Ella's One-Year Photos

I first took Ella in on Friday, April 10th, for her one-year photos and, for the first time in my mothering career, we left empty handed.  Between my three children, I have been to our department store photo studios over twenty times and, although their photographers are not the finest, we have always been able to get at least one photo "worthy" of an 8 x 10 picture.  But, I guess that there is always time for a first.  Ella refused to produce anywhere close to a stellar picture from the mediocre photographer we had and by the time the manager got in there to help us, it was too late.  Ella had hit her wall and was done.  So, after trying for a few more minutes, I packed her up and left.  I then rescheduled a second shoot a week later with the manager who actually has taken some fabulous pictures of Logan and Lia in the past.  But no matter what this photographer tried, Ella refused to give us a brilliant, open-mouthed smile.  She just kept on smiling with her mouth closed over and over again.  We could even hear Ella giggling sometimes with her mouth closed!  Argh.  It wasn't until the very end that I started tickling Ella under her chin.  This finally made her smile with a big grin, but she kept on reaching up to grab her chin.  So, all of these pictures have lots of hands and arms in them.  Oh well.  My seven years of mothering has taught me not to expect perfection.  So, we called it a wrap and and walked away with some semi decent photos.  Hopefully, Ella will snap out of it by the time we go in for her 18 month pictures.  We shall see...

Mommy Daughter and Daddy Son Day!

Since Lia didn't have school today, I asked Ron to take the day off from work several weeks ago so that we could go to the Spring Fair as a family.  After we had arranged this, Lia got invited for lunch and some shopping at the American Girl Doll Store with her good friend, Lilah, to celebrate her seventh birthday.  Lia and I decided that we couldn't pass up this opportunity and so Ron and I divided today.  The girls went to the AGD store and the boys went to the fair.  A good time was had by all.  Lia, Ella, and I thoroughly enjoyed wandering around this favorite store of ours and eating in the bistro and Ron and Logan had a grand old time going on rides and gawking at monster trucks.  Here are a few photos of our mommy-daughter and daddy-son dates!

Lia, Lilah, and Caitlyn sitting at our table in the bistro with their dolls.

Lia and Lilah with Caroline, Mirabella, and Lilah's brand new doll, Grace.  Lilah's parents bought her a new doll AND an outfit for both Lia and Caitlyn.  Talk about an amazingly generous "gift favor?!"

A close-up with Lia and "her girls."

After lunch, we changed Caroline into her beautiful, new holiday outfit.  Here are the girls getting together for a group photo with their dolls holding hands.  

The girls and their dolls.  Aren't seven-year old girls so cute?!

And here are some pictures that Ron took of Logan at the Spring Fair...

According to Ron, Logan thoroughly enjoyed the pit of plastic balls and played in them over...

and over...

and over again.  

Logan also had fun spending quite a bit of time making "music" with a bunch of other kids.

Here is our boy pounding away.

Both of the boys loved gawking at the monster trucks on display.

And no trip to the fair grounds is complete without an ice cream cone.

Logan licking away!

She's Walking!

Well, it happened.  Baby Ella is walking full-time and it all happened so fast.  In the past few weeks, Ella has gone from walking five to ten steps at a time to walking fifteen steps at a time to walking full-time.  This past weekend, she just stopped crawling.  It kind of caught Ron and me off guard as the change happened so quickly!  So we now have this adorable, tiny, 12-month old walking around our house all the time and it's just the cutest thing.  Today we had some sunshine and so Ella, Logan, and I headed out to the backyard after their naps for some play before dinner time.  Since I normally have to carry Ella around in my arms the entire time I play outside with Logan (which KILLS my back), it was so nice to just set Ella down and let her wander around the yard.  As you can imagine, Ella was thrilled with this new found independence and had the time of her life figuring out how to walk in shoes and navigate over the uneven surface of our grass.  I must say that she did a great job!  Here are several pictures I took of Ella's first romp in our backyard!

Like Father, Like Son

Ron has been on Spring Break this week which means he has been spending day after day crossing items off of his to-do list.  It hasn't been a very fun vacation for him, but it sure has been productive!  Yesterday, he headed outside to do some major trimming of the hedges and bushes in our backyard with his electric hedge trimmer.  Logan was so fascinated with this that he immediately ran to his bedroom, grabbed his battery operated chainsaw, and joined Ron in the backyard.  The two of them "trimmed" for a good hour or so before Logan got bored and headed back inside.  I just couldn't resist taking a picture or two of this adorable father and son scene.

My boys hard at work.

This is how I found Logan trimming the bushes.  Apparently it's best to stand inside a bush when trimming it.  Silly Logan.