didn't put the rest of the pics but we also got pics with Donald, Daisy, Pluto and Goofy (who she was scared of).

Next day was Hollywood Studios, which we all really liked. Tower of Terror was a really good ride! We also got pics taken with Handy Manny! I really wanted to ask him what his intentions are with Kelly but I didn't :)-everytime Rusty and I watch this show we wonder if him and Kelly will ever get together. Ha!

Ella's favorite part of the whole trip was probably seeing a live playhouse disney! it was so well done. They had Mickey's Clubhouse, Little Einsteins, Tigger & Pooh and Handy Manny. It was basically a big puppet show but it was really cute and Ella was just glued the whole time.

After the show, Rachel and I went to ride Tower of Terror while Rusty took Ella around.

We went to Downtown Disney in the evening on Friday. Here is Rusty and I in front of the "Jenny" from Forrest Gump!

Ella exploring some of the statues and giving them "pats"

Rachel and I trying to cool off!

I don't have any great pics from Animal Kingdom but we did go there! That is where we went Saturday and it was just so busy and so hot. Rachel and I rode the water ride first thing and we got so wet that I just felt disgusting the rest of the day and neither of us felt like being in any pics!

Saturday night, Rachel watched Ella so Rusty and I could head back to Downtown Disney for a date night! Despite it pouring down rain, we had a great time! We ate at this amazing Irish place, wish we had it here! I wanted to try everything on the menu!

Sunday, Rusty stayed with Ella and Rachel and I headed back to Magic Kingdom, just the 2 of us. I felt so free! I loved having Ella there of course, but it was so nice to just walk around and do what we wanted without having to worry about stopping for diaper changes, snacks, etc. We met up with Rusty around 1pm and headed back for our LONG drive home! That was not fun! It was WAY better to drive at night than during the day! But, we made it!

So, that is our trip in a nutshell! Lots of fun memories. We LOVED the place we stayed-we stayed at Fort Wilderness Cabins. It was a great setup-it was basically just like a little apartment with a bedroom, kitchen, living room, etc. It would even be fine for 2 families to share since there are 2 double beds, bunk beds, and then they have pack n plays to let you borrow! We also learned for next time we go that we need to bring umbrellas/ponchos everyday-that would've been super helpful because we got wet every day we were there and I guess that is pretty common! We also found out that its much easier to drive than to take their transportation. It's nice to have if you don't have a car but be prepared to spend lots of time on the shuttle. We also had to remind ourselves to just not stress about things. We saw SO many people arguing with each other and yelling at their kids. Its so easy to do, especially when its hot.

Since we've been home, Ella has just been fiestier than ever! One little story to leave you with. The other night I put her on her time out bench and she was NOT happy about it. She sat on her bench, looked up at me and said "Mommy NO PATS!" It took me a minute to figure out what she said but once I figured it out, I was shocked! Of course it hurt my feelings that she was basically telling me that she didn't love me at that moment, but I was also pretty shocked that she had figured out a way to communicate that using the things she knew how to say!

Ella update!

Happy June!

Enjoying a juice date with her friend Zoey on Memorial Day...

One of her favorite past times...guess she sees Mommy doing this a lot!

We've been spending lots of hot days at the park by our house! Classic Ella face.

And...it's a splash park! Ella loves it but is a little intimidated-some of that water is pretty strong! I'm not sure if Ella is more fearful than other kids, but I usually feel like I'm the only mom having to run through the water with her child! Oh well! I've learned to just wear my swim suit whenever we go-I usually end up more wet than she is! This day there happened to be just a few kids. We went today though and it was PACKED. When I left, there was someone sitting waiting on my parking spot. It's a popular place!

Ella loves the playground equipment they have there. I like it too because it's easy for me to keep track of where she is. Some of the parks we've visited have so many tunnels and bridges, I lose track of her all the time!

Ella and her friend Ally, planning their escape! They didn't get far.

This picture cracks me up! Ella, practicing her matrix moves, with her friend Ally again :)

So it's been awile since I've given an Ella update! She seems to be changing every day. She goes to Rusty's Mom's every Monday and Tuesday and it seems every Monday, they comment on something new she's doing since they saw her the past Tuesday! Her vocabulary grows by the second it seems. She's very curious and constantly asks "what's that?" She has started walking up to people we don't know (usually in the park) and will look up at them and say to me "what's that"? It's a little embarassing! But she just wants to know who that person is and I guess she doesn't know to say "who's that?" :) Here are some other tid bits about Ella at 20 1/2 months:

*she's quite the perfectionist.

*she hates for things to be dirty, messy or out of place. She was pretty upset at Walmart the other day when one of the tubes of chapstick had been knocked out of the box, so we had to fix it. She's extremely persistent and will not let it rest until it's put back into place!

*Her favorite foods are blueberries, strawberries, peaches, (soy) cheese, (soy or almond) milk, and juice-in that order! She is a pretty good eater overall but dinner is by far our hardest meal with her. I've learned to just not push bites on her and eventually she'll take bites on her own. Her favorite dinner is spaghetti!

*She had gotten really good at feeding herself until recently-she wants me to feed her. It's a little annoying and my food always ends up cold. But as much as I persist for her to take her own bites, she'll just say to me "YOU do it"-even if it's taking a bite of toast.

*Has finally transitioned into 1 nap. We were going back and forth between 1 and 2 naps for over a month. Finally I got sick of never knowing from day to day what our schedule was going to be and just decided to do 1 nap. Eventually her body figured it out I guess, because now she'll consistently go down at around 12:30 or 1 with no problem and sleeps about 1.5-2 hours.

*LOVES bath time! This was such a triumph for us-we struggled with bath time for quite awhile but now as soon as we say "bath time", she runs to the stairs. Actually, a few nights we tried to skip bath time but as soon as we tried to put her PJ's on without doing a bath, she would just cry and point to the door, saying "bath...bath". So now we pretty much just do it nightly as the start of her bedtime routine.

*Her bedtime routine is great right now. Bath starts around 7:30 and by 8 she's usually in bed and close to asleep. I used to sing to her and rock her before putting her in her crib, but now she prefers reading 1 Pooh book and Goodnight Moon. Wake up time is around 6:30. She usually wakes up talking about something-not sure if it's something she had a dream about or what. This morning she woke up saying "swimsuit! Water!" haha! She also is still in her crib and has not shown any signs of trying to climb/jump out so we're not planning to put her in a toddler bed any time soon!

*She loves Finding Nemo and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse-she'd probably watch those 2 over and over all day if I let her. We've scaled back a LOT on TV-she usually watches 2 Mickey's in the morning and part of Finding Nemo after her nap in the afternoons. Other than that I try to keep the TV off! Definitely a challenge on rainy days!

*I've bought her a potty chair but haven't really tried using it yet. She's just recently started telling us (sometimes) when she's dirty or wet so I guess that is the first sign that maybe she is getting ready!

Well, I could go on and on but I'm sure this is getting boring! If you're still reading at this point, thanks! :) I'll end by this video of her, which I find hilarious. Most of you that read this blog probably already know about how her new favorite word is "dangerous". She likes to point at things and say "that's dangerous!" It's pretty cute. So here she is saying "dangerous".

Oh, and one more thing. We live for Disney in 5 days!!! Any tips on long car trips/vacations with a toddler would be greatly appreciated!

Where to begin?

We've been trying to get back into our normal routine.

It's a slow process.

In the past 3 weeks, we've moved my Mom here, graduated my youngest sister (we didn't actually go to her graduation ceremony as she decided against walking-but we did do a "reenactment" of the ceremony at our house!), had family from Holland come to stay with us for 3 days, and successfully married off (is that the right term?) one sister.

Whew.

Last week was a week filled with mixed emotions for me. I had thought Monday morning would meet me with relief, but instead, it left me feeling empty. It was definitely time for my sister to move on with her own life, but I was surprised with the sadness I felt with one less person living in our house! It will just take some getting used to. And it won't be for long as we will have another (much welcomed) house guest for awhile starting June 12th when my youngest sister comes to stay with us!

So I've finally found a quiet moment to sit down and start sorting out the events of the past few weeks. It will probably take me a few posts to catch up. I'll start with what happened the most recently, and I suppose, the most exciting of all! Sarah's wedding, of course! (Sorry, Rachel-your graduation reinactment was quite exciting but it will have to be pushed to the next post) :)

Thursday night kicked it off with Sarah's bachelorette party. I'll just say that Sarah has some pretty wild and exciting friends. I'll post a few *select* pictures in a future post. Maybe.

Friday night was the rehearsal. It was such fun! The actual rehearsal went fairly well and we got all the kinks worked out. Here's us sisters-don't mind the construction in the background!


Dinner was directly afterwards at a fun local place called Scotty's Lakehouse (I think). They had wonderful burgers and fries and I regretted that I had placed my Cobb Salad order in advance, but I ate Rusty's fries :)

Saturday was the big day. We prayed and prayed for good weather and we were blessed with a beautiful day with just a few drops of rain towards the end of the day. I had also prayed a LOT for Ella to behave well as the flower girl. She's totally unpredictable. We decided early on that her and I would walk down the aisle together, holding hands. Getting her to walk down the aisle by herself was something I didn't even want to attempt. She did great at the rehearsal so I really hoped she would do it during the wedding.

Here we go. So far, so good!


Uh-oh. Something catches her eye in the pew. I try to ignore it and keep walking.

Ok, she let out a pretty loud shriek so I should probablly try to get this under control.

And...this is me dragging her up the aisle, as she begins her meltdown.

But aren't her shoes cute?

Ok, this pic got out of order. I think it was pre-meltdown.

And...here comes the bride. Isn't she beatiful? I really didn't expect to tear up but the moment I heard the music and she walked out with my Dad, I lost it. My little sister was getting married!

I really really enjoyed the whole ceremony (other than my feet hurting so badly from my shoes that I really thought I might pass out). She walked out to the song "Kisses & Cake" which is one of the main songs used in the movie "P.S. I Love You". One of her bridesmaids sang a really pretty song by Brandon Heath-I can't remember the name of it now...Love is Near maybe? The Unity Candle Lighting was to "I'll Be By Your Side" by Tenth Avenue North. They first just lit the candle and prayed as a couple.

Then the wedding party came and silently prayed over them.

Then, finally...the kiss!!

The ending song was "This Will Be" by Natalie Cole. It was perfect!

They are so happy! Aren't they a cute couple??

The reception turned out so great. Our church gym has never looked so classy! The bridal party was introduced to the song "Now that We Have Love" from the end credits of the movie Hitch, and we tried to kind of recreate that end scene-cute.

First Dance (to "I'll Be" by Edwin McCain")

Cutting of the Cake (forget what song they had during this but it was a good one!)

And...just some fun pics from the reception. Ella was a wild child! I have a really cute video of her dancing that I'll have to post later.

All in all, it was a great day and a beautiful wedding! All the hard work was definitely worth it and I know my sister is going to be so happy!

(A lot of these pics were borrowed from Amber and Anya-thanks girls!)

We miss you Aunt Rachel!!

Tonight during dinner, Ella started saying "Rachel?? Rachel??" She misses her Aunt Rachel and so do we!! I tried to get a good video of her asking for Rachel but by the time I got my camera out and recording, she was on the tail end of it, of course! We miss you Rach! See ya soon!!

I just uploaded about 200 pics from my camera onto my computer, yikes! We've just been having a crazy couple of weeks at our house. We've got about another month before all the craziness calms down! One sister is getting married, another sister is graduating from college and moving, my Mom is moving from about an hour away to about 10 minutes away and we have some family from overseas coming to stay with us! It will be a fun month but I'm also looking forward to some calm :) Rusty and I really-like REALLY-want to go on vacation after all this but we'll see what happens. We'd really like to go to Disney. I know Ella's too young to even remember it but we have some Disney Dollars to spend and it just seems like a good set up with staying at the Park and being able to just go back to our hotel for Ella's nap without too much hassle.

Last weekend was the big spring family get together on Rusty's side of the family. Since everyone is so spread out and busy, we try to bascially do a get together 4 times a year and celebrate all the bdays that hit around that time. We were blessed with a wonderful sunny day! Here's Ella with her maw-maw, grandpa and cousin Mariah.

This next pic is by request, so here you go Nancy! :) Ella wore this outfit to church last week and got quite a few compliments on her diva shoes, ha! One of the many reasons I love having a girl-you should see this girl's shoe drawer!!

Ella has been doing really well with eating lately. She's great about trying new things and really likes most things. I even made tuna patties for dinner the other night and she gobbled them right up, I was surprised! I realized I'd gotten in the bad habit of still feeding her and not letting her really practice feeding herself with utensils. So...here she is after feeding herself spaghetti.

This past weekend I had a few luxury hours to myself. The first hour was spent at the BMV replacing my lost drivers license. SIGH. But the next hour I hit the first garage sales of the season!! I had been itching to go and Saturday was the perfect day. There were several neighborhood sales that I hit up. Sadly, it seems everyone had the garage sale itch-it was super packed everywhere. Not sure if all the good stuff was bought up on Friday or what, I was pretty disappointed at what people were trying to sell. Used coloring books? Lingerie (yup-really)? Yucky old pots & pans? Clothing with stains and holes? So, I ended up spending $3. I got Ella a cute little dr. kit, a t-shirt and a sun hat. Funny how the focus of my shopping has totally changed! Here she is with the stethoscope of her dr. kit. I was CRACKING UP when I turned the corner and saw her like this!!

And.....last but not least.....we got a new car!! Yippeee! We've been praying about it for about a month now. We had a 2001 Chevy Malibu that I was driving. It was starting to get some miles on it but it was paid for and we've not had any problems with it in the 7 years that we've had it. We also had a 2001 Nissan Pathfinder that Rusty drove. It had quite a few miles on it (like 132K!) and was starting to have problems. And we still owed money on it. We took it in for a maintenance check and found out it needed some work done. So...we just prayed and decided to go car shopping on Saturday. And well...we found a car! It's a 2008 Saturn Vue and it's beautiful and I love it! The dearlership was willing to take a trade on the Pathfinder and gave us definitely more than it was worth. All the stars alligned and we decided to go for it! Rusty is making a HUGE sacrifice for me on this! He's going to be driving my Malibu from now on so that I can drive the new car. I honestly feel a little guilty about this and was really sad for him last night. He really loved that Pathfinder. It was a guys car. The malibu...well, not the most manly car. But he keeps insisting that he's totally fine with it, what a great husband!! This new car will be such a blessing for me-so much roomier for getting Ella in and out, buying groceries, getting the stroller in and out, etc. Yay!

Plan B, Easter and I love you!!

Can you tell from the title that this is going to be a random, catch-up post? Ha! Last week was a fun week for us. The weather was super nice and Ella has been in a great mood! I have to chalk it up to her ears continue to improve. It makes me mad that we weren't able to help her earlier. It was a pretty miserable 4 months or so for all of us-her, dealing with constant pain and irritation and us, dealing with a generally unhappy girl for a lot of the time! I'm hoping things will keep going up from here!

Friday, my sisters Sarah and Rachel were both off work and home. Since the weather was supposed to be great, we decided to take Ella to the zoo! I guess everyone had the same idea. We figured out pretty quickly that something was going on. Cars were lined up really far back. I decided to zoom past everyone, hoping maybe there was just an accident or that everyone was actually turning before the zoo. Nope! Everyone was in line for the zoo! But when we actually got to the zoo entrance, it was all coned off! I'm really glad we didn't wait in that line for an hour only to find out we couldn't get in! I later found out that we had to park somewhere else and shuttle over. We came up with a Plan B pretty quickly. I'd packed a cooler with sandwiches so we just decided to head over to the Art Museum and see if we could just eat lunch on the grounds there and let Ella play around in the grassy areas. Thankfully, the museum was pretty empty and we were able to have a great time there! Ella loved eating outside and then getting to play.

We started off our Easter festivities by dying...Ella's mouth. I had the Easter Egg painting kit in a cabinet and well, Ella found it...

...you can't tell very well from this picture but her mouth was VERY green, as were her hands, legs and hair! Augh! My first reaction was to find the box to make sure it was nontoxix! It was :) So then I took a picture. And then I cleaned her up. So, that is about as far as we got this year with painting anything. We'll try again next year!

Easter morning was pretty hectic at our house since I had to leave earlier than everyone else for worship practice. As I was leaving the house, Ella was in her highchair eating breakfast. I was saying goodbye and was turning to leave when Ella yelled out "I love you!"-for the very first time!! I've been trying to get her to say that for months it seems but she just clams up and will never say it back to me! So, I was a very happy mama :) Especially since I didn't even say it first, she just said it out of the blue!

And, of course, Easter egg hunting pics! We weren't sure how she would do with this but she did great! She really understood it-we were surprised. Rusty hid 11 eggs and she'd gotten them all in just a few minutes. So we just kept re-hiding them, in the same places even, and she thought it was so fun!