Singing

Ella has recently taken an interest in "singing" and I am loving her little sing song voice these days!  Our car rides now often consist of me singing while Ella chimes in with the words she knows and then as soon as the song is over, she says, "more, more!" until I start singing again.  It makes for some long car rides ;).  Her favorite songs these days are the Clean Up song, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (requests the book we have to go with it pretty much every night), the Itsy Bitsy Spider (a favorite with hand motions that she does in a very cute way), the Snuggle Puppy song, Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, Rock-a-Bye Baby, The Wheels on the Bus, and Patty Cake.  Here's a little video of her version of "singing".  Although the singing is pretty cute, I think my favorite parts are her "kissy lips", her "closing her eyes", and the growl (?) at the end ;).

Potty!

Sorry if this is a gross blog post to some people, but I know all the other mamas reading will understand this new phase of dealing with the "potty" :).  I bought Ella an Elmo potty having no intention to potty train her yet, but just to get her used to sitting on a potty as she has been verbalizing when she goes in her diaper for awhile now.  She was pretty much obsessed with it the first day and we spent a good portion of the day "playing" with the potty.  I've done no reading or research on potty training yet, so I could be messing her up by introducing it to her now, but I was pleasantly surprised when she actually went tinkle in the potty the first day!  It's definitely not been a consistent thing since then, but here's to hoping that maybe her strong-willed nature and determination will work in our favor when we actually start potty training!

Trying to figure out how to sit on the potty!

 Evidence!

Aquarium

After a wonderful day spent with my mom having lunch downtown and shopping, we met up with Cody and Ella for a visit to the Seattle Aquarium.  We lucked out and got one of those beautiful, rare, spring Seattle days and enjoyed the sunshine and being near the water.  It was a fun visit that Ella loved even more because her Grandma (who she happens to adore!) was with us.

 She wasn't too sure about the octopus, but has since been very fascinated by pictures of any octopus she sees in her books at home :).

 Ella loved telling us how all the fish say "bubble-bubble"

 Baby, mama, and grandma otter family - very cute!

Easter in Suncadia

This is the third year in a row we've continued one of our favorite traditions of spending a long weekend in Suncadia with some of our best friends.  It just worked out that we ended up going Easter weekend this year, and it was so great watching the kids experience the fun of Easter together.  We were reminiscing about how last year we sat the babies on blankets and let them play while being immobile at that point.  In hindsight we should have taken advantage of their immobility and relaxed more while we had the opportunity to do so!  Ella, Nate, and Sophie were certainly little busy bodies this year, but they did great entertaining each other and playing with each other's toys.  They really are at such a great age and I love that they are such good friends!  Between all the Easter festivities and everything else we did while in Suncadia, we took over a thousand pictures :).  So of course this will be an extra long post!

 Our amazing house we stayed at...different from the house we've rented the past two years but we loved this one even more.

On Saturday morning, Suncadia put on an Easter egg hunt in one of the big open fields.  We had no idea there would be so many people there, but thankfully they blocked off a little area for toddlers so they wouldn't get run over by the bigger kids.  The kids got the hang of picking up the eggs and putting them in their baskets.

Not a bad backdrop for Ella's first Easter egg hunt!

 Haha! Gotta love the hug turned into a tackle!

 

LOVE these three cuties!

Dyeing Easter eggs back at the house...

 Ella hanging out with her buddies

Building forts with the dads while the moms were away getting pedicures at the spa and visiting the local winery :).

Opening her Easter basket Sunday morning

 We enjoyed a walk and stopped at a playground on the way back

 We set up another Easter egg hunt for the kids back at the house

 Lisa was a good sport and put the bunny ears on her {soon-to-be} baby belly!! Yay for baby Magnusson arriving in October and congrats to Lisa and Jamie!

 Jamie is a natural with the kiddos...he will be a great father!

Love our wonderful friends and the memories we make with them each year!  Hard to believe we got a picture of 8 adults and 3 toddlers all looking at the camera while using a self-timer!