Ellie is crazy 8!!

Ellie turned 8 on Monday, September 19th, and we have had a week long celebration for her birthday.  
At 8, Ellie is still a very busy child. She doesn't have much of a down time in her brain. The only time she really sits still is when she is holding a book or if the tv happens to be on. She loves any sport we throw at her, and she's good at all of them. She has a challenging personality, constantly questioning EVERYTHING, and she is very stubborn and convicted when it comes to what she wants to do. I know these will all one day be positive traits, but man oh man do they exhaust me now. She is full of joy, though, and consistently brings light to any room she walks into. She is always laughing and smiling, and is never without some sort of pretend scenario to act out with her siblings. She loves to be the center of attention and to have fun with everything she does. We love her so much and are enjoying watching her character develop.

Monday morning of her birthday, she woke up to gifts and singing from the entire family. We then headed to school with cupcakes for her class snack for that day. On the ride to school, she was given a shout out on the morning Kids Place Live radio show by Absolutely Mindy.

I checked her out of school early Monday afternoon, because she had an appointment with the hand surgeon to get her cast removed in Douglas, GA. This, I do believe, was the highlight of her birthday. The cast was removed, and Ellie was discharged from seeing the doctor again. She was advised, however, to hold off on gymnastics for 3 more weeks - not what Ellie wanted to hear.

We rushed back to Tifton and met Worth, Emma, and Mack for dinner at the kids' favorite restaurant, The Mill. We had dinner, played games, then went for frozen yogurt. We were all worn out by the end of the afternoon!

This past Friday, Ellie hosted her first spend the night birthday party. She had her 2 best friends, Abby and Sammy, over. Including Emma, it was only 4 girls. (Not too bad for me.) Mack decided he wanted to go stay the night with grandma and papa. So with him out of the house, the girl craziness could carry on.

The girls came at 5:30pm Friday. We began the party with a dip in the pool, a dance party, then they had a fashion show, played shopkins, ate pizza and cake, opened gifts and were watching a movie all before 7:30pm. After the movie, they decided to write some comics of their own.  (Ellie's favorite books right now are the Diary of the Wimpy Kid series. This is the movie they watched which I'm assuming inspired the comic writing for the night.)

At 9:30pm, I made them a big comfortable palette on the floor with blankets and sleeping bags. They all cuddled up to go to sleep. By 11:00, Worth had already had to go up to Ellie's bedroom to ask them to try to go to sleep or at least be quiet. At 5:00am, they were up and ready for the morning. They finished up their comics, I made them breakfast, and there was a pirate play enacted all before 8:00am. (Worth and I were 3 cups of coffee in by 7:00am.) For fear of waking up the neighbors, I made them wait until after 8:00am to get in the pool. The girls then swam until moms came to pick up at 9:00am.

Needless to say, Worth and I have been exhausted all weekend. So exhausted, in fact, that we couldn't even get upset over the UGA loss to Ole Miss on Saturday:(  Ellie said it was her best birthday yet, and that is all I needed to hear!

Ellie and Emma in front of the table that greeted Ellie for her birthday morning. Notice the love for her sister early on a Monday morning. i can assure you, this is NOT what normally happens at breakfast!!

Emma made Ellie a card. She was so sweet and wanted to do it all by herself without my help. 

Emma's artwork of her and Ellie in the card. 

Ellie got to open most of her gifts that morning before school. Her big gift from Worth and I had to wait until Worth got home from work later that afternoon. She mostly got clothes, which she was not to thrilled about for some reason. However, when I offered to return the clothing to the store, she had a quick change of heart. 

She had just heard Absolutely Mindy announce her birthday on the radio. 

Cast is gone!!!

Hot and sweaty at the Mill. 

Air Hockey with Daddy. I'm not sure who likes this more, the girls or Worth. 

Ellie hit the 500 ticket mark on the crank game. I'll let the pictures tell the story!

Froyo for the win 

Once we got home from dinner, Ellie finally got to open her big gift from Worth and I. It was a new set of golf clubs. This redeemed my earlier gifts of clothing. (God forbid you buy a child clothes when she has grown out of all of hers.)

The spend the night party was off to an awesome start. Music, pool, and dancing. 

Time for the party favors. (I found them all matching PJs on clearance at Target.  It was cheaper than buying a bag of junk for party favors, and they LOVED it!)

Ellie wanted a UGA themed birthday party. I decorated the dining room and surprised her with it, and her comment was: "Man, Daddy is going to love this!" Well, that was not who I was trying to impress, but whatever. 

I had forgotten how exciting it is at this age to GIVE a gift. The girls could barely get through eating pizza  without worrying about when Ellie would get to open her gifts. 

Discussing shopkins

A gift card to Books a Million- These sweet little friends know their Ellie all to well. 

I love that they both made her cards. 

Ellie hugging on Abby. 

Party girls!

5am comic book making. 

August 2016

Sorry this has turned into a month to month post. I think I FINALLY have all this picture downloading stuff figured out for now on our new computer. It doesn't help when I only get about 10 minutes of free time a week to work on it. That 10 minutes NOT being consecutive.

August has been busy, busy, busy. We've started school, visited Washington D.C., celebrated Mack's 3rd birthday, and earned a wrist cast over the past month.

I will try to update more often now that I know how to work my new computer (hopefully?) I'm just not sure why you can't take a picture, download it on your computer, and put it on your blog. They have to make everything so hard!!

August 4, 2016 brought the first day of school for Ellie and Emma. 2nd grade for Ellie, and Kindergarten for Emma. It was an emotional day for me because I had not properly prepared myself for Emma being gone. It hit me when I left her in her classroom and got back into the car. I worried about both girls on their first day this year. Ellie was entering a class that she knew no one. She was nervous, which made me nervous for her.

They both did awesome though and have had a great start to the school year so far.

Ellie was one of the few 2nd graders allowing their mothers to walk them to class the first day. She never asked me not to, but I heard from several other mothers that their kids wouldn't allow it this year. Thankfully, it never even crossed Ellie's mind...this year. 

Sorry this is blurry, I couldn't enlarge the thumbnails to see which picture I was clicking on. This is Elle escorting Emma to the car in pick up line after their first day. It brought a smile to my face to see Ellie looking out for Emma so sweetly.

Annual after the first day of school froyo trip. Mack was allowed even though it wasn't his first day of school yet. 

Mack finally got his turn at his preschool open house. He gets to repeat 2 year old pre-K this year. With an August 21st birthday and a September 1st cut off, we felt he might benefit from being held back.  We did a 2 year old class at the Episcopal church last year and we will be at the Methodist church this year. 

Worth's grandfather, Gramps, died last November. The family had a memorial service in Albany after his death, but his burial was at Arlington National Cemetery this August. We decided the girls needed to be there and took them out of school for 2 days to tour D.C. and to attend the funeral. They both knew and loved Gramps very much.

The plane rides went smoothly with them. We made sure our connections were spread out enough so we could take our time getting through the airport with these two silly girls. We crammed in a lot of touring for a 5 and 7 year old, but they handled it great. They loved D.C. and Ellie has asked me several times when we get to go back.

This is their first cab ride. They were thrilled that they didn't have to have boosters

They are standing in front of the Washington monument at the Jefferson memorial in this picture

Ellie insisted on a picture with this memorial for the nurses and  women who served in Vietnam. 

They found the dollhouse at our first Smithsonian stop. 

Dorothy's slippers

This was very exciting for them - The White House

A picture of the Capitol building from our trolley tour

Spirit of St. Louis. They took this picture for me to send to Papa. 

D.C. was unusually hot. It called for ice cream consumption

While we were gone, Mack had his first day of 2 y.o. pre K. Mama took him and sent me this picture. It made my morning!

Soon after our return from D.C. Mack had his 3rd birthday. He was thrilled and thought that his birthday was supposed to be all week long instead of just one day. HIs 3 year old stats: Weight: 25 and 3/4 lbs - 2%, and height 35 and 3/4 - 12%. He's little, no surprise there.

Waking up the birthday boy

His sweet sisters made him cards. They read them to him that morning. 

He finally got a transformer. He lifted one from the church nursery several months ago, and I made him take it back. He was so upset and didn't understand why he couldn't just keep it. I told him if he potty trained, I would buy him his own transformer. Since we are finally potty trained - that was one of his birthday gifts. 

The big gift was a bike!

We celebrated that night with hamburgers, hot dogs and cake with Grandma, Papa, E.W., and Mia. 

He handled being sung to much better this year. 

cake face

His birthday was on a Sunday, so the following Monday, I took doughnuts to his class for snack and had another small "party." No wonder he thought his birthday should last all week:)

To round out August, Ellie decided to sprain her wrist pretty bad. She had a different coach in gymnastics who was really working them. I was glad because their normal coaches are more interested in picking at their nails than working with the kids. Anyway, Ellie had done about 350 back walk overs, front walkovers, and back handsprings. I had seen Ellie shaking her wrist, but I didn't think anything of it until we got into the car and she started telling me she couldn't move it. I did a few provocative tests and realized that it might be worse than just a sore wrist. I thought she might have actually torn her TFCC. I splinted her and long story short, we ended up at a hand surgeon"s office the following Monday.

The only way to see if the TFCC is truly torn is through MRI or scope. The hand surgeon felt at Ellie's age, these would not be her first approach. The doctor opted for a cast for 4 weeks, then Ellie can go back into my splint for 2 weeks after that.

I believe this will not be our first gymnastics battle wound.

She just thought the splint was fun

Although she looks happy in this picture, reality set in of how long it has to be worn and there were lots of tears. We talked the surgeon into letting us try to remove it on Ellie's birthday. (1 week early) If everything looks good, she can just wear the splint at that point. 

Out of order picture from the post 1st day of school froyo

Hot stuff on his new bike.