Mina's Retirement Party

Mina is retiring from Roeper, and the school held a wonderful retirement party for her.  It was at the upper school director's house, Lisa, and she served great appetizers and desserts.  Lisa has a son that Hannah rides the shuttle with and has become very attached to, Matthew, so the two of them had a blast. Ella tagged along too, and got to dress up in Matthew's pirate costume.  The girls also loved playing outside in his tree house and hammock.  The best part of the night was watching my mom's face when Stephanie walked in and surprised her.  She almost dropped Hannah she was so shocked! She claims she knew Steph was flying in, but the picture suggests otherwise...

Congratulations, Mina!

School's Out!

Hannah had her last day of school today and we celebrated with a lunch with Ozzy, Junot and Carley at Melting Pot.  They were Melting Pot virgins, but everyone seemed to enjoy their meal.  Ozzy and Hannah have already planned a sleep over for tomorrow night, and Ozzy told Carley that Hannah is his Michigan girlfriend.  And then he dropped his pants... Looks like he and Jordan are going to have a little talk!

In other news, our new swings came and the girls are really enjoying their play set.

Ella at School

Ella's teachers sent home a CD with pictures, and of course there is a shot of Ella eating!  Every morning we walk in. wash our hands, then Ella plays while I make breakfast.  As soon as breakfast is ready (normally fruit and yogurt), Ella races to the table and digs in.   There are also some cute shots of Ella dressed up, pajama day, and Unky Ian reading to her class.  I love that in the one PJ shot, you can see Josephine passed out in the background.

New Swing Set

Jordan bought a swing set from a neighbor and assembled it with the help of the Eick boys yesterday.  The girls are in heaven and spend every waking minute outside playing now.  I ordered new swings and a tire swing that will be arriving on Tuesday, and will likely re-stain it soon too.  Hannah loves swinging now since she learned to pump and can go high without any help.  And Ella alternates between the big kid swing (she has to do everything Hannah does) and getting pushed on the baby swing.  They both love climbing up to the "clubhouse" and sliding down.

Ice Cream and a Birthday Party

We had a great weekend last week, from ice cream with Grandma Joanie to Brock and Asher's birthday party.  It was a pirate theme and the kids got to go on a treasure hunt at Springdale Park.  They also had a tattoo artist and sno cones.  Hannah was in heaven with the tattoos, and Ella of course loved her sno cone.

Update on the Girls

My hope is that the girls will use this blog as their baby book when they are older, and I have books printed periodically so they will each have a copy.  I get so focused on the day-to-day activities, that I write very little about the girls' personalities at 20 months and 4 years.  Here goes:

Hannah is such a character!  She is adored at Roeper and it feels like the entire school knows her which amazes me in just 5 short months.  Everywhere we go, we run into kids ages 3 to 10 that come running over to hug her.  The older kids always crack me up - one gives her a new Pokeman card every day on the bus, which she compiles in her backpack since she has no idea what they are.  She really turns it on at school, and every teacher I meet tells me about what a special relationship they have with Hannah.  My little con artist has them all fooled into believing that they are that really special teacher to her.  And I'm sure they are all special in their own way, but it's funny that each thinks they are Hannah's favorite!  Hannah has a huge vocabulary (and NEVER stops talking), and if you ever use a word she doesn't know, she stops you and asks what it means.  She has a great memory and remembers things that I can't even remember.  She is also a very strong willed girl, and loves to challenge us on everything.  We all spend our days trying to out manipulate Hannah to get her to do what we want with minimal drama.  She can be the best big sister, but is generally pretty jealous of Ella.  She especially hates to share her Softa, Mina and Grandma Joanie with Ella.  I hope the jealousy wanes and they become closer as Ella grows older.

Ella is my sweet little angel baby.  She loves to snuggle, and give pat-pats (patting our backs).  Every day when I pick her up at school, she runs shrieking to me.  Her teachers say she is the smallest, but loudest kid in the class.  Ella loves school, and always has a wonderful daily report.  She is very laid back and almost always happy.  Ella eats like a truck driver - tonight for dinner she ate more than Hannah and me combined.  I don't know where it all goes, because aside from a Buddha belly she isn't that big.  She is definitely a champion eater though!  Ella is starting to talk more and more, using 2-3 words together.  She isn't always easy to understand, but her speech seems to be getting clearer (or are we just learning the Ella dialect?).  Ella is a master climber and can pretty much climb anything at the playground now.  She for the most part can do anything that Hannah can, which makes me so nervous to watch.  She's very independent at times, so she often wants to climb solo.  She loves slides and swings, and has lately been wanting to swing alone on a big kid swing.  Only one fall so far...

I know this is a novel, but I really wanted to try to capture their personalities at this age.  Life with these two girls is busy, but so much fun!

Hannah at School

Hannah has had a busy end of school year!  Last week they went on two field trips, (1) breakfast with the entire stage one at Little Daddy's (I think the teachers are pretty brave to take over 40 kids out to a restaurant!) and (2) Great Harvest Bread.  One of Hannah's classmates owns Great Harvest Bread and offered to have her class visit.  The kids learned a lot about bread!  They got to see all the machines: giant ovens, bread slicers, mixers, machines that give us the perfect amount of bread and much more.  They all stood around the giant bread table to roll, smash and smush honey wheat bread into whatever form they wanted and then baked it in the giant oven.  Hannah got to bring home her creation, and a cinnamon loaf for mom and dad.  Delicious!

This week is another busy week at school.  Today she had a carnival put on by the Stage IV kids (4th/5th graders) where they got to participate in all sorts of fun activities, and then this afternoon was the lower school pool party.  Jordan and I both had to work, so our babysitter took Hannah.  She had a blast going down the waterslide and playing in the pool with her friends, and she gets to do it again next week at the Stage I pool party.  Thankfully, that pool party is during the school day so between the teachers and lifeguards no parents are needed.

A few weeks ago the six graders visited, and I found this picture on Hannah's class share site.  What is she wearing?

Here is an old video from grandparents day of her class singing you are my sunshine: