awana awards night

a few weeks ago we celebrated awana awards night at santa rosa bible church. ella started cubbies in late november and caught up in her book. she earned her cubby bear for completing her first awana handbook!! she was so pleased with herself.

as we were on stage ella was a bit shy, but once she got back to show daddy, corinne and bohdan she was to the moon!!

after the ceremony we went out with the gaffney's for some ice cream at cold stone. ella and collin were so excited!!

my little lady

we went to monterey this weekend. i just so happened to pack corinne's minnie mouse glasses. she kept asking me to put them on her. so while we were in the car one evening she asked me to put them on her. i helped her with them (as best i could while buckled in the passenger side of the car) and then for some reason i started singing tom jones' "she's a lady". well this caught on and she kept requesting it. then ella said, "i'm a little lady, too". corinne quickly said, "no, ella, you not a lady, i a lady". and that's that!

new backyard

here's the semi-finished product of our hard labor a few months back. new sod.

ted turned the back half of the side shed into a playhouse for the kids.

here's our vegetable garden.

the peas are almost ready to harvest.

here's part of the unfinished side of the yard.

mother's day weekend

this was a great weekend. saturday night we spent with our dear friends, scott and april. we went out to eat at la texicana and then headed over to redwood covenant to see phil wickham.

mother's day included beautiful flowers from my sweeties

sweet little ella button

my free-spirited corinney-rinn

lots of sillyness. this was kind of funny. while ted was bringing out the furniture ella said, "should we have music?" next thing i know she's got corinne's ariel boom box playing "be our guest". they started "dancing" around the table.

my sweet family

cuddly bohdan bear

anticipating dessert. as we started eating the cake corinne said, "should we sing 'happy birthday' to mommy, daddy?" of course ted informed her that it wasn't my birthday but they could sing "happy mother's day" to me. he started singing "happy mother's day" to the tune of "happy birthday". ella started frowning and said, "no, no that's not very good, daddy." poor ted.

ella asked for seconds and while she was partaking of her second sliver she sang "happy birthday" with the lyrics of "happy mother's day" to me...it's all a matter of perspective.

easter

this easter was lots of fun. on good friday before we headed off to the good friday service we dyed easter eggs. the girls had fun putting their eggs in the dye. for the last egg we mixed all the colors together to make a brown egg. we sang "mighty to save" while we waited.

our church put on their annual easter egg hunt. all the kids lined up and waited for the word to start.

here's ella getting ready!

bohdan didn't get to participate this year, but he didn't seem to mind much.

that afternoon we went over our friends mark and carissa's house for a yummy dinner. mark hid easter eggs in their backyard for the kids. they had lots of fun searching. corinne wanted to just eat the candy.

it was a great day!

girl's night

a few weeks ago i took corinne out for ice cream while ella was at cubbies. she chose 3 different kinds of ice cream with sprinkles and ate the whole thing!

too busy

yesterday i was looking through a gardening magazine. they had a little article about pumpkins and it reminded me of the pumpkin seeds we bought over the weekend. the previous day the girls helped me trim back some of the bushes and smaller trees in the backyard and we really cleared quite a bit of space. i said to ella, "oh ella, i know what we could plant in that space we cleaned up yesterday!" she then looked at me, sorta grimaced and said, "mom, but, ugh, i just don't have time to plant things all day long!"...okay then.