April 2016

First, let's do some of their memorable personality traits at the moment.
Eva's vocabulary and pronunciation is sadly getting more and more mature, but she still has a few words that are clinging onto 'preschooler' status. 'handband' instead of headband. 'Lusually'. I am trying so hard to think of her other word, and Eli is being so unhelpful right now, shouting out words like orthodontist, vivacious and victorious. Oh and Jensten instead of Jensen (her friend).

Eva is boy crazy. The current love of her life is Parker from class. I have become friends with his mom and we get together about once per week to play with a few other friends from class. We left the park one day and Eva says, "Mom, this is hard to say, I'm not sure how to say this. Parker and me are falling in love." She instructed him to buy her a wedding dress and a ring for her birthday. And the next week he actually came to school with a ring, ha! His mom said they were going through toys and she was collecting all the 'treasures' including a couple toy rings from the Easter egg hunt they had, to give them away, and he asked for one to keep and give to Eva. In Ella's goal of being just like big sis, she too has a love of her life, currently Eli (Eva's friend) because he pushed her on the swing. Although, when we were playing hide and seek, Eli (daddy) and her were hiding and she whispered, "will you be my boyfriend forever", so she's not completely gone yet.

Ella is getting into her mean phase (I loooove 3s...) I get called a mean mommy so many times I lose count. I am mean for making her walk from the house to the car, or packing goldfish instead of popcorn (or vice versa) or for pointing out that her shoes are on the wrong feet, or for insisting she wear warm weather clothes to the zoo on a 95 degree day instead of her fleece pants and sweatshirt. And then the attitude! Oh man...we get 'the look' on an hourly basis. She has it down to a science. Sometimes she bounces back very easily, other times it takes a while. I still haven't figured out her formula yet. She also loves to use weapons (dolls, blocks, etc) to hit Eva. When I hear Eva's blood curdling scream, I know there was a weapon involved. This is the one I am truly trying to break immediately, the rest of the stuff I still get a small kick out of (depending on my mood).

Ella has to be like her big sis, so she also has a love of her life. Currently it is Rudy, as evidenced by her song for him.


Ella has an imaginary friend, named Kaylee Gianna. Kaylee Gianna is quite the one-upper if you ask me. Anytime we do something, anything, Ella tells me how Kaylee Gianna does it, but better. Kaylee Gianna has 3 kitties, and a puppy and bunnies. Kaylee Gianna has 3 baby alives. Kaylee Gianna gets to eat at McDonald's every day. When Kaylee Gianna gets ice cream, her mom gives her 4 scoops, each a different kind. Ella always asks if she can come over, or if we can go to Kaylee Gianna's house. One day I said sure, how do we get there? And she replied, 'just go round and round and round until we see her purple house'. The other day, Ella was bugging Eva, and in response Eva says, "now Kaylee Gianna can't come to Emma's birthday party" (Emma being Eva's baby alive, of course). Ella cried for a solid three minutes, as in can't catch her breath because she is so upset, crying. Luckily we arrived to the library and all was forgotten (until later when Eva gave the same threat).

Eva and Ella are both baby obsessed. After playing at their house, Addie's mom haphazardly shoved a doll at us as we left, a few months ago, whispering 'just take it'. Eva was playing with it and Kelly wanted it out of the house because Addie never played with it and it was just taking up space. So, this doll is a Baby Alive, meaning it pees when you give it a bottle. Her name is Emma, and most days, you'd think she was real the way Eva tends to her. Ella also has a baby, baby Daphne. The other day I was cleaning up their room as Ella sat quietly and innocently at their vanity. Finally I focused on her and realized she was covering baby Daphne in purple and pink nail polish. Most of it has come off, but there are still some streaks and she looks like a doll out of a nightmare. And don't you dare call baby Daphne Ella's baby, "SHE's NOT MY BABY, SHE'S MY HONEY".

Their favorite teasing game right now, is playing copycat. They constantly will bug each other by copying the other. I distinctly remember doing this as a child, and how aggravating and yet gloriously fun it was, depending on which end I was on. Ella also looooves to hide. And the girl is GOOD at it (actually when playing hide and seek she is your average 3 year old, but she is unrivaled when we aren't officially playing hide and seek, and we need to leave the house, or we are somewhere public). In a scary way. Many times I have to demand that she make herself known, and she doesn't still, so finally I remember to say, "give me a hint, make a funny noise". (finally I hear a "yodelay he ho"). The other day, in my favorite kids' consignment store, she was in the designated kids area (for more trusted children at least, it's not fenced in or supervised or anything, but the store is the size of a living room) and then she wasn't there. I casually started calling for her, and then a little bit of panic entered as I squatted down to peer under every clothing rack and didn't see any little feet. I forgot to ask for a hint, tho I'm not positive she would have given one. Everyone started looking around (there were four of us in there, so it wasn't that embarrassing) and finally one of the mom's asked her daughter where her friend went, and thankfully, she marched us right to one of the clothing racks and there was Ella, perched up so her feet couldn't be seen, quiet at as mouse, and giddily flapping her arms in anticipation of being found. Rotten child. I lectured her, and she felt very sorry. I am sure she'll never do it again for the rest of the week.

 Carol and Sue came to visit. Carol declared that we needed to work on a house project. So we chose to work on the pergola (I'm so glad we did this!). Sue watched the girls while Carol and I scraped a bunch of the parts we were going to repaint, and also painted a ton of wood for Eli to use to replace some of the existing wood that had to go. We didn't finish the remaining stuff before they left, but as I write this at the end of May, it is basically done! We also repainted some of the front yard stuff too, I feel so accomplished!

 I'll take a quick detour and fast forward to after Carol and Sue left, once we worked more on the pergola. Here are some before, and progress photos.

This was after we removed the slats on this side, but before painting.

and some afters.

Okay, and now we'll get back to when they were actually here. We also added some flowers and some bugs (we bought a praying mantis egg sacks and lady bugs)


We went for a little picnic and exploring.

Had to hit up the ice cream place in the Apache trail.

Ella took control of the camera...

We went to an old mining town in the Superstition Mountains (the pictures above are actually on the little train there). Then we panned for gold.

Guess who had the most fun, and was really intent on finding gold...this guy

The girls just enjoyed collecting the colorful 'rubies'. They filled several little containers.

Eli and I were able to sneak out for the night to meet some friends. We went to several new (to us) places in downtown Phoenix, and had so much fun!

We went to a place called Cracker Jacks, where they have a terrible mini golf course and a sad little race track. Eva had no interest in trying, but Ella drove a mini race car. I use the term 'drove' very loosely. It was pretty entertaining. I felt bad for the poor attendant!

We went out for lunch with Sue and Carol and then for a walk in Old Town Scottsdale.

Eva was feeling very fancy in her dress. She asked for a bun in her hair too.

 And can you believe it, Emma turned 5, or 1, or she's a 'just born baby'...I don't know, I'm confused. But we had a birthday party for Emma. Back in February, Eva asked if we can have a party for Emma and I said sure on her birthday. Then Eva asked when her birthday was and I absentmindedly said April (thinking it was so far off, she'll forget). Well, April came and Eva remembered. So we went out and got her a cake, made cupcakes too, lit some candles and had a celebration. Ella ate a ton of blue frosting. Eva even wrapped up a bunch of toys for Emma and then helped her open them. It was quite a special day.

We went to our friend Charlotte's birthday party. It was a My Little Pony theme.

We also set up our movie projector and watched a movie outside on our wall. We watched Maleficent, it was so fun! We had hoped to camp and have a fire also but it was very windy so we couldn't do either. We ended up just doing the movie and having hot dogs and s'mores over the grill.

We met Eli for a lunch picnic one gorgeous day.

We had friends over to play and they had the most fun ever. Tons of water spraying, playing on the bunk bed, playing with toys, dress up, tea parties, the works!

Ella woke up screaming one night, and I rushed in. It was actually hysterical laughter and I was so confused. She's had occasional nights where she has 'night terrors' meaning no matter what I try I cannot get her to stop crying, and I can't wake her up. She just cries in her sleep and thrashes around until she finally passes back out. But this night, she had, maybe you'd say night hysterics? It was so creepy. She was laughing so hard, huge belly laughs, and again, wouldn't wake up. I caught the very last part on video.

She is puzzle obsessed

Eli and Eva went for a hike, and they saw a rattlesnake, eek!

Eli's company always does the annual Pat's Run. It's a 4.2 mile run in honor of Pat Tillman, a fallen Army vet. It's a good cause of course, but every year we are mad at ourselves for going. We have to wake up at 5am to get down there, and then the entire run is like herding cattle, so many people walk so if you want to run you are constantly dodging people, but somehow we made fantastic time, I think we ran 9:30 minute miles even with the stroller! We borrowed a friend's jogging stroller, and the girls loved the different view.

This is Ella and me at 5:30 am She got a splinter the night before which I thought I removed, but in the morning morning her whole foot ended up swelling and we wonder if it was really a bee sting, because I couldn't for the life of me find the remnants of a splinter yet it was majorly red and swelling.

Ella fell asleep!

My childhood neighbor Carley (Sorrentino) was coming to town, and Eli and I wanted to meet her and her husband and friends out, so Pam and John happily took the girls for half the day and even a sleepover! They had all sorts of things planned. They went to a little festival in their neighborhood, they made fairy gardens, went swimming, and did who knows how many puzzles (a recent favorite for the girls).

Ella rode a gigantic bull at the festival.

Ella insists that she's not up to no good, because she's smart. (Oh and she doesn't say this, but she always says she is smart because she eats smarties)

Notice their pajamas not matching? This is what they call a mashup. Lately when it's time to get ready for bed, if we pick out matching jammies, the return half and say, 'no I want a mashup' and then get mismatching jammies.


Okay, and continuing on with video overload.