Pages

Friday, August 28, 2015

Five on Friday!

1. Well, the first day of school here in Charlotte has came and went, and I am not sad about not going back at all! Instead of stressing out, going over my lesson plans 29483 times, and trying not lose a student, we sat on our front steps and watched the school buses go by our house! 


Ella is slightly obsessed with school buses. I think she is thrilled school has started again just for this reason! 
We also celebrated the first day of school by having a play date with Mackenzie! Mackenzie's mom and I taught together at 2 different schools and now we are both home with our girls! 


Ella had a blast sharing puffs with Mackenzie, playing with all her toys (even though we have 95% of them at our house!) and sitting in her dog's bed. 


2. Y'all! So exciting! WE FINALLY HAVE BUSHES!!! This has been going on since APRIL. But they finally came on Tuesday and did a great job with everything!


Look at all that mulch!!! Ella was perplexed. 


Now...what to do with that area in front of the sidewalk?!? 

3. My friend Sarah shared this on her Facebook the other day: 

"The Asheville, North Carolina VA currently has a *homeless* veteran in hospice. He lost his leg in Vietnam, is a Purple Heart recipient, and has no known local family. The Chapter will be attending his funeral, and his last request was to be buried in his dress blues- MOPH has purchased the uniform for him (they predict he has about 2 weeks to live) in the mean time, let's flood him with cards of gratitude. This is a great activity to help your children understand patriotism and that freedom is not free!"

So of course we had to make something for him!



In case you want to send him something, too but can't see the address in the pic, here is the info:

Mr. Robert Strong
VA Hospital-Hospice
1100 Tunnel Rd.
Asheville, NC 28805

4. Charlotte friends! Come buy {some of} Ella's old clothes at the Harris Y Consignment Sale this weekend!


It doesn't look like a lot, but it's over $300 of stuff! (And girlfriend still has 3 full tubs of stuff here at our house, should she ever get a baby sister one day!) Plus there's more shoes/accessories in the bag. Oh, and this is just her fall/winter stuff...they won't accept spring items at this sale. But still, a huge chunk of her closet space is now open....so I can buy more clothes ;) I might have a problem. 

5. This weather!!! It has finally cooled off {slightly} in North Carolina and we can actually play outside without sweating our butts off. 


Can't wait for FALL!!!!
(*I know, I shouldn't be wishing the summer away, but I'm so over it. It has been too hot this year! And also, I'm getting sick of Ella's summer clothes, not to mention my own!)

Have a great weekend everyone!

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Fun in Farmville!

Yes, my parents really do live in a town called Farmville. Like the Facebook game. I know

Anyways! They were really missing Ella so they begged me to take a little road trip up and see them last week. Unfortunately, Ella decided to share her little stomach bug (that she had 2 weeks ago) with me, so I was pretty much dying half the time we were in Farmville. But Ella had fun!

Thursday we just hung around the bathroom house, but Nay Nay introduced playdoh to Ella.


They made lots of Ella's favorite animal...turtles!


And then played with shells. Homegirl needs a beach vacay, stat!


Friday, I was feeling a little better, so we went to the zoo! We went last year when Ella was 5 months old, but she loved it so much more this time!



Too cool for school on the carousel. 


She really liked watching the prairie dogs, even though I thought they were so gross!


This monkey came right up to her (well, through the glass) and it scared the crap out of both of us!



She was looking for Daniel Tiger...she did not want to believe that this guy was a real tiger. 




Then Ella got to feed the giraffes! She was a little scared though, so I think my mom did most of the feeding. 




My dad took her in this big cage to see all the birds. 


And did you know...?!?! Apparently I gave birth to a camel. 




More animals to feed!


We also got to ride the "choo choo" this year. Ella hated it at first! What the heck. 


But thanks to my mom and some puffs, she was all good (we just couldn't get her to sit down!)!



Bye, zoo! See you next time!


But the fun did not end there!! After Ella's nap we went to my mom's friend, Pam's house to see her horses! At first Ella was scared...when the horses came up to her, she said "no no no no no" and waved her hands at them. But a few minutes later, she was a big fan and didn't want to leave them!



We went inside to see Pam's dog, Koda. Ella was OBSESSED with him! They played and played and played. She told him to sit and he sat. He loved Ella and the feeling was quite mutual!




Thanks for a fun time, Mom and Dad! Hope you don't get my stomach bug!!! 

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Discovery Place

Last Friday, Ella and I finally put our museum membership to use and hit up Discovery Place! I hadn't been since before Ella was walking; we had so much fun and of course I took way too many pictures!

First up, the fish!


Next we went into the rainforest area. I'm pretty sure Ella hated every second of it, especially when I forced her to walk across this rope bridge.


She was interested in the scary bears they had on display!


And of course, she loved pointing to all the living things she knew on this wall.


We went into this room where Ella got to touch a starfish and a hermit crab! She was a little scared, but I think she liked it overall. Too bad she would not look at the camera!


So, after we did all of those "big kid" things above, we finally settled into the little kids area, which had a lot more activities for people her age.
She was fascinated by the gigantic water table!


They also had lots of different manipulatives for kids to build with...which made my little engineer so happy! 



Ella's favorite thing in the whole room was this huge Lite Brite! She was so into this thing...do they still make Lite Brites?! I had one when I was little...we may need to get one for Ella!


She also loved playing Peek-a-boo in this house!


All that playing sure is exhausting!


Good thing she got it together to play a little bit more...


This ramp was intended for cars to go down. Ella thought it was for her to go up. I had to pull her off it at least 10 times. 


More playing...these were fun until they kept going in someone's mouth. 


And she loved these magnetic cars!


They also had this huge dinosaur that Ella was all about, until I made her get on it. I'm really going for Mother of the Year here. 


All in all, we had a lot of fun at Discovery Place and I can't wait to go back! Should be a fun thing to do this winter when the weather is blah, too!