Moving On

It is with mixed emotions that we say good-bye to our first house - the house we moved into after we got married, the house we brought both our girls home from the hospital in, and the house we created tons of memories in.  When we first bought the house, we knew we would probably be in it for 5-7 years before outgrowing it, and sure enough, 6 years later, we are moving on.  We (well, mostly Cody) has put a lot of hard work into this house updating, painting (and re-painting thanks to my ever changing taste) and making it our own since we moved in.  I'm mostly sad about leaving our wonderful Issaquah/Sammamish community and lots of friends in the area, but we are only going about 30 minutes north to Bothell.  Ironically, our new house is about 2 miles from where I grew up.  We are excited to be moving into a great kid-friendly neighborhood in a new community.  And we're very excited that we'll actually have room for friends and family to stay with us while visiting and that we have plenty of room to grow into our new house.  We are so thankful for answered prayers that our house sold quickly (sold on the first day of showings!!) and that our new house came on the market at the right time so we didn't have to live in temporary housing - God was certainly in control of this whole situation!  I wanted to include the pictures of our first home (taken by our real estate agent's photographer) so we'll always remember it.

March Instagrams

Breakfast at Portage bay with my whole family...

Wishing she could join her big sister's ballet class (she pounds on the window and yells excitedly when she sees Ella -- I'm sure it's a distraction to the ballerinas, but it's the cutest!)...

 It felt so good to be back in my old classroom subbing for a few days...

"It's so bright out mommy! It feels like summer!"  You know you're a Seattle kid when the high 50's feels like summer...

 SOLD! Bittersweet to be saying good-bye to our first house but excited about what lies ahead...

 Finally got around to printing our 2013 blog book...love that we have these family "yearbooks" to look back on...

3 1/2 Years Old

Oh we love this sweet girl!  She is growing up so fast and becoming such a big girl.  I think she's recently gone through a growth spurt as most of her 3T dresses that she insists on wearing daily show her tushy because they're too short now.  At least she can get away with wearing tights or leggings underneath.

She is such a good helper, especially when it comes to her sister.  She never complains when I ask her to get a wipe out to clean up Lucy and she is so good about cleaning up the toys Lucy makes a mess with.  She knows how to entertain her sister and loves telling us when Lucy is getting into something she shouldn't be doing (which is OFTEN!). She loves helping me clean and bake and has been a trooper with getting our house cleaned up and decluttered for moving.

Ella loves her long, straight "Rapunzel" hair and has been asking for it straight pretty often lately.  At least she can wear it straight for 4-5 days without washing it.  But then she'll tell me she misses her curlies, and I agree with her...we love those curls!  She panics anytime I bring up the idea of cutting or trimming her hair - this girl has never had a haircut!  Although she did note the other day that when it gets so long that it touches the water while she's sitting on the potty, "we might have to do something about that."  Agreed.

She's fully potty-trained at night time and naps now - no more pull-ups around here! She is my wake up call at precisely 6:30am every morning when her little face appears at my side of the bed telling me she has to go potty.  It's often startling without my glasses on!  She can easily go by herself, but insists that we know she's up and using our potty.  She'll usually go back to bed or play in her room until around 7am when we're ready to get up with her, but she loves snuggling with us on our bed in the mornings.

We've taken her railing off her bed so she's in a twin bed with no guards or rails up.  Makes it easier to get in and out of bed for her...both a good thing and a bad thing.  She's actually great about staying in bed all night and loves the freedom knowing she can get up if she needs to go potty.

Her vocabulary is hilarious as she picks up on what older kids and adults say so quickly and uses expressions appropriately.  Her favorites lately, "Oh.my.goodness.  That is just sooo awesome." And, "That is like crazy fantastic mommy!"  She told her dad the other day, "Daddy, lose the attitude."  You think she's heard that a few times? :)  When she can tell I'm getting frustrated or flustered she'll tell me, "Mommy, just call on God.  He'll be here for you."  Love that I have her to remind me of these things :).

She's still princess obsessed.  She's been known to use a "dingle-hopper" at the dinner table a time or two (for those not familiar with The Little Mermaid, Ariel calls a fork a dingle-hopper and uses it to brush her hair).  We need to remind her that forks are for eating, not for brushing hair.  When we ask her to get ready for a bath, she'll immediately tell us she needs to go get her fin and bikini on and pretend to be Ariel the entire time she's in the bath.  It amazes me how she stays in "character" as long and as often as she does.  It cracks me up when she'll break out a line from Frozen pretending that she's Elsa and I'm Anna - we'll be having a conversation and she all of a sudden tells me, "I said NO Anna! You can't marry a man you just met!"

A few recent favorite pictures...

Practicing her ballet moves before dance class...

 Looking so grown up lately...

 She still loves everything about preschool.  Her astronaut helmet she made at preschool...

Two things Ella loves: reading books and anything "Frozen" related.  I love her "reading" her Frozen book (which probably won't make sense unless you've seen the movie)...

I love that Ella's preschool has helped to nourish and support her spiritual growth.  She looks forward to Chapel once a week and does such a great job remembering songs and Bible verses.  Here is one of her recent favorite songs and her weekly Bible verse:

11 Months

11 months!  Eek!  How is that my baby will be ONE next month!?  She has grown, changed, and learned so many new things in the last few weeks.  It's so fun to watch her learn something new literally everyday.  She recently hit a mental/physical growth-spurt and reached a lot of developmental milestones within about a week! Crazy how fast she's moving and changing these days.  In one word, she is a HANDFUL!  Still our sweet, snuggly, happy girl, but always on the move and into something.  She's wanting to be more independent and mobile, and gets frustrated easily when she can't get what she wants or go where she wants to go.  Her little personality is turning into a big personality as she is asserting herself and letting us know who she is.  When she's in a chatty mood, she is loud and between her and her sister, Cody and I often have to stop our conversations as we can't hear each other over them.

  Some of the things she has recently learned and we love watching her do now:
- Waving!  She has the CUTEST wave and gets so excited when someone waves to her.  She puts one or both hands up in the air and will wave back and forth as long as someone is waving at her.
- Pointing.  If she's not waving, she's pointing at everything and everyone.  She'll often do a wave with one hand while pointing with the other hand.  So cute!
- Is pulling up to stand on her own.  She first mastered this in her crib and now can do it on pretty much everything.  She has no fear trying to stand up in the bath tub which often leads to falling and being submerged under water.  It hasn't phased her in the least, but it scares me every time!
- Prefers to be standing up holding onto something rather than sitting down.  She loves playing with her music table and cruising on furniture. 
- Walking with her walker.  She loves walking all over the place while pushing and hanging onto her walker.  She gets brave and will hang on with one hand and does a transfer from her walker to furniture on her own.  I don't think she's close to walking on her own any time soon though - she still has a lot of weight to support on those little feet ;).
- Is obsessed with playing with balls, and is actually pretty good at it.  She will roll the ball back and forth to us - at first I thought it was just accidental and her hand would just happen to roll the ball in the right direction, but we've realized she's actually very intentional.  She gets really excited to play with balls and will crawl after them as they roll away.  She loves getting a ball for Lily and then dropping/attempting to throw it for her.
- Loves throwing things - she tosses her binkies out of her crib and shrieks until someone comes back in and gives them to her, she loves throwing food off her high chair (especially when Lily is waiting under her chair), and thinks it's hilarious to throw whatever she's holding and see how many times someone will pick it up for her.
- Growing more teeth! Another one cut through on top making a total of four on top and two on bottom.  She chews and gnaws on everything leaving teeth marks all over her crib and on every table at every restaurant we got to.  Oops!
- Has finally started doing a more traditional crawl.  Up until a few weeks ago, she was still doing her army crawl with her belly on the ground.

We just love this sweet girl!!  Pictures from her last month...

She loves her books...

Teething much?

Big waves!

 So happy to be standing up playing these days...

Celebrating daddy on his birthday...

  I love when she gets up on her knees to play...

 Testing out her noise making skills on the microphone...

 We had fun hanging out with aunties and uncles while my whole family was in town to celebrate birthdays...

 Celebrating my birthday - so fun to have grandma stay with us for a week!

 Pinning her big sister down...

 Concentrating hard to figure out this walking thing...

Easily entertained with moving boxes...

Growing LOTS of curls!  Her hair is so similar to Ella's at this age, just a lighter color...

 She loves bath time...

  And I had to include one picture of her sad face - we think she's so cute even when she's crying! Haha!  These days she gets easily frustrated when she doesn't get what she wants or something she was playing with gets taken away (usually remote controls, iphones, cords, etc.)...

I took this video almost a month ago when she was first starting to figure out how to use the walker. I love how she was figuring out her first steps with it.  She's very confident/fast with it now!