Wednesday, January 5, 2011

It’s over…Now things can get back to normal

The house is a disaster with presents scattered everywhere, we had a situation where a portion of the basement flooded so Ella can’t play down there until we get the mold taken care of (fun times) and I am completely out of laundry soap, which means there hasn’t been a dent made in the piles of dirty clothes. All that said, we had a WONDERFUL Christmas!

Now, school is back in session, Joe is back at work, and I’m attempting to put the house back together.

I’ll have to take the Christmas break in steps because too much happened to report in one post.

On December 16th Ella had her preschool Christmas show. Her 3 year old class joined another class and sang 2 songs. Here’s the video of the second song. Ella was singing along great, but she wouldn't do the motions. Oh well. The little boy next to Ella is in her class and stared at her the entire time. Apparently she was singing pretty loudly (he knows Ella so I’m sure he wasn’t staring at her because of her EB). By the end of the song she was tired of the staring, so you can see how she responded.




The program was precious. Grammy Janet was able to come down and see it with us, and Boppie joined too. Isn’t the dress fabulous!? It was a present and you could tell that Ella felt like a princess. She flittered around all day. In fact, on Sunday I was going to put her in another dress and she wasn’t having any of it…only the red polka-dot dress would do.

I loved being home with Ella the week before Christmas. She’s such a fun kid and I love her little personality. We were able to go see The Festival of Lights out at Bull Run Park, and the National Zoo light show (where she got to ride a little train).

We spent Christmas morning at home (which was wonderful). We were able to attend the Christmas Eve candlelight service at church, and Santa even came to visit! Ella wasn't too excited about Santa until she saw the presents he left her on Christmas morning.

Just about a week before Christmas Ella added something else to her list...a Princess Maker. If you've never heard of a Princess Maker, it's ok...Ella's mom and dad had never heard of one either. Luckily Santa is a smart guy and knew that the best place to find out was on facebook, so he posted a message asking his friends if anyone had ever heard of a Princess Maker. Luckily Santa has several friends who have little girls, so they were able to help him out. Then Santa sent me a picture and asked me to confirm with Ella if that was, in fact, the Princess Maker.

So, on Christmas morning Ella walked downstairs and saw this

She was beside herself with excitement! The only other present that got this much attention was her Rosetta dress-up outfit from cousin's Thomas and Jessica (although I'm pretty sure Thomas had nothing to do with the gift). She played with this non-stop until we forced her to change clothes and we had to head out to San Diego. And the minute we got home from San Diego she started playing with it again and it pretty much consumes her day from morning until bedtime.

2 years ago we had an Elmo filled Christmas. This year we had a Princess filled Christmas, and Ella couldn't be happier. She got books, dress up clothes, videos, a purse, etc. She loves those princesses...but when your name is Ella, just like CinderELLA, of course you have to love princesses (although right now Ella's favorite is Snow White...shhh, don't tell Cinderella).

Santa also brought Ella her bunny slippers, which she was very excited about. He decided that this wasn't the right year to get her a doggie. Maybe when she's older.

Joe and I have a deal when it comes to presents: He gets me what I want and I get him what he needs. It sounds like a bad deal, but it works since Joe will buy himself what he wants and I buy myself what I need.

So before Christmas Joe got all sorts of hunting gear that he wanted, which meant that for Christmas I got him the luggage that he desperately needed. Before Christmas I got myself a new purse (since I had the other one for 3 years) and for Christmas Joe got me a new video camera! It's one of those tiny little cameras that will fit in my purse. I was so excited! It has become clear that the older Ella gets the more we're going to need a video camera and can't continue to use the one on our regular camera, so this is perfect!

We flew out to San Diego on Christmas day. That deserves a post of it's own. In the meantime, Merry Christmas...belated.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The videos are just precious.
What a blessing to be able to share in your happiness as well as your difficulties. Thanks for posting all the pictures. So.....CUTE.
Makes me wish my kids were that age again.
Happy New Year and thanks for the Ella fix.