Happy 4th Birthday Ella

Our little girl is 4!!!  Birthday festivities started the Saturday before her birthday with a PJ Pump It Up party with all of her good friends from school.  Since Ella LOVES wearing pjs, there was no question that the attire for the party should be pjs.  Word on the street from the other parents was that this was a very popular idea and the kids loved it.  There is somewhat of a love/hate relationship with Pump It Up.  I can take Ella there during the week during Pop In Play and she loves it.  Then we'll go for a birthday party and she won't play unless one of us is jumping with her.  Well that was not the case at her party.  About 15 minutes into it, this is what she looked like...hot and sweaty.  She was running around non-stop for the whole party!

 

She looked like she was having so much fun that even Granddad wanted to get in on the fun!

And here is Michael and Ella after a run through the obstacle course.

Then we finished the party with snacks and cake in the party room. 

If there is cake or ice cream, odds are it will end up all over the face!

 

Ella Wolf was anxious to help her good friend Ella C. open her party favor, with Blair supervising it all.  These girls are just too cute!

Then on April 30th Ella went to school and celebrated with cupcakes with all of her friends in her class.  Then she came home and we opened presents (anything Frozen was at the top of her birthday wishlist, although she has thoroughly enjoyed everything that she got for her birthday).  We finished the night with dinner with Grandma and Grandpa, Granddad and Meme, and Jean and Tom at our favorite Mexican food restaurant.  By the end of the night Ella felt very celebrated and was very tired!  It was a great 4th birthday!

Hoppy Easter

If there is a potential for gifts - a letter is written so that the gift giver has a very clear idea of what the girls want!  I especially loved this one with the drawing.  To say the girls are obsessed with the movie Frozen may be an understatement.  It is a bit like Beatlemania!  We made it clear that Easter was not like Christmas but Addison felt it was important to capture their wishes in writing. 

We had a great visit to the beach over Easter weekend.  We dyed Easter eggs of course...

Easter morning was quite foggy at the beach, but they found all of the eggs.  The Easter Bunny did not deliver really anything on the wishlist (although mom and dad did give the girls the Frozen movie) but the list was quickly forgotten once they started finding candy and coins in their eggs.  Easter Bunny didn't forget the big egg with bathing suits which is always super popular.  And turns out the Easter Bunny was busy on Bolivar - there were at least 2 other houses we could see that had eggs in the yard.

Orange Visit

What a super fun visit we had with Granny!  We played at the park, took a driving tour of Orange, went shopping and ate at Casa Ole.  Not sure what else you could ask for.  The girls had a blast and on quite a regular basis now, Ella asks when we are going to go back.  I promise her we will seen Granny soon and will make it back to Orange as soon as we can.  We'll be a bit distracted with beach trips for a while, but we'll be back!  Love you Granny!

Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez

Our first family vacation to New Orleans was a HUGE hit.  First we have the pets.  Pets that tolerated, played and I might go as far as to say enjoyed being around the girls. 

 If Ella could have a cat, this would be the one.  White, fluffy and she was super playful.  Here the girls are "cat fishing".

The star of this picture is supposed to be Hannah, but it is a super cute pic of everyone.  A fun post parade family pic!

 We went to the New Orleans aquarium and it is certainly one of the best.  An extra treat was the parakeet exhibit - a room full of parakeets that liked to eat off of food sticks you could buy.

We saw fish and sharks and even got to pet baby stingrays (they were slimy). We saw a super huge sea turtle, frogs, a sea otter, crawfish, shrimp, a white alligator, eel, penguins, birds and a whole lot more. 

After walking around the French Quarter and looking at art and listening to music in Jackson Square, we enjoyed a tasty meal at Acme Oyster House.  The girls even tolerated the long wait to get a table.  Yummy, yummy food!

And then there was the St. Patty's day parade on Sunday.  Wow, it was hard to believe we were at the small Metairie parade.  51 floats later we had a ridiculous amount of beads, stuffed animals, cabbage and other stew veggies (totally random twist for a St. Patty's Day parade), we had garters that ended up as headbands on the children (and Dave at one point), various sword type objects, a mermaid toy, other random food and snacks.  We may never be able to go back to Mardi Gras at the beach house...

 Ella started off on Michael's shoulders standing kind of in the back, not really wanting to participate much.  But once she got warmed up, she was in it 110%.  Uncle Dave put her on his shoulders once the big floats came to help catch the good stuff.  Like the big green toothbrush she is holding in this pic - just what we needed.  

 Here are both of the girls with hands in the air.  Notice Addy's head gear and Ella's wings and stuffed animal.  We did not bring any of this from home.  Seriously towards the end they would get beads and just drop them on the ground.  We had so much stuff, if it wasn't a huge stuffed animal or something unique it wasn't worthy!

 I like this pic of the parade mayhem, stuff all over the ground.  It was just incredible.

Fun times!!

The Great Remodel of 2013

Bit belated, but finally some before and after shots of the big remodel from last year.  Hopefully the last big remodel we have to live through!  I tried to take the pics in basically the same spot, although sometimes it might be hard to tell since there are walls missing in the after shots. 

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Livestock Show 2014

 Ella's first rodeo carnival ride!

 Fun on the Farm with the goats

 Addy found a new very soft fluffy friend at the petting zoo.

Standing and smiling with Ms. Moo all by herself this year!

Go Texan Day

Such a fun time to live in Houston!  We had a Go Texan filled morning with a pony ride for Ella at her school and then we found the trail riders and we followed them through the neighborhood and they led us to Kolter and we got to see Addison.

 Here is Ella and some of her cowgirl friends at school, ready to ride the ponies!

Very excited cowgirl Ella who woke up early this morning, carrying around her stuffed pony here at home. 

Happy Birthday!

Fun times celebrating Grandma and Granddad's birthday!

Vegas!

The girls got to vacation at Granddad and Meme's and Michael and I got to vacation in Vegas.  Our trip can be summed pretty easily - eating, drinking, sleeping, Pawn Stars and Britney!

Kolter Rocks

The theme of this year's spring fundraiser was "Kolter Rocks" and the girls got some rocker girl hair coloring to go with the theme.  There were major objections to hair washing once this was in, so we let it ride for a couple of days and then there was mandatory washing.  Fortunately for the girls, their light hair ended up tinted a bit pink for a few more days.

Artic Winter of 2014

It has been COLD this winter.  We've had two ice and snow days when school closed, yet there was minimal ice and snow.  In the city at least, maybe one pro to living in the burbs is a greater chance of frozen precipitation.  Whole bunch of hoopla and this is all we got at our house

 

Our science experiment was a success, the water froze into a block of ice and our marbles were trapped.  

Icicles were exciting for a minute or two.  Not really all that impressive, yet not something that happens regularly here!