Happy Birthday to Ella!

Ella turned four years old last Sunday! Hard to believe that she is four already!! I still remember the day she was born like it was yesterday and she was so little. Or how she used to sleep in her swing all the time. Or crawled faster than any baby alive and once she was walking there was no stopping her. She can be so goofy and silly and happy and cute. All the teachers and people she's met think she's so "delightful". They seem genuinely surprised and excited by how delightful and happy she is.

I've said before she has talked about her birthday pretty much since January. Every time we were at the grocery store, she would look at the birthday cake display and pick out which cake she wanted. About a month ago, I had her pick a cake and told her that was going to be her birthday cake and we started the countdown to her Tinkerbell party!

July 28th, we had about 20 family members over from my mom's, my dad's and Andrew's side of the family. Ella had been so excited, too excited I think. When the party started she, Lily, and her cousin Emilee went on a treasure hunt for little treasure chests each filled with a gold dollar. After that, they decorated crowns and picture frames with princess stickers. And then it was time to eat. About this time, Ella realized she was tired and a bit overwhelmed by all the attention. She felt it would be best to go up to her room and conk out for a bit. So we ate and waited. and waited. Then we tried to wake her up after about an hour and a half. It took 15-20 minutes to get her to wake up. I've never seen her so hard to wake up. But she got up and opened all her gifts and then had cake, so she was the belle of the ball after all. Thank you to everyone who came to wish her Happy Birthday and those of you who sent along birthday wishes!!

On her actual birthday August 5th, Andrew and I took the girls to Mall of America and Ella was Princess for a Day. Our friend Molly, who is also Ella's godmother, was in town and met us at the Mall. We watched Ella ride the rides for a bit including the merry-go-round! This is a huge feat because she has not been on a carousel for two years. The last time was a disaster turn with me and my dad at Valleyfair (an amusement park here in MN). She screamed the entire ride. But this time she WANTED to go on it. So we said okay. And she really enjoyed it. No screaming. She was smiling and said, "that was fun!" when it was over. After that we moved on to the Libby Lu experience where Ella received the Princess treatment. She loved every minute of it. The funny thing is that afterwards we went to lunch and while we were waiting for our food, Ella gave Lily the Libby Lu experience. Please see pictures at the end of Ella's birthday photo album to see what I'm talking about. It was so hilarious how Lily knew just what to do and listened to Ella tell her, "Okay close your eyes."

After that, we visited the Disney store and stocked up on Tinkerbell t-shirts and some purple sparkly mary janes that Ella just LOVES! That night my dad came over for pizza and Ella opened a couple more gifts including her "big" gift of a new bicycle. She and Lily took turns trying it out in the house before we took it out on the path by our house. She's still a little leery of it, but likes to try it out. :-)

Now she's onto telling what we need to do for Lily's "Nemo" birthday. She's decided all by herself that Lily will be having a Nemo birthday and there needs to be a Nemo cake and Nemo balloons. We'll see, I haven't asked Lily what kind of birthday party she wants yet. :-)