Little Miss Lily Turns 3!

So I guess it's feast or famine when it comes to new posts on the blog. :-) It was September 28th yesterday which means it was Lily's birthday!! Yeah!

She has been waiting and SO excited for her birthday ever since it was Ella's birthday. Every time she went down for her nap or to bed, or even when saying good-bye to people she would say, "See you at my birthday!" For an entire month or more, she said that. It was so cute! We made a paper chain so she could take one off for each day as it got closer to her birthday. And she decided right after Ella's birthday that she was having a Dora party. And she told EVERYONE. She would "call" all her friends on her play phones and ask them if they were coming to her party and then say, "See you then!".

I was a little worried that she had built up her birthday so much and that she might end up overwhelmed but she did pretty well all day. We started the day off by letting her open her gift from us: a dollhouse! She was pretty excited when she opened it. Especially because it came with two little babies. She LOVES babies. After that, we headed out to the Pancake House for breakfast. Then, back home again to get ready for the party, and for Lily to take a nap. Once the afternoon hit, we were ready for our Dora extravaganza!


(That's great-aunt Gail at the Pancake House with the kids.)

All the kids in attendance went on a Dora birthday adventure to save Lily's birthday party! Swiper swiped the candles, balloons and cake toppers. The kids were in three teams and each group had Map and a Backpack with supplies they would need to rescue the birthday party. They had to dig in our sandbox for the cake topper and other treasures, rescue Boots and a candle from Lookout Point (aka the neighbor's swing set), and then gather a balloon from the grassy meadow. I think they all enjoyed themselves! We ate a meal and then opened presents.



When it came time to sing "Happy Birthday" and the cake, Lily was ready at first, but started crying when we started singing. I actually wasn't surprised. I was worried she would do that. She didn't even want to blow out the candles. But she had plenty of friends standing by to help her out. Once she actually got to eat the cake, she was all happy again. :-) She finished her day out by opening all her new toys and playing with them. We opened a few after the party and this morning as well, just to spread them out a bit.




Lily trying out her new scooter. Apparently, it doubles
as a seat when you need to take a break. :-)

We really enjoyed visiting with our friends and family. I think Lily really had a lot of fun too. I can't believe our baby girl is three years old already. Time goes by too quickly. I want her to just stay little and want to cuddle and be my girl that misses me when she is at school. But it's also been nice having her get a little more self sufficient (yay for potty training!). She is so sweet most of the time. She gives us hugs and kisses. She is so smart and vocal. Her vocabulary amazes me and I usually love listening to her stories. She is always chattering (sometimes too much...."Why, Mommy, why?" "What is that there?" Why is the garbage can there?" you get the picture.) She's just our sweet baby girl and will always be! Happy Birthday Lily pie!

Here's a few of my favorite photos:

Go Red Sox!

When I say Red Sox, I mean Ella's soccer team. They are undefeated so far this season (I think). But they have come up against some tougher teams the last couple games. They have also lost a few team players so Ella ended up playing the entire game last Saturday! She has so much fun out there. She is aggressive and just gets in there and goes after the ball. She even got a foul called against her in one game because she was trying to get in and get the ball. She tries so hard when she's playing. And she is really starting to get the rules of the game down (ie: don't steal the ball from your teammates, etc.) :-)

Here are a couple photos of one game:



It is so adorable at the end of the game when they go through and do the ritualistic high-five, with all of them saying "Good game, good game, good game."

And here's one last picture of Ella dressed up for Cowgirl/Cowboy day at school.

Sisterly Love

The end of the summer was pretty tough for me and the girls. All three of us had been spending so much time together. They were getting on each other's nerves and I was losing patience. So we were all excited for the school year to start. With our new schedule. The girls see each other for a little bit in the morning. Then, one of them is off to school, the other is with me. Lunch, naptime, and then it's 3pm! Whoo hoo! They are playing so much better with each other. It's so great! They can go almost an hour without someone whining, crying, or yelling at each other. It's fantastic!

Here are a few images showing the love:

I know it looks like Ella is choking Lily, but all of sudden I looked over
and Lily was sitting on her lap and cuddling. It was so cute!


When they are playing outside, they like to pull all our junk out of the garage and play with it. Here they are sitting on our old baby sleds. They like to make "houses" with stuff they find in the garage.

Stay tuned in a couple weeks. I'm going to attempt to actually get a posed sister picture. They don't have school Oct. 15-17 and I plan to take them to the Arboretum, bribe them, and hope to get a cute picture of them TOGETHER. So stayed tuned Grandparents! You may get that sibling picture you've been longing for. :-)

A couple weeks ago, we went to Hyland Park where Target was hosting a Children's Book Festival. We were there for a bit and pretty much got to do everything before it started pouring rain. Ella is in her soccer uniform because she had her soccer pictures just before we went to the festival. It was drizzling a tiny bit and cloudy which kept the large crowds away. It was actually a lot of fun! And we ran into some friends of ours, Kate Brooke-Beyer, her husband Mark and son Colin. Andrew and I went to Knox with Kate, and I met up with her again this summer for a couple playdates. They live in Eden Prairie just a few miles north of us!




That's just Ella with Uniqua (of the Backyardigans). The other girl sort of looks like Lily from behind, but its not her. :-) Lily is deathly afraid of any sort of people dressed up as characters so she wouldn't be caught dead near Uniqua. And ever wonder what The Wonder Pets look like in real-life? That's a picture of the KIDS who voice the Wonder Pet characters. I was surprised they were so young! They "read" two of the storybooks using the animal voices. The girls were pretty mesmerized.

One more quick note...

Just in case any of our faithful readers out there use Google Reader and would like to add our blog to their Reader, our actual blog address is: http://theisaacsons.blogspot.com

It won't work if you try to use www.hollyandandrew.com.

In other randomness, Ella is being used in an advertisement for the My Gym Eden Prairie Cheerleading Class. You can see the ad here. She's not currently taking the class. But pretty cool she's featured on the ad!

As always, thanks for checking in with us!!!

Lily's Very First Day of School!

While Ella goes to school M, W, and F, Lily will attend on Tues and Thurs. They are actually both in the same classroom but have different teachers and their lockers are right next to each other. Lily has been talking about school all summer. She tells everyone, "I'm going to Penguin School." Well, really, she is in the Penguin class at school. They name all the classes after animals. Ella is in the Frog class this year.


By the way, yes, those are the same clothes Ella had on for HER first day of school. She wanted to "match" Lily so she put them back on. Thankfully, they weren't really that dirty so I didn't argue with her that much.

Lily was so excited after Ella had school on Monday because she got to go the next day. And she did great! We took her in and she found her locker. She received a pencil just like Ella did. She thought that was pretty cool! And we did a scavenger hunt in her classroom to find out where things were. We all said good-bye to her and she was fine! She didn't cry at all when we left.



Ella and I went off to meet Jody and Arie at storytime and then the mall play area. When we came back to pick Lily up we were a bit early and watched her sing Wheels on the Bus with the other kids. She did the motions and everything. I believe it was one of the cutest things I've ever seen. Then her teacher called her to let her know I was there. Lily ran over and gave me a big hug and promptly BURST into TEARS! The teacher was so surprised because she did great all day and wasn't sad at all. I think she just didn't realize she missed us until she saw me again.




I was a little worried how dropping her off today would go. But she did fine. She sat down to play playdoh and I got her started. Then Ella and I said good-bye. She got just a little teary but not really crying. I reminded her that Ella and I were just going to speech and then to work on Ella's "homework" and that we weren't going to be doing anything fun. So she wasn't going to be missing anything at home. School was going to be way more fun for her. She seemed to think that was okay and we left. When I picked her up, she told me right away that she missed me (melt my heart!) but she didn't cry and I immediately asked her what she did today and got her thinking about something else. She had a fun day and sang a song about a horse and some apples--or something along those lines. :-) She's already excited to go back next Tuesday so I think she's doing all right!

Ella's Back to School

Our last couple weeks of summer were a bit looonnnggg for all of us. We ALL couldn't wait for school to start! And this Monday was the day!



Just to clarify because I'm not sure I've said this on the blog. But Ella is doing one final year of preschool this year before starting kindergarten next fall. Because she has one of those August birthdays, we felt it would be better for her to be the oldest kid in her class than the youngest. And we thought it couldn't hurt for her to have one more year of more intensive speech therapy before starting school. She will be getting speech help M, W, and F at preschool and a private session on Thursdays with Capable Kids (where we've been taking her the last year and a half). That is probably a bit of overkill. But the school district is free and if they want to help her, I'm all for it! Besides, on Mon and Wed, they help her in the classroom while she's playing so she doesn't even realize she's getting help.

So Monday morning we were off to school! It was old hat for Ella this go around. There were kids who were crying and sad to have their parents leave them. Not our Ella. She was ready! She gave me her customary good-bye (high five, kiss on the head, nose rub) and then gave me a big hug. And she was off and running.


Her teacher left her a pencil in her locker, along with her name tag.


Lily and I spent the morning having coffee with my friend Kelly and working on an art project. Then Andrew, Lily and I waited for the school bus to bring Ella home! They drop her off right at our house. The bus driver was really nice. Ella told me there were only three kids riding her bus and one got off before her. Her teacher sent home a note in her bag saying Ella's day went great and she had fun playing My Little Ponies with Claire and Riley.


Lily and I were waiting for the school bus to bring Ella home!



Wednesday went great as well! Apparently she played with Claire and Riley again and Claire rides her bus home too. I guess she's already made some new fun little friends! We worked on her "All About Me" homework page today and she's excited to turn it in to her teacher tomorrow. Last year she just colored everything and I wrote the words for her. This year, she colored the whole thing and wrote all the words! (I wrote them out on a separate piece of paper first, then she wrote them on her paper). She is really starting to learn a lot of her letters which is exciting!

Ella also started playing soccer through the Eden Prairie Soccer Association. She has practice/games on Friday and Saturday evenings and plays on a team of 10 kids. It's co-ed at her age group and she's one of three girls on her team. She really seems to be loving it and she's pretty good too. I'm not biased at all! Really! You don't believe me? :-)

Quick update

We had a really great Labor Day weekend! Tom and Pat came for a visit and we did quite a bit in the short time they were here. We visited the Pancake House for lunch on Friday and then went to the bookstore. We went to Chuck E. Cheese on Saturday morning and stayed through lunch. While sitting in Chuck E Cheese, we noticed an outdoor mini-golf course and it looked really nice. Not cheesy at all. So we walked over to take a look. This was at Centennial Lakes Park. They had an 18 hole mini-golf course made with real grass and putting greens. We played a round and enjoyed the park. It's a great place to take photographs of people! I made a mental note to remember that in the future.




We had a nice relaxing afternoon at the house and grilled out for dinner. After a big breakfast on Sunday, they made the trip back to Wisconsin. We decided to head to Riley Lake for one last swim/beach outing for the season. After that, I spent the afternoon at a movie with a friend which was nice to have a little break. Monday, I took Ella school clothes shopping just the two of us. We had smoothies and read books at the bookstore, did a little more shopping and then had lunch. It was a lot of fun to just hang out with her. I hardly ever get one on one time with them (well now, that school's started, I do). Andrew took Lily to the Mall of America to the aquarium and the Disney Store. So they had a really nice time out too. Then we had a family movie night Monday night. It was a great weekend in all!

Thus ends our summer of fun! :-)