Every year University Place celebrates Duck Daze and has a parade down Bridgeport. So my friend Kari and I took Ella and Miranda to the parade. The weather didn't cooperate with us but we made the most of it! The girls had a good time, Miranda had a huge bag of candy and toys at the end and Ella got to see horses and clowns so she was entertained. And to top it off our friends the Costanti's were in the parade so that was a lot of fun to see some familiar faces!
This June has been the best I can remember, so we have been taking full advantage of it. Bernie's parents were so nice to take Ella for ther afternoon so Bernie and I could head out on the Sound with our friends Jared and Wendy. We had so much fun cruising around and enjoying the unbelievable June weather! We had dinner at the Tides Tavern and had more laughs that I could handle! Wendy and I always have a good time and as you can see from the picture she is always loads of fun :) Thanks for the great day Jared and Wendy!
I have been meaning to post some video of Ella on the move since it took her over 10 months to crawl. She did the army crawl for awhile but finally made the transition to the regular crawl in the last few weeks. I was so nervous that she was never going to get there but she went from 0 to 100 in a couple of days and now I can't take my eyes off her. I now wonder what I was so worried about!
Ernie rocking Ella to sleep
Mila driving the boat
Another beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest! We took the boat out yesterday with our friends the Lay's and had a total of five kids between our two boats. Thankfully Ella seems to be getting used to her life jacket, which is such a great thing since in the last week she has become a climber! If it weren't for her pack and play I don't know if we would have made it the whole day. She has gone from barely crawling a month ago to crawling, pulling up, walking around furniture and toady she stood on her own for the first time. This girl seemed to take her sweet time to get moving but now there seems to be no stopping her, which makes for a very tired mom and dad by the end of the day!
My mom and I took Ella to the Woodland Park Zoo today and had a fun time checking out all of the animals. I wasn't sure if she was too young to enjoy it but I thought we would try it out anyway. Turns out you are never too young to enjoy the zoo! Ella was delighted when she saw the animals, especially the giraffes. They are her favorite, she has a stuffed giraffe at home that she sometimes sleeps with. At first they moved so slow that she didn't seem to notice them but once she did she couldn't get enough. Since giraffes seem to be her favorite we took her to the giraffe feeding and she got to feed them herself. That was the highlight of the day for Ella but also for my mom and I, they really are gental giants and so beautiful. Ella also enjoyed the elephants and penguins, unfortunately the lions, tigers and bears were all napping during our visit. I am sure the zoo will get even more fun the older that Ella gets and am so glad that we have both Woodland Park and Point Defiance so close to us!
Bathing beauty
Tired girl after a long day at the pool.
Shopping at El Paseo
I saw this headband in the store and had to put it on and take a picture, it was just too cute and Ella was too hot and tired to care.
Checking out the palm trees
Joshua Tree National Park
We took our first family vacation and headed down to Palm Springs on Mother's Day. We had a great time and were so happy to see some sun. We were expecting weather in the low 90's but ended up getting close to 100 or over one of the days, pretty hot but we weren't complaining. Ella was a perfect traveler, she did great on the plane and was content at the pool just hanging out with Bernie and I, although she was happiest in the water (big suprise)! We spent one day at Joshua Tree, which was beautiful and spent another day at the fabulous outlet mall they have down there! The rest of the time we just lounged by the pool, we will definitely be going there again. We all had a great time and were very sad to come home, we are already trying to plan the next family vacation.
Yes, I know we are a little crazy but we do celebrate our dogs birthday. Today Apollo turned 8 years old and for the past four years on his birthday we have taken him to the dog park and then to Mud Bay pet store to pick out some treats from the bulk baskets. Today was even more eventful than normal because when we got to the dog park we were suprised to find they were having a reenactment of the civil war to celebrate the 160th anniversary of Fort Steilacoom. It was a little strange to see all these people dressed up and hear all the cannons going off so I had to take a few pictures to capture the event, some people really get into this. They had all sorts of tents with food so we stayed for lunch and watched the festivities, it made for interesting Saturday!
While I was folding clothes this morning Ella thought it would be fun to sit in the laundry basket and then crawl out. She is getting pretty good at pulling herself up and has mastered the army crawl (which has made my life a lot busier) but it seems her favorite thing to do is push things across the floor. It's funny, you can spend so much money on toys for your kids and they will find joy in the simplest of things. I only wish I was as big of a fan of laundry as Ella is!
