Action Packed Week

More pictures from Ella's action packed week with aunt Lindsay and cousin Hayden:

this picture just cracks me up....

New House!

Well, we are officially getting settled and somewhat unpacked in our wonderful new house! We all just absolutely love it and could not be happier! The neighbors are wonderful and very friendly, and we were already invited over to dinner last weekend at one of their houses. Ella made instant friends, and we've found out there are several young girls in our neighborhood that are Ella's age. The dogs made instant friends with the neighbors directly behind us. They foster dogs and find homes for them, so currently they have 5! They like to talk a lot, which I am sure our neighbors love.

The prior owners left us a swing set and Ella never wants to stop swinging! I still have some painting to do, and lots of decorating, but we now have some groceries and clothes unpacked. I haven't been able to post much for a few reasons....we left our camera at a friend's house, still don't have our computer set up at home, and haven't decided on the lesser of evils for internet yet. I am kind of getting used to not paying a cable/internet bill. And....we hooked up our TV just to see what would happen...and guess what? Free cable! I thought that was very nice of the prior owners to leave us as well. At least Ella can watch her Curious George in the mornings for now...

Ella has now finished up at her old school, and will start up at Samford next Monday! This week my sister Lindsay has been taking care of Ella during her transitional period to the new school and here are a few pictures she's taken from her phone during some of their activities:

Hoover Library

McWane Center

(cousin Hayden is jumping around and waving his arms while Ella stands and observes)

Lindsay dressed Ella up in her little fairy princess outfit, and she told Brinkley, "Look Bink, Bink, I am a pre pre princess!" (pretty pretty princess).

Tonight Ella is spending the night out at Lindsay's so we can avoid a little of the driving back and forth. And John and I have a date night for the first time since I can remember!!! Hope you are all doing well! We'll have a house warming party very soon. We are very much looking forward to finally being able to do some entertaining!

Big Month!

We have had quite a big month! Ella is officially off of the pacifier, and that was not a struggle at all. She asked for it a few times, and I told her pacifiers were for babies and she was getting to be a big girl, and that was that! Guess I worried about it for nothing! What else has been going on...Anne Marie had something like the dog croup (apparently dogs can get the croup?). That was a nice vet bill, but she is doing much better and hasn't coughed at all for a couple of weeks. Work has been crazy for John, as always! Only worked a few nights until midnight this month....

Oh yes. AND we sold our house! Well, we have a contract on our house, and will close on it July 10th. Then we move out by the 13th! Our house search has been absolutely exhausting, but we have finally found something that we think meets our needs (and most importantly the dog's needs :), most of our wants (not my jacuzzi tub!), is in a great neighborhood and school, has been kept up very well, and all at a decent price. It has not been an easy search. Yes, there are TONS of houses on the market (and I think I have probably seen everyone in Birmingham!), but most of them are really bad houses! Either something terribly wrong, not kept up at all, or just needed way too many updates. Oh, and one even had a pet turtle swimming around in the kitchen sink.

Tomorrow is the inspection on the house we are buying, so as long as that goes well, we'll close on July 24th and move in the week of the 28th. In the mean time we'll be staying in my mom and David's spare bedrooms! Hopefully will be very temporary, but maybe I can con mom into doing a few loads of laundry for us while we are there! We still haven't started packing and I just keep hoping I'll wake up one morning and everything will magically appear in boxes and in the POD we are renting for the month.

Here are a few pictures of the new house. You can't see just how enormous the yard is, which John is so excited about. But I am quite nervous about keeping up (large front, back, and huge side yard). We are definitely in the market for a riding lawn mower if you know of anyone trying to sell one!

It is 3 bedrooms, 2 baths on the main level, mostly hard wood floors, has an enormous unfinished basement that could easily be 2 more bedrooms, and best of all....has a built in dishwasher! We will not have to roll our dishwasher across the kitchen and hook it up to the sink to run it. That is going to just be crazy. I don't know what its like to be able to run dishes AND run the sink at the same time. That and having 2 bathrooms, its just going to be so luxurious! It's on a double cul-de-sac so very little traffic! Maybe no more cars landing on our mail box! It's still in Bluff Park, but literally a street away away from Vestavia and so convenient to everything. School will be Bluff Park Elementary, which was one of my top choices for schools.

My camera's battery has died and of course in our madness I can't find the battery charger. So, here's all I have on updated pictures of Ella. Sorry!!!! We have taken tons of cute ones (and videos too), but I just can't get them off of the camera yet.

This is before splash day at school a couple of weeks ago. Once a week she gets dressed up in her bathing suit before school and they have little baby pools, sprinklers, and have a fun time playing in the water. She LOVES to go "swimmin".

Few updates of Ella. She is drawing faces and it is so amazing to watch how intense she is with her drawings. She definitely has john's artistic abilities. Last week she drew 3 faces in a row, all different sizes, each with eyes, a nose, and a mouth. She said, one was daddy, one was mommy, and one was Ella! She'll draw them with eye brows, she'll draw some and say that those were funny faces. She would draw for hours if she could. She has even shown her creativity by coloring all over her dresser and night stand while I was cooking one night. She was very honest about it and told me she did it though, which I thought was good. She is doing very well at her alphabet and her letters, words, and sentences are getting more and more clear every week.

We are just amazed at how caring she is. Last week at Sunday school there was a little girl that was upset and Ella took her a doll to try to make her feel better! The other day Anne Marie was jumping over the baby gate and her leg got caught on it for a second and she made a little whimper. Ella ran over the gate, shook her hand at it, and said, "No, No, No Gate!". Then went over to Anne and said, "Kiss it and make it better" and then gave Anne a kiss on her back. She is always asking us if we are ok, and she always seems to know when anything is wrong or someone is upset.

Ok, time for bed. Sorry for such a long post. I hope to get back on track with posts, but I am not going to promise anything until we get settled in the new house! We are looking forward to having a big house warming party soon!

Having some issues with the blog formatting tonight, but there's a little update at the very bottom. Here are pictures galore...(in no particular order)...

Little miss Diva playing dress up

Playing dress up would not be complete without the tutu, aprin, and mittins

Beach pictures! I tagged along with Lindsay, Hayden and Darci to PC Beach a couple of weeks ago. Way too short, but a much needed vacation.

We tried to have a little photo shoot with Hayden and Ella our last night at the beach, but Hayden immediately ran to the water and got completely soaked (note he is not wearing pants)

Kickin back eating breakfast on the balcony

Janet's graduation breakfast at Cracker Barrel in Auburn. Congrats Janet!

The happy couple that got married last August, and finally gets to live in the same city!

Ella just looks so grown up here just chatting along at breakfast

Ella's birthday tutu, given to her by Jacob and Dylan Strickland, at their messy art party (she still tries to sleep in it Jenny!).

The farm! Can you find Ella and me in the picture below?

I guess I am definitely out of the habit of blogging. But the good news is I AM in the habit of cleaning! For once in my life! I guess this house selling thing is good for something.

Let's see, what all has been going on with the Bowles family.....too much to catch up on. I'll just update from the past week. Ella had her first cat fight at school...apparently her and 2 other girls were fighting over a stuffed bear...hair pulling, pushing, screaming. It's amazing what little 2 years old will do for something they really want. On that same day, she came home and sang the entire alphabet all by herself. Of course the video camera was dead, so I got a not so great recording on my phone. She is definitely testing us all the time these days, but is still such a little sweetheart about 98.2% of the time.

We just found out Ella finally got into Samford's daycare program, so she'll start there in August. It only took 3 years for her to get in (yes, got on the waiting list when I was 3 months pregnant). It will be much more convenient to my work and her doctor's office, and they have a very wonderful program there. We will definitely be sad for Ella to leave St. Peters and all of her wonderful friends she has made (yes, she actually talks about her friends at the age of 2!) but I think she'll adjust in no time.

The house thing. Ugh. We've had about 13 or so people look at it since it went on the market around Easter, and ALMOST one offer last week. Right before we got the offer the husband found out he lost his job! Bummer! (for him and for us!). 2 more lookers today, so we'll see if anyone bites soon. At least we are having some more traffic. We're TRYING to not get too attached to a house until we have a contract on ours.

Let's Go Fly a kite....

We had Ella's 2nd birthday party at Homewood park this past Sunday. The weather couldn't make up its mind, but luckily it cleared up for most of the party. We had......

Kites that wouldn't fly.....

Ring around the rosies....

a little playground time....
even though some didn't want to leave to go open presents

Popsicles galore
Lots of friends and family

cupcakes

doggies

and fun!

oh yea, and lots of presents!

thanks for helping open them cousin Hayden!

Our little 2 year old diva with a new, handmade apron from Natalie

and dress up shoes from who else....Aunt Cookie.

Ella must have had a fun day, since she fell asleep before eating dinner!

Happy Birthday Ella!!!!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! So, its been over 3 months since I've updated the blog! Sorry! I'll try to get better I promise! I miss posting things, but things have just been so crazy. Our house is officially on the market as of yesterday! Now, if I can only keep it clean for a few days....


Today is our sweet little Ella's 2nd birthday! It is so hard to believe she is already 2. Just unbelievable. It will be impossible to get caught up from the past 3 months, but here are some things that Ella is doing now that just amaze us. She can sing almost all of her ABC's (along with us), sing Rock a By Baby all by herself and say a few little nursery rhymes like Ring a round the Rosies; tonight she recited the entire Pat the Bunny book (maybe we read that one a little too much!). She can recognize almost all of her letters and colors, she is speaking in short complete sentences and phrases and we can pretty much always understand what she's saying. She has the best sense of humor and is just the sweetest little girl. Her favorite movie right now is Mary Poppins and she loves to sing Just a Spoonful of Sugar. I think she's got a little crush on Michael Banks.


I glanced through our 600 pictures I just downloaded from the past couple of months...so here's a quick glimpse of what we've been up to:

Easter Egg Hunt

Aldridge Gardens

Where did the bird go? I don't know!

Aunt Cookie babysitting...of course giving her sweets

The sweetest little girl!!!

Our winter wonderland

Not a fan of the cold

Why we love our dogs

Yes, already playing chess (just kidding!)

ok, this is just kidding also....

time to go clean the kitchen....