Happy Birthday, Ella!

Zero...

One...

Two!!!

Just to be safe, let's hide all sharp objects...

Yesterday the kids and I survived a day of errands in the rain that involved dropping my dad off for an outpatient surgery followed by SIX other stops (with everybody unloading and loading for each stop.) I'm pretty sure I was thinking crazy, but they actually all went pretty smoothly. Ethan is an excellent umbrella chaser and door opener, and Ella had all the ladies in the stores giggling about her pants which kept sagging (she was showing more pullup than usual because mommy forgot that pair of paints doesn't have an adjustable waist).

We seem to have clumsy days in cycles around here. So far today Ethan has pulled down their shower curtain on his head and fallen head first into the toilet (he did block his fall with his arm, so no injury but a serious amount of insult on his part). He would probably add to that list the tragedy of jelly on his pj's and a piece of grapefruit flying into the air and landing on the floor as he scraped the last bit of juice out. These were clearly major events based on the level of drama that followed. He likes things to be a certain way, that child.

Ella is very excited about her birthday and has been telling us repeatedly "I'm having a cat birthday!!!" I'm hoping that I am capable of pulling off the kitty cat cake. It's not at all complicated, but doesn't have much in the way of details for the less artistically inclined. Today Ethan proudly helped me make the cupcakes and a cake for her birthday--I'll try decorating without little hands helping.

The kids both enjoyed talking with cousins on Skype today and spent the rest of the morning doing Ella's birthday puzzle over and over again.

Let the birthday celebrations begin...

[This is my second try at this post. It may just be me, but trying to move pictures and text around in this format is not obvious or easy. My general solution is to just go away and (maybe) try again later...we'll give it one more go. I'll go ahead and apologize right now for the weird formatting of the pictures!]

We started off our morning with Ethan coming downstairs and climbing into our bed. This was a surprise, since he generally stays in bed when he wakes up and calls out to us that he's awake. We got about 30 seconds before he declared the bed too crowded and made a motion that we get moving.

Ethan and I made cinnamon rolls while Ella slept in late (for her at least). Then we headed to the Children's Museum for some family time celebrating Ella's birthday (since Brent will be working on Wednesday when we play with some of her friends.) The kids had a lot of fun, although it's debatable which they were more excited about--the museum or chick-fil-a afterwards! Ethan enjoyed controlling a vortex. Ella enjoyed being a superhero in the wind tunnel and trying out the different headphones. We enjoyed the fact that we got there right when it opened, because by the time we left it was crawling with kids.

I'm sure you'll all be invited...

At lunch today the kids started asking questions about my wedding ring. Ethan asked if he can have one when he is a "growing up". When I told him that he can buy a ring, but that a wedding ring would be if/when he decided to marry a girl, he immediately replied, "I'm gonna marry a girl. I'll be grown up in two months, and then I'll do it."