More Summer Fun!!!

As with a lot of other things in my life, I'm sort of all or nothing when it comes to blogging. That being said, get ready for a lot of pictures of what we've been doing lately...

With Sadie's birthday being the day after the 4th of July, and this year the 4th was on a Sunday so we decided to combine the two and have a little BBQ at our house and let Sadie dig into her own cupcake and call it good.

Thanks to Target for a little help with Sadie's "cake". Maybe someday I'll be one of those cute mommies who bakes a cute little cake that goes with the theme of the party. 

Unfortunately, my camera was on macro-focus so all of the pictures turned out blurry. :( Oh well, here's a couple of them.

After the BBQ, we all headed over to a local college that does an AMAZING fireworks show. We sat right next to where they set them all off.

This was actually Ella's first experience with fireworks since last year I was just about to go into labor and the years before that we were more concerned with getting her to bed than letting her see fireworks. She was not a fan.

Sadie was though!

At first I was kinda bummed when I thought about how Sadie's birthday would always be kinda overshadowed by the 4th, but now I think she'll think it's pretty cool that she gets to see fireworks every year the night before her birthday.

We made the mistake of getting really good parking. Unfortunately for us, that meant waiting for about 45 minutes to be able to get out of the parking lot.

Another fun thing we've been doing lots of this summer is going to the water park. Since we don't have access to a community pool and it gets so dang HOT here in Oklahoma, I bought a season pass to the water park and we have definitely gotten our money's worth!

Ryan's even been able to come with us a couple times. (Ella now goes down any slide that you can ride a tube on. See those slides in the background?...She's gone down the blue one and the yellow one. I have to admit that even I get a little scared as I'm climbing those stairs to the top, but she's a brave little toaster and can't get enough of those slides! The blue one is one of those enclosed ones that's totally dark and you can't see which way you are about to turn. She loves it!)

This is how Sadie likes to enjoy the water park.

The Lazy River.

For Sadie's birthday, my dad and sister went shopping together and got my girls a couple of matching outfits (and their cute green polk-a-dot swimsuits.) I think that's one of the funnest (most fun?) parts of having 2 girls is dressing them the same (or 2 boys for that matter.)

We have some good friends out here that have the perfect back yard for Ultimate Slip-n-Slide. **We did a version of this in Omaha with some dental school friends but I have to say that these guys perfected it with the addition dish soap. :) 

One day we were swimming at a friends pool and Ella got ahold of my camera:

A couple weekends ago, we went down to Dallas for a meeting that Ryan had. Ryan's program pays for it every year so we always like to tag along. There was a pond behind our hotel that had some ducks in it so one night after having some yummy Jimmy John sandwiches, we asked the guy for some extra bread so that we could go feed those ducks. He gave us like 4 loaves so we fed the ducks for a LONG time! 

The ducks saw us coming.

Sadie didn't quite understand the concept of feeding the ducks. She was more concerned with feeding the Sadie.

Ryan really gets into feeding the ducks.

One for you,

one for you guys,

and one for me.

I don't know how many remember, but Ella would ALWAYS do this face when she was Sadie's age and breathe thru her nose like a little bull. It makes me laugh so hard to see Sadie do it too!

Look closely at this next picture. Ella was literally feeding the ducks out of her hand. Crazy girl.

What we've been up to...

Summer is here and our little family couldn't be happier about it! This is what we've been up to the past several weeks.



***So I had a pretty upsetting experience...half way thru out vacation when we went to Utah and then on to California, I was messing around with our camera and I ended up deleting all of our pictures that I had taken up to that point! I was so MAD! I keep thinking about this one picture that I had of Sadie that was SO CUTE that I will never see again and I just get sick to my stomach! Anyway, thanks to my Falther-in-law, I still have a few pictures from a night that we went up the canyon with the family.

Cute little Hannah.

While we were in California, my cousin Aubrey used her "princess powers" to get us into Disneyland. We were so excited to take Ella because we went all the time when we lived in Huntington Beach but now that she's older and loves everything Princess, we knew she was the perfect age now to love Disneyland.

(BTW, some of the pictures are the wrong way, but I'm on Ryan's computer and too lazy to figure out how to rotate them. Also, be warned, there are way too many pictures.)

Aunt Mel, Kylie and Ella on the tram ride in.

When Ella was small, this was her FAVORITE ride at Disneyland. I was excited to let her ride it again. You can tell by her expression, she wasn't as easily impressed this time around.

Our girly little Storybook boat captain. So Disneyland! I love it. :)

Any of you out there that take your little 3 year old girls to Disneyland--you HAVE to take them to Bippity Boppity Boutique! They do your hair and make up and turn you into a real princess. My cousins hve gone before and my mom really wanted to take Ella. It was so fun for all of us to see how much Ella loved being treated like a princess!

This was Ella's audience.

They had her hold this little plastic thing that gaurded her face from all the hairspray.

Sorry Sadie. Bald babies can't get turned into a princess...

Hair's all done. Now time for the make-up.

A little sparkle sticker

After she was done, they pulled back some curtains for the "big reveal" and Ella couldn't take her eyes off the mirror! Then they had her do some princess poses...

We rode Dumbo while Sadie...

...took a little nap.

Ella and my cousin with the princess powers--Aubrey. Thanks again Aubs!

Sadie and my dad.

Ella showing us that she's tall enough for the Mattahorn (I don't know if that's how you spell it but Ella just called it the white mountain with the scary monkey inside.)

Ella and my cousin's son, Gid.

Ella and my cousin, Kylie.

***That last picture was taken right before Ella got knocked in the head by the gate that you have to wait behind when you're the next in line to get on the ride. What happened was the gate opened, the people in front of us got on the ride, we stepped forward and Ella went just a little too far forward and when the gate closed, it hit her right in the forehead! There was a huge knot right away and she was kind of crying but luckily she was tough enough because it was our turn to get on the ride!!!

Notice the bruise:

It's the end of the day and look how great her hair still looks! That was some strong hairspray.

When it was time to go home, Ella was convinced she wasn't tired. It took about five seconds for her to be completely out! For some reason, Sade was not only awake, but in the best mood of her life!

The next day...this is what all that hairspray did to Ella's hair. I thought she looked like Beetlejuice.

When we flew from San Diego back to OKC, we had a layover in Phoenix. My sister and her family were nice enough to come and spend a couple hours with us. Ella and Sadie with Kaitlyn and Chloe (Carson was there too...somehwhere.)

Back in OKC, we went to the zoo one day to check out the new Children's Area. There's lots of fun areas to play in the water which is noce since it's so stinking HOT!

We got a season pass to a little water park out here so excited to spend some more time in the sun there with friends!