Gymnastics Carnival and New Roommate

This Saturday was Ellie's gymnastics carnival. She has been taking gymnastics at the Y. This weekend we got to watch what all she's learned. They set up an obstacle course for the preschoolers and they had to get each skill stamped off on a card as they went through the course. At the end they got a medal for completion. Ellie was SO excited about her medal! She kept saying, " it's my first medal!" Mia and E.W. came and Emma even got to walk through some of the course. They had a blast! I was very proud of my budding little gymnast. After the carnival we went to Daylight Doughnuts for tasty treats! Something about a warm, fresh doughnut that makes everything more fun! (I forgot my camera, so all the pictures I took were terrible phone pictures. Click here to see Worth's mom's blog/pictures and some video she took!)

Worth was on call this weekend so in his time sitting around Saturday waiting on his pager to go off, he decided to go ahead and put together Ellie's old baby bed so that we could eventually get Emma up in the room with Ellie sometime this summer. Well, Emma laid eyes on the new bed in Ellie's room after their bath last night and threw a fit to sleep in it. So, we put her upstairs for the first time last night- a little ahead of schedule, but they both were super excited about it. It took them a while to get to sleep, and Emma cried out a couple of times during the night. All in all it was a good first night as roomies!

1st Tball game and Baby #3 update

Yesterday was Ellie's first T-ball game. She was so excited, and it was one of the most entertaining sporting events I've ever been to. The kids were hysterical. The ball would be hit and the players from both teams would run out to get it. Ellie, however, was more concerned with her hat than anything else as she guarded 3rd base.  I was impressed that she could hit the ball and run, so at least she has that part of the game down. We did almost lose one player when he left 2nd base and took off into the outfield and then into another tball game. If you are having a down day, I highly recommend a little league tball game, specifically the 3-4 year old age group! (I condensed the pictures for this post, I took TONS of those cute little kids!)

A quick baby #3 update: Yesterday, we met with the maternal fetal medicine specialist and my regular OB about the baby's ectopic bowel, and from what they can tell so far everything looks normal. The baby didn't have the markers for down's syndrome and I passed all my genetic blood work tests that rule out several of the chromosomal disorders. I have to have a repeat level 2 ultrasound to get a better view of one area of the heart and I had to have a cystic fibrosis blood test just to rule that out. (Worth and I have no history of CF in our family that we know of, but they want to check me just to make sure) The specialist seemed to think all was good, and that either the baby possibly swallowed blood early on or the "bright bowel" is just one of those things that will go away. We aren't completely out of the woods yet, but I feel much better about everything. Especially, when they told us that all other areas of the baby looked great. Thank you for all the prayers, calls, texts and emails. It meant so much to me and helped me through a difficult month of waiting!

All ready in her uniform

Group discussion about what numbers were on their backs. Ellie is explaining she is #1

Tripp trying telling Ellie his number

Ellie and her friend Ashlynn comparing shirts and belts

Group huddle before the game

Go Red Sox!

Ellie at 3rd

Preparing to field the ball...

and then the hat starts getting in her way. Daddy to the rescue!

Waiting to bat with Coach Stephen

The team lined up for batting

This 3rd baseman from the other team was just staring everyone down when they got to 3rd like "why did you just run over here like that?"

And the hat is an issue again

We had 4 pitchers, no 1st baseman on no outfielders. They all wanted to catch the ball except Ellie, who is still fighting with her hat

My little ball player:)

Office Renovation

Over the last couple of months in my days off I have been working to turn our ugly yellow office into something more than a room where stuff gets piled up. You can see the yellow walls we started with and progress thru building an entire wall if built ins, a new desk, and paint. Still with some details to finish but for the most part it is finally done.

A Visit to the Georgia Aquarium

This past week was spring break for Ellie, so I planned for us to head up to Atlanta and go to the Georgia Aquarium on Friday. We have never been and I kept promising Ellie we were going to go, so I organized the trip about a month ago. My Aunt Joyce lives in Atlanta, so we stayed with her. Mama and Daddy wanted in on the fun (and volunteered helping me wrangle the girls for the trip) so they went with us. Worth was on call, so we left him in Valdosta.

Ellie decided to get strep throat Wednesday, but since we had already purchased tickets, parking passes, etc. I decided we would do the trip anyway. Ellie never acts puny when she's sick anyway and other than a fever, swollen glands, neck pain, and not eating (which she never does anyway) she was good to go. I know, I probably should be turned into child services for taking her up there, but she was so excited about it and had been home all week with strep, so I couldn't crush her and change our plans. Hopefully, she didn't infect the thousands of people that were there!

I don't think I've ever been anywhere like that where everyone was so rude. People would just walk or stand in front of you when you were clearly trying to get a picture. When we ate lunch, Ellie and I were sitting at the table finishing our food while the other folks were in the bathroom and a man and his entire family just came and sat down at the table we were at AFTER I  told him other people were sitting with us. I guess he just didn't care. Ellie and I got up still chewing our food and my dad came over and helped retrieve our stroller that this man's family pushed away from the table. I know there were tons of people at Disney, but everyone was so nice there. I felt like I was in New York instead of Atlanta at the Aquarium!

Despite the annoying people, the girls ended up having a great time. The best part of the whole thing to us was the dolphin show, which I was not allowed to take pictures of. So, no pictures of that awesome performance, but I did my best with some other pictures.

At the entrance to the aquarium with Grandma

Ellie refused to pose in this picture and Emma isn't doing a very good job of it. And yes, Emma has a serious mullet that she refuses to let me do anything with so I have given up and I let her wear it proudly

At the entrance to the tunnel in the ocean voyage area

Whale shark - it was amazing how big those things were!

Ellie and Emma amazed as they ride the moving sidewalk through the tunnel

Another close up of the whale shark, these animals fascinated me!

My only picture of our whole crew: Mama, Aunt Joyce (my dad's sister if you can't tell), my Dad, Ellie and Emma

This is a boat in front of the whale shark, it was feeding time. I don't think you could pay me  enough money to be in that boat doing the feeding

I loved the big sting rays (sorry pregnancy brain has made me forget the real name) but they just looked like they were flying through the water! So cool!

I thought I cropped this picture, but I guess I didn't do it correctly - sorry for the random lounging dad and kid added into the photo.

Big sister helping Emma see the frogs

Giant American Bullfrog - Gross!

Beluga Whales were beautiful creatures

Sea dragons were amazingly frail looking to be ocean creatures

The penguins thought Emma had food for them

Example of rudeness: as I was trying to get this picture of Emma and Ellie the lady and her daughter to the left decided to jump in and get their picture as well. UGH!

Cropped shot

Hopefully no one came immediately behind Ellie to put their face and mouth on the plexiglass like she's doing in this picture! I tried to keep her from doing that, but it is hard to do with a 4 year old. Sorry for anyone that got strep throat from my daughter!