MRMC Hospital Fair

Yesterday we headed to Moberly to the MRMC Hospital Fair. We have been the past few years and it is always fun for the girls. Ella loved this "creature" that she met.

When you entered the ER your child could pick any stuffed animal they wanted and take it into the Emergency Room to meet a doctor. The doctor then assessed your stuffed animals "ailment" and bandaged it and gave take home advice for the child. I was thankful both girls chose small stuffed animals again this year! Gracie picked a ballerina bunny and Ella chose a teeny tiny Piglet.

Here are the girls consulting with the medical staff. Ella's Piglet hurt his ear and Gracie's ballerina bunny had too much sugar in her diet and needed to watch out for diabetes. No more Lucky Charms and Trix for this bunny rabbit!

The girls were quite attentive during this process.

After lunch it was finally time for some cotton candy! Don't worry...we didn't give any to the ballerina bunny.

Ella wanted to ride the tricycle obstacle course that MODOT had set up. She really listened well as the workers told her what each road sign meant and how she should respond as the driver.

After we got home Gracie had to drag out most of her stuffed animals and we had to play doctor for a while. Each animal had an injury that needed treatment. She's one creative child to come up with some of the illnesses that she thought of.

Dr. Doolin was very kind and affectionate with the injured animals. Maybe we are looking at a future veterinarian?!

A Budding Entrepreneur

Gracie has been talking recently about ways she could make money. She wants to buy things from time to time and I'll simply say, "Do you have the money to buy it?" The answer is usually "no." Today she decided she was going to start using her artwork to make money. She sat down for a few hours and worked really hard on some pictures and then wrote prices on the back. Based on the prices I decided she thinks a whole lot of her artwork. I then had to sit down with her and talk about pricing. She plans on taking special orders and having me update this once in a while with new pieces she is selling.

"A Bright Sunshiny Day"

"A Jellyfish in the Ocean" -- SOLD!!!

"Fruits and Vegetables" (Clearly this one didn't take too long!)

"Ballerinas in Action"

Here Fishy, Fishy

Here are some pics from our fishing outing tonight. We went to Longbranch Lake and fished in the spillway and only caught 1 fish. It was still a fun evening. The girls have enjoyed fishing this summer, but they bore quickly which is evident by the number of random pictures they each took of each other with my camera. I had to delete about 70 pictures when we got home!

Ella Learning to Knead

As boring as this post might be, it was another "first" in Ella's life. She made Monkey Bread with me tonight and kneaded bread for the first time. She loved the feel of the dough and probably worked it a little too much!

Check out the technique! What a pro!

Is it time for a big girl bed?

I have been in the midst of an ongoing debate with myself. I know it's probably time to have Ella's crib converted into a daybed, but she sleeps so great in her crib that I hate to mess up a good thing! Gracie is still our bad sleeper, but Ella never wakes us up in the night. Never! I have been joking with people saying that once Ella's toes start poking out the end of the crib I'll switch her to a "big girl bed" but until then she has to stay in the crib. Well today when it was time to get Ella up from her nap I found her in an unusual position. She had turned around sideways in her crib and had her feet sticking out the rails. So now the debate has begun again... What do you think?

First Grade Ramblings...

At school yesterday Mrs. Stull had the class complete the following sentence. "I hope first grade will be....." Mrs. Stull said every kid in the class wrote the word "fun" except Gracie who wrote "a blast!" How cool is that?! Gracie's teacher told Brent about it because she thought it was so funny.

When I picked Gracie up after school today, Mrs. Stull said she asked the class to complete this sentence - "My favorite thing about summer was..." Well she told them to finish the sentence but she said Gracie wrote a paragraph. Mrs. Stull was laughing as she told me that it was all readable, even if it wasn't spelled correctly. I just told her I wasn't too shocked to hear that because Gracie loves to read and write, so if she had more time on her hands, she would have written a book about her summer!

Gracie's First Day of 1st Grade

What a big day! Today Brent started his 4th year at Atlanta C-3 and Gracie started her first grade experience. She has been so excited to head back to school and see all of her buddies!

Gracie wanted to wear her Disney World dress on the first day of school. She was also super proud of her new Barbie lunch box and backpack!

Gracie's first grade teacher is Mrs. Stull. She is a lot of fun and has a daughter in kindergarten that Gracie is friends with. I know Gracie is in good hands!

Gracie's recap of the day included these highlights:

• We don't have snack anymore.
• We only get milk breaks 2 or 3 days a week.
• We don't have rest time anymore! :-)
• By the end of the year I am going to be able to read chapter books.

A Big Weekend

We picked the girls up in Moberly today, and it appears they had a big weekend. There were many stories to be told about all the fun they had, but by the time we got home, Ella was dead to the world. There was much effort put into waking her up for her bath before bedtime. A true sign of a good weekend!

Our 11th Anniversary

Today Brent and I celebrated our 11th year of marriage. We pretty much had the whole weekend to ourselves because my parents had the girls for one final hurrah before school starts. We didn't really have much planned which was good because I drove into the garage Friday night and discovered the door to the freezer had been left ajar, so everything in the freezer was leaking all over the garage floor. That meant a spontaneous cleaning of the garage and freezer took place. A quick version of the "blame game" had to occur also to determine who left the freezer door ajar. It turns out Brent thinks it was me! After cleaning up that disgusting mess, we watched "Valentine's Day."

Saturday we woke up and had a morning of yard work and trimming the bushes. We were already disgusting, so we decided to head over to a church work day at Tri-County Christian School. We only put in about an hour's work there and came home to clean up. We headed over to Bevier to eat at Ugo's and then watched "Date Night."

All in all it was a wonderful weekend even though we spent most of it working. It was just nice to have the uninterrupted time to do some of those projects that always need to be done. It's hard to believe 11 years have passed so quickly. We have lived in 5 houses in those 11 years, 4 different towns and have been blessed with two beautiful daughters. There has been nothing dull about the last 11 years and I'm sure the upcoming years hold many more adventures!

"When I Get Bigger"

Ella is on a kick of saying "when I get bigger...." which is followed by something she longs to do. For instance, "Mommy, when I get bigger your bedroom will be mine. Mommy, when I get bigger Miss Gott will be my teacher. When I get bigger I will do cartwheels like Gracie. When I get bigger I will sit in a big girl car seat like Gracie. When I get bigger I will have an iron like yours." She has some big dreams! Well, I recently began jogging again, and one night as I was stretching I came to a startling realization. I can no longer sit on the ground with my legs in front of me and touch my toes. I tried and tried, but it was a waste of time. There's a good 2 inches lacking. Ella sat down beside me and demonstrated how she can touch her toes (and her fingers even stretch like 2 inches past her toes. Little show-off!) Anyway, she looked over at me and said, "Mommy, when you get bigger I will teach you to touch your toes." I wish it were that easy! In the meantime, I will continue to try to reach my toes on my own power and Ella will continue to work on the list of things she will do "when she gets bigger."

A Summer Project Success

This summer the girls wanted to plant some things and watch them grow. We had some failures (tomatoes and pumpkins) but we also had some success stories. Case in point...this massive sunflower. We actually had probably 6 sunflowers at one point, but several got too heavy and broke. The girls were thrilled with their beautiful sunflowers, so they didn't even mind the tomatoes never producing anything or the pumpkin vines slowly dying.

We planted the sunflowers in a strange spot, but they did really well. Gracie loved swinging by them and seeing how much higher they were than her!

Playdate Extraordinaire

We scheduled a playdate today with two girls from our church who are also sisters. Madison is a year younger than Gracie, but they play great together. Savannah is a year older than Ella, and they play well together, too. All in all, the patient big sisters let the little sis's play with them and it was so cute. There was a whole lot of dressing up going on, so we ended up having a beautiful tea party. We made candy jewelry, went to Burger King, bounced in the bounce house outside and played Barbies. The girls are already scheming their next playdate!