Conversations with Ella

1. Today as she was running down the sidewalk:

Me: "Ella turn around and come back here."

Ella: " I can't hear you mama"

2. Tonight while she was sitting on my lap looking at my face:

Ella: "Mama I lub your face"

Me: "What's your favorite part?"

Ella: "Your dirty little lips and your big ears."

3. Personal prayers at bedtime:

Ella: "Please bless the food. Amen"

Lance: "Ella stop dancing and I want you to pray again and say thank you for things
that happened today."

Ella: "Dear Heavenly Father - Thank you for things that happened to Jesus today.
Amen."

We are FAM-I-LY

(The title of this post is meant to be sung - sorry if it's stuck in your head now)

Tonight when I was putting Ella to bed I read her the book "Tell Me Again About the Night I was Born." If you are not familiar with it, it is a really sweet book about a little girl's adoption story. I have been trying more and more to tell Ella the story of her birth. She doesn't really understand it at all but she likes to hear it. My hope is that when she is old enough to understand what adoption is, she will be so familiar with the terminology and the miracle of her birth that it will not be surprising to her and that we will be able to avoid (or more easily work through) some of the heartache that go along with adoption.

Anyway . . . and now we are finally getting to the point of my post . . . while I was reading the book, Spencer came in the room and listened the story. As I read I interjected parts of her birth story and part of Spencer's birth story. Spencer asked me if tomorrow I could tell him the story of his birth. I realized in that moment that he was feeling a little bit left out hearing Ella's story over and over.

I tried to explain my rationale behind getting Ella very familiar with her birth story. I tried to explain some of the stigma surrounding adoption. I told Spencer that some adopted children feel like they weren't wanted or weren't loved. Spencer's eyes immediately welled up with tears. He said "But mom, that's not true. Her birth family loved her so much. They loved her enough to do what was right for her. And we love her so much. She's my sister, she shouldn't ever feel that way"

I wish I could have captured that moment and the raw emotion on his face. Lately, my kids have been fighting non stop. They compete over any and everything. The last couple of weeks have been really tough over here. But when it comes down to it, he's in his sister's corner and it was nice to see.

Now, any ideas on how to have more of those moments and less of the screaming ones?

We've reached a milestone

Ella had her hair curled and hairsprayed for the first time today. I used a three barrel curling iron on her hair before church today and we had so much fun. I sat her on the sink so she could watch herself while I curled it. She LOVED the whole process. I'm afraid I've created a monster - she couldn't stop looking at herself in the mirror when she was done and she told several people "I beautiful today."



Here are pics of her hair from behind and a couple of me and her together.

Apostrophe Madness

I'm about to admit I'm a big fat geek but one of my biggest pet peeves is the misuse of apostrophes. It drives me batty! In case any of you suffer from this same malady, there is quite a fun little blog about it:

http://www.apostropheabuse.com/

This doesn't bug me but apparently there are a large group of people annoyed with people using unnecessary quotation marks:

http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

It's quite fun to look at too (if you are slightly obsessive about things that don't really matter :) )

And now, I am completely paranoid about my grammar and punctuation in the rest of this blog because I usually type without thinking or editing. So forgive me if I have made the same mistakes I just complained about ;)

Area Honors Orchestra

Spencer started taking viola lessons this year. He chose viola based on hearing another kid play Super Mario Brothers Music on the viola. I'm pretty sure that was the extent of his knowledge on the subject. Sadly, I knew even less but we won't go there. He has been diligent with practicing (by diligent, I mean fighting us every step of the way but eventually giving in and doing it). I think his favorite thing is taking songs written for the piano and converting them for the viola. Anyway, we were all excited when we found out he has been asked to play in the Area Honors Orchestra next year. It has been fun watching him progress.

Yankee or Dixie?

Take this quiz -

http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencerreport/yankee_dixie_quiz.html

I am over 60% Dixie - "a definitive Southern score" according to the quiz.

How did this happen??

Oh the Horror . . .

Have to cut out dairy again. :(

Book Review #1

Not really a review, more like incoherent ramblings, but here are my thoughts on some recent books I've read - I'm going to try and keep track throughout the year of what I've read.

1. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver - Wonderful, wonderful non-fiction book by one of my all time favorite fiction authors. She documents her family's experience living for a year only eating locally grown in season fruits and vegetables. Do not read unless you are ready to drive your family crazy with amazing statistics about farming and organic food.

2. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield - Picked this up because I saw it repeatedly on a list of people's favorite books of the year. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Definitely a page turner with an interesting twist at the end. I spent one rainy day curled up with hot chocolate and this book (not sure where my kids were at the time).

3. The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue - Book about a boy who is stolen by fairies who leave a fairy in his place. Alternates points of view between the two boys. I thought it was just okay.

4. Eat, Love, Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert - If you haven't read it - find a copy and start. Or call me, I'll send you one (I have 3).

Ella's Room

WARNING: This post is extremely boring if you are not obsessed with decorating.

I am FINALLY posting pics of Ella's room. It is not completely finished but if I wait for that nobody will ever see it. Here it is before:

We first painted it green - which looked like a sickly hospital room at night, here are some pics:



And . . . drumroll please . . . the almost finished product, after we painted it pink. The pink on my computer screen looks darker than it actually is. It is very very pale. So pale that you can't read white letters up against it:

Here's the view from the door:

Not sure if you can see too well but there are butterlies hanging in the upper left corner (Two fell I need to put them back up).

Opposite view of the room:



That is chalkboard paint inside the frame. We weren't going to have any toys in her room but Ella likes to put all the "baby Natalie's" to sleep when she goes to bed at night.

Looking at the end of her bed:

Closeup of the bench and her name:

Aunt Tammy gave Ella the darling bench and Gram made the pillow seat for it. It is so darling!

Close up of pics and vinyl at the end of her bed:

One of the most common meanings of Ella's name is "beautiful fairy princess" so we kind of have a fairy room. I need to put new vinyl up because you can't really see it against the light pink but it says "All it takes is faith and trust and a little bit of pixie dust."

What I still have left to do:

1. Change the vinyl letters.

2. I think I'm going to put white polka dots on Ella's lamp shade.

3. Over Ella's bed I am putting some vintage 1930 prints of flower fairies that I found. I tell Ella an ongoing story most nights about a little girl who finds a fairy inside a flower and goes on adventures with her (my mom made up the story and told it to me when I was young - I just add onto the basic idea). I was so excited when I found these vintage prints. I am going to mod podge them onto canvas and then hang two side by side over her bed with these nail covers from Rod Works:

http://rodworks.com/PansyNailCover-idv-138-29.html

I will probably spray paint them white. I am going to use sheer white ribbon to hang the the prints. Here is one of the possible prints I might use so you can have an idea:

Moving On

Well I have given up for the moment finding the Thanksgiving and Christmas pics I took with my camera. I really hope they are not gone. I have some cute ones of activities we did throughout the Christmas season. But I need to move on with blogging instead of waiting to find them. So maybe you all will see Christmas pics in July or something when I finally come across them. Fingers crossed that I do.

Cutest Baby Ever

This picture of Natalie and my mom on Christmas Eve makes me smile every time I see it. I just want to pinch those cute little chubby cheeks.

Natalie is a big topic of conversation in our house. Ella has named all of her dolls "baby Natalie." When we put out our Nativities for Christmas, she insisted that baby Jesus was actually baby Natalie. When I tell Ella her adoption story she often asks if we can go bring baby Natalie home to our house :) It is so cute!

True Meaning of Christmas

When we are in town, we spend Christmas Eve with my cousins. It is one of my favorite days of the year. I love it when we all get together. It is really interesting to me that even though we all grew up so far away from each other and didn't see each other for years, we were able to pick up right where we left off. When I'm with my cousins it FEELS like home. I'm really lucky to be so close to 5 more amazing women.

Anyway . . . we have noticed in the past years that we tend to be a little excessive with gifts on Christmas Eve. We all didn't have the best childhoods growing up so we I think we overcompensate with our children no matter how hard we try not to. So this Christmas Eve we decided to adopt a family. Sandy found a single mom with 3 teenagers who just took in her niece and nephew who are 4 and 6. I'm not posting this to brag about what we did but to remember how good it made us feel to help this family. We went a little overboard so next year we are going to adopt 3 or 4 families. Here is a pic of all of us and the gifts for the family:

Check out Aaron in the far back left of this picture. I just noticed it - he cracks me up.

I'm posting this picture of us eating dinner so you can get an idea of how much we had. This whole table was covered with gifts for the family, as well as having gifts under the table and on the side of the table:

I really wish I could have been a fly on the wall when our adopted family had Christmas. We have all been recipients in past of families adopting us for Christmas and it felt so amazing to give back. I hope they had the Christmas of their dreams.

The Baby Whisperer

Lance has always been so great with kids. Natalie loved being held by Lance on Christmas Eve. If anybody tried to take her from him she would cry and then stop crying when he would take her back. His calling right now is in the nursery which he thinks is the greatest calling in the world. Every Sunday morning he gets phone calls from parents thanking him for the job he is doing and he often gets cards and treats from the kids. I married a good man.

The Real Butterscotch

Those of you with girls understand my love/hate relationship with this horse. Ella wanted one for Christmas so bad!! She told everyone that she knew that she was going to be a good girl and Santa was going to bring her "Butterscotch." She accidentally found one of her Christmas presents hiding in my closet and she said "Oh no Santa brought the wrong thing, take it back to store and get Butterscotch." As much as I love to make my little girl happy, I just couldn't justify shelling out the almost $300 for a toy that didn't seem to do all that much. Luckily, Aunt Sandy saved the day!!!! Sandy lives on a farm in the neatest house built in the late 1800's out in Greensboro, Maryland. She gratiously volunteered to let us tell Ella that Santa left a pony for her at Sandy's house where it could be taken care of. She even let Ella rename it. Christmas Eve we went over to Sandy's and all eagerly watched Ella's reaction to getting what we considered the best present a 3 year old obsessed with horses could get. Ella was uncharacteristically shy at first but as soon as everyone (and all their cameras) went back inside, she really warmed up and was so excited!

Another Thanksgiving!

I am so excited because I accidentally deleted these pictures but just found out that my mom had some on her camera. My cousins held Thanksgiving a week early so that we could all have Thanksgiving together. I was happy that they did that because my favorite time of year is when we all get together for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I am so lucky that I get to live near all of them. They are more than cousins - they are sisters. Thanks Stephane for hosting this!