Happy Birthday Ela

Ela is 4!!!  The few weeks leading up to her birthday she kept asking me if she was 4 yet.  I promised her I would let her know when her birthday was, but I guess she thought I would forget to tell her because she still asked me every day.  Of course, she had a fever the day before and the night leading up to her birthday.  This poor girl always gets sick at the most inconvenient times!  She did feel pretty good by the end of the day and had no fever all day on her birthday!  We celebrated at her restaurant of choice... Texas Roadhouse.  I wish I would have been in front of her for this picture, she looked like a scared deer and I don't think she even cracked a smile, but she did get her arm up for the big "YEEEEHAAAAH!!!"

We had a little party for her at the park by our "oldish-newish house" (The girls refer to our first duplex rental as the "old house," our beloved house we just sold and moved from in June as the "oldish-newish house" and the small apartment we now live in as the "new house.")  This is their favorite park in town and they were very happy to drive back through the "oldish-newish neighborhood."  It was pretty windy, so here is Ela pretending to blow out her candles.      

 These are the awesome "popsicles" the girls and I made for Ela's special day.  For those of you that know me well, you know that this was a very trying and patience-building activity for me to do with my children.  I was very glad when it was over and I could clean up :)  Remind me again why I bought a popsicle-cake maker?

Here are a few of the friends that came to celebrate with us.  It was a fun day and everyone had a great time!  We are so thankful to have our crazy little Ela-bean in our family!

Swim Lessons

Swim lessons are over for the summer and Abbey is looking forward to lessons next summer already.  She passed her swim test today and can advance to "goldfish" next year!  Abbey did great this summer and is quite the little fish now.  Ela did not like swim lessons and was happy when it was Tuesday/Thursday when she didn't have class and could go to the kiddie pool.  I tried bribing her every lesson to get in and participate with her class, but she wouldn't do it.

Stretching out before swimming.

One of the few times Ela actually got in the water!

 Abbey's favorite thing she learned during lessons... jumping in!  She loved going to the deep end and jumping in where she couldn't touch.  

 This is where Ela stayed pretty much every lesson.

 They can only go down the slide feet first so Ab's thought she was being creative going down on her back... looks so uncomfortable, but she loved it!

GO PACK GO!

Eric and I took the girls to the Family Fun Night at Lambeau Field on Friday night.  Abbey kept trying to get Ela excited about going to a "real Packers game."

Cute little green and gold girls.  We stopped by Target on our way home from swim lessons to get Packers shirts.  Everyone knows you can't go to a fan night not wearing the teams colors!!! 

 The weather was perfect and we were on the shady side of the stadium...yay!  We got a huge thing of popcorn and the girls gobbled it up!

One of the highlights for the girls was watching the "WAVE" go around the stadium.  As you can see, Eric was very excited as well! :)  After the scrimmage meet was over, they had fireworks set to music.  It was very cool and a great way to end the night!  The girls were troopers and did so well for being up late... they even slept the whole way home!