Ella at Dance

Against my better judgement Ella has started dance lessons. I have never really been into dance, but Ella on the other hand LOVES it. I just couldn't keep her from at least giving it a try. So we picked up a leotard, some tights and, yes, tap shoes and off she went. I will admit it was pretty cute, and she absolutely loved it!! They won't let parents in to watch, I broke ALL the rules and got some dirty looks for trying to sneak this picture :) - but you know me - that certainly didn't stop me from trying.

Ella's recounting of last night's incident goes something like this. "Collin closed the door and it landed on my finger. At the doctor they painted my finger orange before they fixed it. Then they put some soft medicine on (the bandage - kind of like a cast so it was wet when they put it on), and now my WHOLE hand is wrapped up! And I only cried a wittle bit when they gave me those big shots!" Magically she has forgotten all about everything else! Even after 3 kids I am still amazed how quickly they rebound - way better than us, I couldn't even sleep last night.

Our ER visit

We went to get Collin's haircut last night and right when we walked in the kids decided they had to go to the bathroom - off they went. A minute later I hear a blood curdling scream, the kind that you know something is really wrong. I go running and find that Ella has smashed her finger in the big, heavy bathroom door. She has sliced the finger right at the bottom of her fingernail and the whole bottom half of the fingernail is no longer attached and lifting up at a 45 degree angle. It looked pretty horrible. We put a band-aid on and she settled down a little. The poor little peanut waited through Collin's haircut. When we got home I took the band-aid off and the fingernail was no longer sticking up, but under her fingernail was getting really swollen. I decided to call the clinic and see if there would even be anything they could do. She said if I suspected the nail was no longer attached at the bottom I should bring her to the ER so they could repair it. So off we went. 4 hours later.....they decided to try and repair what they could. They gave her 3 GIANT shots of lidocaine right in the webbing part of her finger (they told me this would be the worst part - apparently they don't know how well Ella can scream!). It took 4 of us to hold her down/distract her while the pulled up her fingernail to repair, clean and drain out the nail bed. She screamed bloody murder the whole time - luckily it took less than 10 minutes. They were able to glue the cut instead of stitches underneath, then they pushed the nail back under the cuticle where it was suppose to be. So her fingernail is still there, for now, but it is only attached at the top part and basically floating around at the bottom. They said obviously her entire fingernail will fall off, but since it was still attached so nicely at the top they wanted to leave it on to provide some extra protection for the laceration. They put a little cast-like thing on and wrapped it all up. She also has a VERY small fracture at the tip of her finger. Once they were done they gave her a popsicle and a Dora movie to watch and she was good to go! She was out cold the minute we hit the car. She woke up a few times crying in the night, but seems to be doing pretty good this morning.

The Child Life Specialist helping Ella to clean and fix Curious George's finger to show her what was going to happen.

Look a little too familiar grandma??

Ella thought it was pretty cool to get a picture of the bones in her fingers.

Ella's 1st Day of Pre-School

Ella was very excited to go to school just like Collin - especially because her best friend Cole is in her class. She thinks it is pretty cool, because she is going to Collin's old school and even has teacher Kari just like Collin did! When we got to school the two of them went right in, found their locker to hang up their backpacks, and headed right into their room. They found their names, washed their hands and off they went to play. I totally assumed Ella would have a fabulous day, but when she got off the bus she was sort of crying and said Cole wasn't on her bus and that made her feel "not very good on the bus". She was sad that Cole got to play outside and she had to go see Teacher Dona (speech therapy). After a little talking and going through her backpack she brightened up quite a bit, and I heard all about their snack, where she sat on the rug, the games that they played, etc. By the end of the day she was telling me how excited she is to go back to school on Thursday!

Run, Collin, Run....

While Bill and Cyndy were in town last weekend we spent an afternoon at Doug & Denise's house (Bill's parents). They took us out on the pontoon. We stopped a few times to swim, but the kids were afraid to jump in where it was deep. Doug drove up closer to the sandbar and the kids had fun jumping off the boat and swimming. After getting up a little courage Collin decided to swim/run to shore (don't panic it wasn't THAT far or that deep!). When he got to shore he yelled "I'll race you back to the house"! Keep in mind that we are a GOOD 1/4 mile from the house. We of course thought he was kidding, but off he went. He LITERALLY ran at full speed down the beach. It looked so funny to see this little kid running as fast as he could right down the beach. We started up the engine and took off -- sort of taking our time at first, I figured for sure he would slow down and/or stop half way. "We've got to let him win right", Doug says? But we kept looking over at the shoreline and he was seriously holding his speed. At some point Doug was honestly going full speed on the pontoon and Collin was keeping up with us. All of a sudden the race was on. Collin literally beat us to the dock, he never did slow down. He ran full speed the whole way. I had no idea a little kid could run like that. Matt tells me that 1/4 mile is about the same as 400 yards - that's four football fields at full speed....I would have dropped over dead! When we met him at the dock he was pretty out of breath. Later that night he said it was crazy because he had two hearts - one in his chest and one in his head!! I'll bet!

Gopher Game

Collin and Matt were lucky enough to go to the Gopher Game with Jake and Brian. Collin had so much fun, and said his favorite part was sitting by Jake! Collin was very into the M-I-N-N-E-S-O-T-A cheer and waving his arm for "another GOLDEN GOPHER FIRST DOWN!"

Wall-E

Scott and Sherry gave Collin a wall-e for his birthday. Since then wall-e has come with us to countless places, including but not limited to: whitewater state park, lake superior, the grocery store, and of course he always sleeps tucked in right next to Collin. Here are a few places we have caught wall-e on film!

where's waldo? I mean wall-e??

Whitewater State Park

While Cyndy was home we spent a night at Whitewater State Park with her and my mom and dad. We did a nice hike up to chimney rock and to inspiration peak - view from there was amazing. Pretty rugged terrain, but not too long of a hike. The kids had fun showing Cyndy all about camping. Doing the fire, playing lite up frisbee, catching fireflies and sleeping in a tent.

Feeding the "Chickies"

While Cyndy was in town we walked up to the little apple orchard near our home. Ella discovered that feeding the chickens or "chickies" as she calls them is one of her new favorite things to do. We have had to walk back several times in the last week. Over the weekend we went and the owner was around and she let all the chickens out of their cage. Ella loves to feed them and Madelyn runs around chasing them and yelling "duckie, duckie"! It's pretty cute.

Video of the girls feeding the chickens

Collin's 1st goal at soccer!!

Collin is in fall soccer again. This year he is into the game and going after the ball and last week he even scored his first goal. The week before that he almost got a goal, you can see in the video how much he wanted to score and how excited he was. Last week he got the ball and brought it all the way down the field and scored! He is having so much fun, and we are having so much fun watching him.

In the first part Collin is in the white shirt. In the second clip Collin is wearing red shorts and blue shirt.

WBL Football

We took the kids to their first WBL football game tonight. I was planning to stay an hour and then head out, but we were all having so much fun - mom included of course :) we ended up staying for the whole game. Collin picked out a player #77 right away and he watched him like a hawk. I couldn't figure out why he had picked that number but Matt remembered that had been his number in hockey last year (I don't think Collin realized this at the time). Anyway he literally knew where that kid was at all times. He did watch the game quite a bit, ran up down the bleachers some, cheered really loud for the Bears and checked the stat sheet about the players a lot! He was very interested in how much people weighed and what number they were, etc!! He did not want to leave! However when we got home and I said, "Collin wouldn't it be fun if mom and dad were at the game to watch you play"? He said "No, I'm not going to play football" - very matter of factly. He wouldn't really give me a reason just that he didn't want to. So although we may not have got Collin hooked on football - we definitely lit a spark in Ella. She saw cheerleaders for the first time ever. She was enamored with them. By the second half she found herself a permanent spot right in front of them and didn't move until the end of the game. She was SO cute watching them, studying their every move. Every now and then we would catch her trying to copy what they were doing. She especially liked in when one of the girls went up on the other girls' hands. On the way home she was very excited to tell us that she was going to be a cheerleader. She kept saying "Probably I'm going to practice a lot at school, and I'm going to go way on the top"! Even Madelyn seemed to enjoy the game - there was so much to look at!

Ella watching the cheerleaders.

Photo of all 3

Well I didn't think it was possible to get a picture of all 3 kids - but with a little pressure from Sherry I decided to give it a try, and wouldn't you know I actually got a few cute ones! For those of you who know me - and that I usually take about 100 pictures to get that one cute one -- I honestly snapped less than 10 this time. Kelly might be on to something!