Princess experience

My girls love princesses. Reese＊s love is far greater than Ella＊s but Ella is quickly catching up. I think that most little girls love princesses and have discovered that you can find just about any product out there adorned in princesses.

Last Saturday an organization in our area put on a fun Princess Experience event. The event included a sneak peak of the Little Mermaid, that will be released this month, in the movie theatre near to our house and a princess makeover and games after the movie. At the theatre they had lots of princesses there for photo ops as well as a goodie bag. We only made it 取 of the way through the movie, Ella was done and Reese just doesn＊t do very good in the theatre yet. After we got Ella out of the theatre she completely melted down and we realized she was not going to make it to the makeover portion. Neal took Ella home to nap (she took a 4.5 hour nap) and I took Reese on to the makeover portion.

Reese absolutely loved getting her nails, hair and makeup done. She thought she was such a big girl. She also had fun with all of the game and freebies available. It was a really well done, fun event.

Random updates on a Monday

1. Reese got an outfit from her Gigi last Spring that has turned into her favorite. The outfit really didn’t hold up that well from one year to the next, it wasn’t terrible but it was faded this year and just looked like it was worn hard last year. She has insisted on wearing this outfit at least once a week. It is being sold in the garage sale in a couple of weeks but I let her get one last wear out of it and made sure to get a picture.

2. Ella is becoming a little girl L There are so many baby things that are slowly going away. A couple of things that I do not want to forget are the way that she has said Elmo for the past 5 months, Melmo. She is now saying Elmo and is correcting me whenever I say Melmo. She has also called her milk, maach until a few weeks ago she is now saying milk. She is so precious and while I am excited for her to grow up I am going to miss my sweet baby. I want time to stop for a bit. In the below photo she tried a lick of her ice cream shaped chalk…she didn’t think it was very tasty.

3. We are not thinking that Reese is going to be a soccer star. She seems to think it is okay but it isn’t something that she is excited about. She is normally more interested in water or snack breaks and picking flowers on the field. She will run down the field with her team mates sometimes but doesn’t really have interest in kicking the ball or scoring a goal. At lease she is adorable when she is out there. I don't have any new soccer pictures but the below is an adorable picture of her sliding down a blow up slide.

4. Ella rode her 1^st pony at first Friday a couple of weeks ago. She loves to look at photos of Reese riding ponies and begs to ride one too. She was so scared and would not let go of me the whole ride. She only agreed to sit on the pony for about a minute. She was not a fan. This is the best photo I was able to get. Stinker.

5. I just had to include this photo.

Soccer, Birthdays and Busyness

The next few months are going to be jammed packed but a lot of fun. In the month of September Reese has soccer games every Saturday, Neal will be traveling for a little over a week for Fall market and we have an exciting Little Mermaid Princess Experience to attend with the girls. In October we have Ella’s birthday party and day of birthday festivities and my youngest sister, Chelsea, is getting married towards the end of October and Reese has soccer every Saturday. The wedding will mean a lingerie shower, a rehearsal dinner and the wedding day all in a week (the same week of the birthday party and day of birthday festivities). Then the week after she gets married I will be having surgery and the following week is Halloween. I am exhausted just thinking about all of these things but it will be exciting and fun. I am looking forward to having my entire family in the NWA area. I love living here and it will be fun for me to show them to where I live.

Saturday before last Reese had her 1^st soccer game. She is playing through a program called Happy Feet. There are 6 kids on her team and 2 of them are from her school, 1 of the 2 is her best friend Reagan. We found out last week that another one of her favorite friends will be joining her team starting this Saturday. They play another team of 6 each week. They have 3 kids from each team play at a time and do 3 on 3 scrambles. It was really cute and much less chaotic/funny than I thought it would be. They all did a great job when they weren’t too busy picking flowers.

This past weekend I ran my 1st 5k! I wasn't able to run the August 3rd 5k that I'd been working towards due to my ankle issues but I managed to run this one. I ran it in 30.05 minutes. I was so pleased to finish it without walking but there were a few hills that nearly killed me.

Potty time 2

Ella pooped on the potty tonight!!! She is 22 months old. Reese was 27 months old the 1st time she did this so hopefully it will all happen a bit faster for Ella. We have been letting her "practice" on the little princess potty when we are outside playing. Tonight I caught the signs just in time and asked her if we needed to get the potty out. She said yes but I wasn't sure if it was going to happen or not because she really loves to "practice" but nothing ever happens. She got up and down for about 10 minutes. Then Reese announced "Ella went poo poo". I still didn't think she had but I went and looked and sure enough she had. We all screamed and cheered and Ella was so proud of herself. Here's hoping it happens often from now on. The thought of eliminating diapers from our house is just so exciting!

Random updates on a Monday

1. Something I want to document and never forget, because I love it and know that one day soon it will just be a memory, is the fact that Reese cannot pronounce her v's correctly. So we get this: moobie= movie, moob= move, Steeb (Neal's boss)= Steve, smoobie= smoothie, neber= never.

2. Ella has developed quite the attitude and ability to fight back. We may be in over our heads with these 2 strong willed girls..but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

3. We have undoubdebtly moved into the best cul-de-sac there is. The girls have had a blast since we moved in. For the 4th of July we had a 3rd of July cul-de-sac party complete with food, a baseball game, fireworks and a band. It seemed that everyone had a great time.

4. I have been running for over 3 months now! This is a huge accomplishment for me. I have set out to run before and it has only lasted for a few weeks at most. I have 2 ladies that have been running with me and I think that is the difference that has kept me at it. I have gotten up to 3 miles, this is also huge for me..I know it is not a lot to many but this is the furthest I have ever run. I have been working towards a 5k race that I am scheduled to run on August 3rd. Sunday July 7th my left ankle began hurting. The next day both ankles were hurting. The hurt was mild so I went ahead and ran on a treadmill while I was on vacation. They didn’t hurt any worse, it was just there, until Friday of that week. My ankles were swollen and so sore. They are now very sore and swollen off and on. I broke down and made an appointment with an Orthopedic doctor. I apparently have tendinitis. I'm on anti inflammatory and am hoping that will fix it. Sadly I will not be able to run the race.

5. The girls went to spend the weekend with Neal’s parents for the first time ever away from home without us this past weekend. I truly missed them so much but it was a much needed break. We were able to relax, enjoy friends without distraction and get a lot done around the house in preparation for a big shower that we are throwing here next weekend. The girls had a great time with their Grandparents and I am thankful that they were willing to take on so much responsibility. Gigi and Gi-Pop will probably sleep really well for a week.

6. I'm so glad to have my precious little girls home!

San Antonio Vacation 2013

This year’s vacation started out with 4 bathroom stops in the 1^st 3 hours of our road trip to San Antonio. After our 1^st bathroom stop Reese would insist that she needed to use the bathroom and once we stopped and got out she would reveal that she did not need to use the bathroom. I have to hand it to her that she is a very smart 3 year old, she figured out quickly that claiming to need to use the bathroom got her out of the car that she hates. My girls are decent car riders but not great and neither of them really napped in the car..Reese not at all really and Ella only for a half hour here or there.

We chose San Antonio because Reese has had an obsession with whales for a while now so we decided to do Sea World. While we were there we also did the river walk, the Children’s museum, swam in the hotel pools a lot and ate at Taco Cabana a lot. We stopped in Allen on the way up and back for the night to break up the trip and had fun there too.

The river walk really was not kid friendly. There is about an 8 foot wide walk way on each side of the river with no railing to keep you from falling into the river. There are also hardly any bridges to get you from one side to the other and the couple that we saw had stairs, not convenient with a double stroller. We didn’t let the girls get out of the stroller as we feared they would fall in. We stopped for dinner at the Rainforest Café. This was actually one of the highlights of the trip. The girls loved all of the animals and were fascinated, and a bit frightened, of the thunderstorms. The food was okay but the entertainment was spectacular for a 3 yo and a 1 yo.

My mom came up for the night and got to go to Sea World and the Children’s museum with us. Sea world was a lot of fun. We spent 10 hours there and everyone held up so much better than I expected. Neal looked at me at one point and said he didn’t think we could have done the whole day there without my mom as it is a lot to keep up with the 2 of them at a theme park that size.

We had a really great vacation and so much fun together. We hope to do it again one day when the girls are older and also do Shlitterbahn and maybe float the Guadalupe River.

Ella's 1st movie

At 2 years old we took Reese to her 1st movie. Ella is 20 months, which seems young for a movie in the theatre. Monsters University came out a couple of weeks ago and Monsters Inc. is Ella's favorite movie so we decided to go ahead and try it. We went on a Sunday afternoon after nap. We went with our good friends and neighbors. Ella and Reese were so excited. Ella was such a good girl. She sat in our laps. watched the movie and ate her pop corn and candy. Her sister on the other hand would not stay in her seat or be quiet. About an hour and a half in we had to leave because Reese wouldn't behave and Ella was about ready anyways. So we look forward to seeing the entire movie when it comes out. We had a good time and Ella enjoyed her first experience in the theatre.

 

 

 

Look at Ella's silly pose in the below photo!

 

I love this photo of our cute little family.