Elly's 5th birthday party (May 2014)

Still catching up.  This was already in my drafts.

It's so hard to believe that my little girl turned 5 this year.  Where has the time gone?  On the one hand it seems like she's been around forever because I just can't remember life without her, but on the other it seems like yesterday that she was a tiny little baby.

 She has made our lives so much richer since coming into our family. She's such a beautiful little package of orneriness, sweetness, excitement and love with a good dose of sassy attitude mixed in.  She has a real need to talk constantly and tell me everything that's going on in her life. She's told me that she's like a volcano that has all these words inside her that just have to come out. I love that she wants to share it all with me, but at times she can try my patience and I'm constantly going to God in prayer for wisdom on how to parent her.

 I love that she gives me lots of snuggles and she's very free with her compliments.  Kids are so honest - for better or worse.  Her heart is tender towards God and I love that.  She has such a sweet way of expressing herself.  One day I asked her what was her favorite thing about herself. I fully expected her to say her hair was her favorite thing because she loves her long hair. She thought about it for a moment then said "I'm not mean".  That was her favorite thing about herself. I loved that and it's absolutely true.  She's very sweet and tries to be nice to all her friends.  I'm just very proud of my sweet little girl.

This year she wanted a Cinderella birthday party, so that's what we did.  Here are a few pictures from her day.

April update

Here's a quick overview for April 2014 ~ 

Our wonderful neighbors, who left last August, sent a box.  Elly had so much fun going through it.  We still miss them so much.  They were just the best.

Our German neighbors never fail to get Elly something special for certain holidays.  This time she got a chocolate bunny for Easter.  As you can see, she was pretty excited about that.

We went to a birthday party at a local farm,  The owner talked to the kids about taking care of the horses and introduced them to the baby donkey, then they were able to go on a trail ride.  It was a little cold that day, but Elly enjoyed it. 

Easter morning ~ 20 April

Elly had just woke up and was peeking at her Easter basket.

Easter play at church

Easter egg hunt at home after church.

March 2014

Not too much was happening in March it seems, but here are the highlights.

Elly was still enjoying her ballet classes

Elly's favorite preschool teacher, Mrs. Bodwell.

The kids loved playing on these bike ramps outside of the preschool.

One of the many places we love to visit. This is Pforzheim Wildpark.  They have lots of animals that we get to feed and pet.  This day we met friends there.  

That's it for March....on to April ☺

Review for February (2014, that is)

Seems impossible that it's been almost a full year since I last posted to this blog.  I am so far behind that I've just been putting it off because it seemed too big to catch up on. It's hard for me to just skip past all that has happened in the last year though, so I'll see if I can just do the highlights over the last year.  Seems I always say that and then fail to keep up with it, but I'm going to give it a try continuing from where I left off.  Now if only I can remember back that far ☺

Ok....February 2013....here are the highlights.

Sam's 45th birthday

Valentine's Day party at Elly's preschool

Valentine's Day gift

This is crazy, but I don't remember for sure where this place was.  I believe it is Kloster Maulbronn which is a monastery in Maulbronn Germany.  Sam found it on the internet and we took a drive out there.  It turned out that it was a German holiday so nothing was open, but we still had a nice day.

Elly's a pretty good photographer these days ☺

Ok...one down....only 12 more months of highlights to go before I'm caught up.  Moving on to March 2013 ☺.