Easter Sunday

Ella opening an Easter present on the way to Claire and Brian's house. How fun!!! A book with bumps... She loves to play with it and the book entertained today during church. You have to appreciate any quiet activity that keeps a 2 yr old quiet!

Ella showing off her reading skills. We were on our way to Claire (formerly Coates) and Brian Capobianco's house for Easter dinner. Mike and I got to catch up with Claire and Brian while eating a fantastic and tender meal of lamb, Rosemary potatoes and grilled carrots that was fragrant and delicious. Brian is quite the cook! Lately everyone seems to be showing off their culinary skills, looks like I may have to learn to do something other than open box, add water!

We let her out of the cage for Easter...
Just kidding, this is Stella's (Claire's puppy) home.

Ella loved everything puppy related, even all the toys that were preloved (and chewed) by Stella. Ah, gross kids! You have to love them!

Here is Fin in all his wonder on Easter. He spent the entire time at Claire and Brian's showing off his amazing sleeping ability. But as soon as we got home, he was all muscle again as he loves the tummy time. He really looks masculine in comparison to Ella at this age.

Even though he is packing on the pounds
and looking like a baby, it just isn't the soft, rolly-poly giggly cuteness that Ella presented. Fin seems to be poised in all situations and have a serenity about him. As one of my friends put it, he has an old soul it seems. We will look forward to seeing if that remains true in the future!

Almost caught up!!!

Ok, so we are almost caught up on Blog photos...There still are photos from Easter day to add, a couple more playdates-with Ella bathroom antics, and some Fin photos of his amazing skills (drooling, looking cute). So be sure to check back next week for those that check at work. We will have everything up to date by then. For now, enjoy a glimpse of our activities for the past 2 weeks!

Posey BBQ

After a fun day of Easter Egg hunting and catching up with Rachelle, Toby, and Ted, we ended the day at the Posey house for an impromptu BBQ. Oh my gosh, fantastic food, but before we get to that...

Ella is even sporting the hairstyle
to make her popular
with the rockstar crowd.
How many more years
do we have before we trade in
Doodlebops songs for
something a little more edgy?
And is that a good thing?

Ah, don't you love when sliding glass doors become a source of entertainment? Good times!

Anyway, Dan is an excellent cook!!
The BBQ was amazing and probably would have made a vegetarian salivate (Tollie, I mean you!).

We had a great time playing Guitarhero or some game like that, playing with Hayden, Dora, and Toby, and spending time with other adults with kids! A great family event.
Thanks Posey family!

Literally, stepping into Dad's shoes!
Guess Hayden can't wait to be the
BBQing wonder that his father, Dan, is...

The Edmonds Easter Eggstravagansa!

Ella stood patiently among all the 3 yr olds (because mommy was too distracted with a baby to read signs correctly) waiting for her chance to grab the candy and eggs. She really looked poised for a strategic attack and even made an early break for it a couple of times. After being corrected by mommy and asked to wait, she missed her chance when it really was time to make the run! This might have been a good thing with all the chaos! She was given a few candy eggs by a nice grandpa standing near us, he dropped them for her to find. It was sweet!

Looking pretty as a picture!

My friend, Rachelle, was instrumental
in making the day out with 2 kids a success!
I don't know if I could have done it without her help.
This is a picture of her helping carry
Ella (who was tired), to the car.
We are so lucky to have good friends!

This is the whole gang (minus Mike).
From L to R: Rachelle, Ella, Renate, Fin, Ted, Toby,
(back row) Layla, Jenn, Danny, Cassia, Dan
(front row) Ella B., Phedora, Hayden

Snomommy group Egg Hunt

Ashley (Ava and the soon-to-be McKinley's mommy)
helping Ava and Ella hunt eggs.

Ava sharing nicely with Ella.

Ella on the hunt, having trouble deciding how to hold them all.
Without footed PJ's she can't just toss them down her clothes
because, as she discovered the hard way, they fall right through!

Here are pictures from the Snohomish mommy group egg hunt that we hosted at our house! It was only three little girls hunting, Fin and Madeline were too young, but it was a lot of fun. Zoe, Ella and Ava are all within 6 months of each other in age, which made for equal footing when hunting eggs. They were filled with noisy and pseudo healthy snacks like goldfish crackers and graham cracker shapes. It was a lot of fun watching them shake their snacks, and Ella got so accustom to the habit that we hid her snacks in eggs for about a week!

Don't wake the BEAST!!!!!! (better known as the 2 yr old)

Ella still is the loving child that we have always had, but now she tempers that love with the traditional rite of passage-the terrific 2's. The books always say keep a positive attitude and the behavior will follow, so we don't call them terrible, we call them terrific. Won't it be terrific when they are over?!!!

So as much as I love the boundary testing, I love it even more when there are moments like these that remind me of the angelic baby that she was/is.

Glad to be back up and running, enjoy our backlog of posts!

Happy St Patty's Day!

Please bear with us as we are experiancing technical difficulties! In other words, our computer died again, this time it will probably be Friday before we can get the power supply replaced. Until then, it is an all written blog.

So have a drink to celebrate the Irish and enjoy the old pictures!

For more Ella photos...

Check out the link to the left that takes you to the Brindisi Blog. Jen watched the kids so I could take the exam and she got some cute photos of the girls together.

Senorita Cuteness Strikes again...

Ella's new leotard for the dancer.

She danced around the house in it spinning.

She liked it so much she had to wear it on our family walk.
Of course for the walk we put pants underneath it and a sweater on top,
but the skirt was still sticking out.

Ella in Fin's car seat.
She seems to like to show us that
she really isn't "too big" for the items
we keep using that line for.
The distractions we use in that moment
only mean that she goes back later to prove us wrong.
Thank goodness Graco makes strong swings and carseats!

This is Fin's normal reaction to all of Ella's antics.

So tomorrow (monday), is my first day of work since I PASSED the real estate exam on Friday. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be and took about an hour to finish. Not too shabby!
I can't believe it, but I am officially a real estate agent. I will let you all know how things work out as I figure out how to balance work and family. I know it will be a struggle to maintain that balance, but I look forward to the challenge. Fin and Ella will be spending the morning with Carrie so that I can get situated in the office. For now I am keeping my days short so that Fin gets plenty of mommy time, and we don't stress Ella with too many new changes as well. A few changes at a time, there is no need to rush into this, but it will be good to get the ball rolling!

Reason to Celebrate?

I take my real estate licensing exam this afternoon, so hopefully all will go well and we will have many reasons to celebrate this weekend!

Thank goodness Fin is going to give me a couple hours of sleep, which I am heading off to enjoy now. I hope to update tomorrow with some good news!

The Sound of Silence

Photo from our front door
towards neighbors house on Tuesday.

As we are still battling colds here, things have been pretty quiet and low key except some sniffles and coughing. Poor Fin has lost his little voice and his cries are really pathetic sounding right now. They waiver between the sounds of a cat whimpering and the raspy sound a rope makes when pulled against something. Hard to describe, but even harder to listen to as a parent. At least he is showing signs of improvement as well.

Family Photo

This is our most recent family photo. If only Fin didn't look like he were sleeping or about to sneeze! At least his new photos (in the new post listed before this) show marked improvement in the past 2 weeks with photo posing. We hope everyone has a great week! And we will try to stay on top of the blog this week as well.

Fin's Photoshoot

Fin's best "Blue Steel" look.
(An inside joke for those that have seen Zoolander!)

What a cutie! And check out that head control...

Fin had his first solo photoshoot this past Friday. He was so sleepy when we got there, but we woke up the grump and by the end he was posing like a pro. Here are the 2 free poses that we chose. So here ends our picture run until Ella's 2nd birthday. Enjoy our photo addiction!