The night the lights went out in Alexandria

This weekend we went back to Charlottesville to visit the new cousins, Sam and Nate, as well as Gi Gi and Paw Paw who are in town for a visit. We arrived Saturday afternoon and left Sunday afternoon. It was a nice weekend visit. Ella didn't pay too much attention to her cousins, except when they cried. She would just stare at them as if to say, "What is your problem?"

It was so sweet to see Ella interact with her Gi Gi and Paw Paw. She hasn't seen them since December, so I was sure she wouldn't recognize them. She acted like she totally remembered who they were. She would sit on Paw Paw's lap and he would sing to her, which she loves. And when Gi Gi would get close to her face Ella would take both of her hands and put them on Gi Gi's cheeks and coo at her.

The only problem with going out of town is that it always seems to throw Ella's sleep schedule off. In the hotel she was up every couple of hours, and this pattern continued last night. We'll see if things are back to normal tonight.

In the pictures you will see that Ella had a special treat tonight. We gave her her first chocolate covered strawberry. She didn't really make it to the strawberry, but definitely loved the chocolate. I know, apparently you're not supposed to give babies chocolate, but she only had a little bit and its not like we give it to her every day. Usually, when we're having a dessert, we'll give her a little taste of the whipped cream or frosting. Tonight it happened to be chocolate. I'm sure she'll be fine.

On another note, around 3:00 today all of the power went out in my office building. I'm not sure what happened, but the result was that we all got to come home early. I like the coming home early, I don't like the fact that I was almost done with a memo when the power went out. Lets hope my document was 'auto-recovered.'