4 Years of Fun

Ellie celebrated her 4th birthday this week! We have had so much fun with Elz Bellz in our family. She showers us with love and exhausts us with never ending energy. As you can see in the previous post we had an epic Willy Wonka birthday party to celebrate. But I decided to off load some facebook pictures so we can have this year of' Ellie memories' in our family album.

 This is one of my favorite pictures of Ellie to date. As I sat at the table she came up and said  while posing, "hey Mom, how do I look?"

 Ellie loves cooking with me. She helps me make things every single day. At times it gets messy but most of the time it is our special time.

 Ellie decided she wanted to have a movie night, one Friday night, with root beer floats and popcorn. She created her own concession stand for Mitch and I to come and partake of. We did have to pay a penny to receive our food, she's pretty smart.

 This is a picture of Ellie's face when I ate the last gusher and did not properly destroy the evidence. She sat and cried/screamed for 30 minutes. I told her she could cry all she wanted but it would not bring that tasty treat back. Her words included, "how could you!?...I can't believe you! ...and I wanted that!"  The whole tantrum was so ridiculous (especially because I rarely eat their fruit snacks) that I could not stop laughing and had to snap a pic. I know, bad mom.  :)

 This is the first time El came out having done her own hair for a play group. She was pretty proud of herself, I love her style.

 This year was Ellie's first year of soccer. She was absolutely a joy to watch!

 Please ignore the middle finger. On our anniversary we went to the Blue Bird. Ellie chose a little bag of peach rings (her favorite) as a treat. She never will smile for the camera, her silliness always comes through instead.

 Ellie is our little fish. She loves swimming and took swim lessons this year.  She is always one of the first ones to jump into the lake.  She also learned to ride a bike this summer and is quite in love with the joy of peddling that thing.

I can't forget one of her most favorite people, Dad. When he comes in the door at night that little lady is nearly glued to him. She has to sit next to him at dinner, wrestle with him, and read books with him. You would think that would make me feel bad, no no really. I enjoy a break and we are happy to have such a good dad in our family.

 I threw this one in just to remember how much she has grown. Ellie can hardly wait for her new little sister to come. She is always telling me how she will feed her and hold her and get her out of her crib. What I really heard is, "Mom you're going to have to make sure I don't squish her". She told me just the other day, "when I grow up, I want to be a Mommy ."  She melts my heart.

We are so blessed to have this beautiful little girl in our life. She fills us with love, patience, and smiles. Happy 4th Ellie bug.

Ellie's Birthday Party

I have some serious updating to do on this family journal! We seem to be constantly on the go and life always has a tendency to fill up with more adventures with each new day. Our latest celebration (after Thanksgiving of course) was Ellie's 4th birthday. We have been counting down to this for weeks and Ellie could hardly stand the wait.

Because her birthday fell on a Sunday we did a birthday party on the Saturday before. Because Ellie LOVES candy we decided to have a Willy Wonka birthday party. I had so much fun planning and the kids got plenty sticky so I suppose it was a success!  Our biggest dilemma was who to invite. Ellie has A LOT of cousins but we decided to only invite the ones that were within a year of her age. Luckily, a few older ones stopped by at the end to pick up their younger sibling so hopefully no body was sad. We still had 9 cousins within her age group, plus a few little friends.

We spent the day licking the walls, making candy necklaces, playing candy, candy, who has the candy (button, button), wearing Wonka glasses and playing with glow stick balloons. It turned out to be a fun and exhausting day!

 We are not responsible for death or damages contract...very important for a 4 year olds birthday party. :) Silly Ellie cheesing it up. Isn't Mitch a good sport. He said, 'the next time we do a birthday party let's go somewhere that I don't have to wear a costume.'  But you better believe that Ellie loved the look!

 We used Jolly ranchers and made lickable stars. However, we had to re-do four of them throughout the day because Max kept making the rounds and licking everyones.

 Again pulling some goofy face, one day she'll smile at the camera.

 Here is cute Max with cupcake stuffed through his binky. He could not keep his hands off the treats.

 of course, the set up. Notice her VERY important Birthday badge.

These were our tasty candy necklaces.

 Here are some more pictures of the lickable stars

Last but not least, the coveted 'Golden Ticket". Happy Birthday Ellie!