It's Fall Y'all

I can't believe it's almost November. Fall 2012 will definitely go down as the busiest fall to date. In late July we put an offer on a new house in Charlotte and after many ups and downs throughout the process, we closed in mid September. We did a little bit of renovations and moved about 3 weeks ago in the beginning of October. We had been casually looking for new homes but when we found this one, Mike and I both fell in love. We had a long wish list of things we wanted and this house met or exceeded all of our expectations. We had been needing a lot more space with our growing family and this house is perfect for us!

The weekend of the move was craziness but luckily DeeDee, Papa and Uncle Court came up to help us which was a lifesaver! I will post more pictures of the interior once it is a little more completed (i.e., we have pictures hung up on the walls!) but we are getting settled in nicely. We absolutely LOVED our old neighborhood and neighbors and we certainly do miss them a lot but luckily it's only a 15 minutes drive away from them and we have met some fun new neighbors here already. One of Ella's boyfriends from her preschool class last year lives over here so they have been amazing introducing us to new neighbors.

The weekend after moving in, we had Maddie's baptism so we were lucky to have family in town again to help us. Mike and his Dad worked non stop for 3 days on different projects! On Friday night, Mike's Mom and I took Ella to see Disney on Ice. We went last year and she loved it and her love for all things Disney has multiplied over the last year so even though the timing was super busy, I knew we had to make it work for her. She couldn't wait and talked about it all week and proudly wore her Cinderella dress to the big night. I let her pick one present and she immediately picked out the Ariel doll and then Grandma got her a Tinkerbell fairy hat and cotton candy.

 She literally sat mesmerized for 2 straight hours and the only time I could get pictures was during the intermission. She cheered so loudly and sang along to the songs she knew. 

 Ariel and all her friends, Ella's favorite of course!

 Like I said, mesmerized the entire show!

 And she even got her first taste of cotton candy and no surprise my little sweet lover devoured it! The show went until 9 and she immediately crashed when she hit the car seat on the drive home. It was definitely a special night for her and I am so glad I got to see it through her eyes.

 One thing we are loving about the new house is the backyard. It is fully fenced in so Dakota can run around freely and it's nice and flat and grassy so the girls can have fun out there as well. The weather has been great so we spend a lot of time after naps out there playing.

 Ella enjoying her new backyard with her soccer goal. Daddy is smiling right now!

 Last weekend, we traveled down to the Georgia mountains to celebrate DeeDee's 60th birthday. DeeDee has helped us so much the past year since we had Maddie and has helped so much painting the  girls new rooms (pics to come soon I promise!) so we were happy to help her celebrate.

 We loved all the beautiful colors and spending time with the family!

 Papa got Ella some lovely "accessories" for the weekend

 It was a little chilly in the morning and night but the sky was the most amazing crisp blue sky and Ella and Dakota enjoyed a morning walk before we had to head back to Charlotte. It was a quick weekend but great celebrating my Mom.

 It was picture day last week at school and we were practicing our smile on the way to school in the morning.

 I was happy to help out with the pictures and got to see Ella and her little buddies from school. Her class minus one boy and girl that were getting their picture taken at the time.

 Ella and her buddy Piper!

This weekend we were excited to have a more laid back weekend in Charlotte! Our new home comes with amazing tress and yes, lots and lots of leaves. Mike blew them all into a big pile but before bagging them, Ella had the time of her life jumping in them.

 You can check out the front of our house in the background and the massive pile of leaves! Can you spot Ella;s head in this picture? She was standing up and just her head was peaking out!

 Our little princess usually doesn't like to get dirty but she jumped right in and had the best time.

 When Maddie woke up from her nap, she joined in the fun, although she just tried to eat them so she didn't last too long out there.

 But I had to get a couple pictures of them in their Halloween shirts!

Love these two girls!

And one final picture of the back of our house.  

So, yes it has been an insanely busy fall for us but we are loving every minute of it. We had two Halloween parties also this weekend and a big Halloween parade and trick or treating to look forward to on Wednesday so more fun to come! Also, the new house has plenty of room for guests so please come visit us soon!

Happy Halloween

Special Day

I know it has been way too long since my last post but there is a good reason for that, we moved to a new house! More on that later but for now, I wanted to post about our special day today. Our sweet Madeline Grace was baptized today and we were lucky enough to share this special day with our families.

Maddie was such an angel the entire service. The service started at 9:45 and she usually naps between 10:00-10:30 so I was a little nervous if she would get fussy and tired but she loved every minute of it. She watched everything so closely and loved when the choir sang. She is such a sweet baby and I was so glad she was able to have such a great baptism.

Thanks to Jaime for being our photographer for the day.  

 She really liked the minister and didn't make a peep when he held her or when the water was poured on her head. And there were two other children getting baptized as well and one boy was NOT happy about it. I felt so bad for those parents, I am just glad it wasn't us.

One of my favorites, she loved the candle.

We had a small brunch at the house following the service and our "old" neighbors came by to celebrate with us. The five girls enjoying the new backyard.

 Poor girl was worn out after her big morning and took a nap shortly after getting home from church.

 Getting some loving from her two grandmothers

Ella and Uncle Court, a bow tie and smocked dress, can we get anymore fratty?

Big sister loved every minute and was so good during the entire ceremony also.

 The big girls were so excited that they got to celebrate with cupcakes!

Cheers to Madeline Grace, what a special day!

The things she says and does

Ella literally has us laughing out loud and pulling out hair out almost every day, sometimes within 5 minutes. Three years is such a fun age and still a little frustrating at times as well. But one of my goals with this blog is to document all the big and small things in their lives. I am not very good about writing things in the baby book (in fact, I haven't even gotten a baby book for Maddie yet and she is 6 months old!) so this blog keeps a record of their day to day life. So, miss Ella, this post is all about the funny things you say and do each day at three years old!

In our Hokie gear before the first game! You hold up your pom poms and say "hokie hokie hokie high!"

 At three years old, you say the funniest things all the time. You love to pick up any phone you see and have a fake conversation. Sometimes when a telemarketer calls, I let you answer it. You just keep repeating, "hello, this is Ella James Hennessy!"But when it comes to talking on the real phone, you are funny about that. You used to want to talk all the time, but now not so much.

You have funny names for things, you call Gatorade "gator gator", instead of saying "you forgot", you add an extra got in there and say "Mommy, you got forgot." Every night after we tuck you in bed, you have to blow us a kiss and say "love you night night" at least 3 times, sometimes more depending on how hard you are stalling that night.

You are also into letters a lot right now, you know a couple, of course E, L and A and know how to spell your name. You also know a K is Mommy's letter and a M is Daddy and Maddie's letter. You know some random ones also like R and F but the newest one you just learned is G. Everytime you see it, you shout, look Mommy G for gas!" Like when we are in public places and I am sure you do it at school, what those teachers must think! We try and say, yes, G for grapes but then you always say "and gas!" You like potty talk a lot these days. Whenever you do pass some gas, you always laugh and say "holy smokes!" We think this came from Daddy, at least, I am blaming it on him!

 You still love your sister so much and to see you all play with each other and interact is so much fun. Now that Maddie is sitting up, you love to sit next to her. But you definitely have an opinion about what toys she should play with and are very particular that she doesn't play with anything you might want to play with. We need to work on this sharing thing a little more. Before bed, I ask you what your favorite part of the day has been. Last Friday I asked you and you had done a lot of fun things that day, been to school, played at the park, played with our neighbor buddies but you thought about for awhile and then said, "taking a bath with Maddie Grace. I love taking a bath with her." Hearing those sweet words and how you two adore each other is the sweetest thing a parent can witness for sure.

 At three years old, you are still my cautious and tentative child. You want to make sure everything is very safe before you try it. But then once you do, you usually love it, it is just getting you to try it part that is hard. You rode your bike with Daddy the other day and hadn't been in awhile and even though you have been on it a lot before, you wanted to make sure that Daddy was going to go slow and not too fast.

 At three, you are very into your clothes and what you are going to wear. This is nothing new but we definitely have some battles over clothes and also your hair and how you want to wear it each day. And the bow has to match and the shoes have to be just right. And not just your clothes, Mommy's clothes, Maddie's clothes (Daddy is usually at work by the time you wake up so you can't pick out his clothes!).

Watching the Matthews Labor Day parade

One of your favorite things is dancing and singing. You love music and once it starts playing, it is like you have to start dancing and singing. We have lots of dance parties at home, with Mommy and Daddy and your best buddies in the neighborhood. When Mommy gets around to it, I am going to post a video of you singing Nicki Minaj's song, Starships. You love this and Call me Maybe the most right now. You are still undecided if you like sports or not (but daddy keeps trying) but singing and dancing are definitely at the top of your list!

You love Homer the Dragon, the mascot for the baseball team and the local beauty queens or "princesses" as you call them.

 At three you also have major opinions about what you like and don't like and you are not afraid to express those opinions. Like for lunch, you have a pb&j for lunch everyday and love it. It is our one stand by that we can go to everyday and know you will eat. But this year in school, there is a boy with a peanut allergy and so no pb&j at school. So, Mommy tried to be sneaky and buy a soy butter that looks just like peanut butter and tastes similar but no missy, you would not be fooled. You took one bite and declared you didn't like it. I tried to tell you it was just the same but you knew better and so you only had one bite of your sandwich at school and told Mommy to never use that yucky peanut butter again. No pulling a fast one on you and your peanut butter. (And can we talk about how it is so unfair to all the peanut butter lovers out there that one kid has to ruin the fun for all the others???)

 But despite the peanut butter, you absolutely love school. You wake up every morning asking if it is time to go to school and since you only go M/W/F, the days when it's not school, you get sad. But this year, being three, we get to do drop off for school. No more Mommy walking you to your class, just hopping out of the car and walking with your bag all by yourself. Yesterday was your first day and even though we discussed it, I had no idea if you would make it there since we only went twice last week. But then another Mommy emailed me and who was helping the kids find their classes and said while lots of kids needed help, not you. You walked confidentially down the hall and stopped to smile at her and went right into your class. I love that school has brought you so much confidence.

You rode the pony carousel and loved it. Getting a little more brave big sister!

 At three, you are very into birthday parties. Like love them, everything about them and good thing since we seem to go to one about every week. 

 I was shocked that you were so brave with corky the clown since you don't like characters in costumes (I don't blame you, I didn't either!) but you warmed right up to her and let her paint your face. Plus, you knew after the clown comes...

 CUPCAKES!!! You absolute favorite part of the party. You, my friend are a huge sweets lover.

Don't get me wrong, we have moments of tantrums when things don't go your way and even though we don't use it too often, you have spent some time in time out when it was warranted. I know you are learning and testing boundaries but try and give your Mommy and Daddy a break every once in awhile.

So, we will wait and see how the rest of three turns out but right now, we are excited to see you learn and grow each and everyday!

Some of your favorite things right now:

TV Shows: team umizoomi, dora the explorer, any princess movie

Games/Crafts: puzzles, painting and stamps

Favorite foods: PB&J (with the real peanut butter), pizza, cheese, rice, cereal, pancakes, cupcakes but you also eat lots of fruits (grapes, apples, strawberries, bananas, blueberries) and veggies (broccoli, corn, raw red peppers, raw carrots)

Favorite things to do outside: swing at the park, climb ladders at the park

Favorite books: Bearenstein Bears and Fancy Nancy

Stats at your 3 year check-up:

31.5 lbs (45%)

38 inches tall (77%)

Vision test: perfect

You did have to get one shot and you screamed but the toys made it all better.