The Wolf Family

Friday, June 6, 2014

1st Grade Awards

The week before school was out, Addison had her 1st grade awards ceremony. Here she is with Dr. Shetzer her principal after she got her awards. Addy got honor roll and perfect attendance. The perfect attendance is the greatest achievement I'd say, especially with the trouble she has with her allergies...she managed to not get sick this year which was a huge accomplishment!

Addison and her super good friend Caroline.

Ms. Patel, the greatest 1st grade teacher!

Addison and her other super good friend Josie.

Mother's Day

We had a lovely relaxing Mother's Day weekend at the beach. Got some super cute kiddie made gifts from the girls, which are my favorite. This was the icing on the cake though. Addison's Chinese teacher had them fill these out and for anyone who really knows me, you will totally agree with some of the responses and be quite surprised by others...

30? years old = I like this one, her teacher told them to put a ? if they weren't sure how old their moms were. I technically tell Addison I am still 29, but I'll take 30 too.
Sleep = she nailed this one
Rice Crispy chocolate squares = not a lot of cooking here, but they are super good!
Favorite food = fish, I do like fish and of course the ironic part is that I never really ate fish until I was in my early 20's. Addison has consumed more fish in her 7 years than I did in my first 20!
We like to go on walks and exercise = I do like to do that now, irony of this one is that I didn't like going on walks and exercising until my 30's

Can't wait to see what treasures I get next Mother's Day!

Magnet Performance

End of school means end of year performances. At Kolter the performance is tied in with the foreign language magnet classes, so there is very little English spoken in the show! This year the kindergarteners and 1st graders performed together. All of the language classes did a piece and it was to the theme of The Very Hungry International Caterpillar. Addison's Chinese class did a song and dance about fruits to coordinate with the part of the story where the caterpillar ate all the fruit. We had no clue what she was singing, but it was super cute. Addison was front and center in a super cute outfit her Chinese teacher had for some of the girls. Here is Addison in her debut Chinese performance.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Crab Festival

We are having fun exploring new things in 2014. Last visit to the beach, a flyer for the annual Texas Crab Festival caught my eye. We'd been down at the beach house on the weekend of the crab festival before but I never thought of going. For the sake of trying something new, we spend some time on Mother's Day at the festival. Sunday was definitely a slow morning at the festival, not a lot of folks, but we got to enjoy some live music, there was a guy doing balloon animals for the kids, and we had some fried crab munchies for lunch. I think we'll definitely give it another try next year. Maybe visit on Saturday when it is a bit more lively. Was a great end to a nice and relaxing weekend at the beach this time though!

These were some of the most elaborate balloon characters I'd ever seen. The girls asked for mermaids and this is what they got - very fun and huge!

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!

Friday, March 21, 2014

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!!

Monday, March 10, 2014

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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