Utah Arts Festival 2010

This years trip to the Utah Arts Festival was mostly spent in the toddler play area. We did take our time and looked thru all of the venues and the artists that were set up. There were a lot of good artists out there this year. We enjoy our time there every year.

Here are some of the pictures from our trip.




"Hey Kenna"

"Peek a boo"

Play time

Tried to get a picture of all 3 of us


Ella and Mommy


Oaklie Loving the sun!!!


Pops pushing Ella in the car swing.


Snack time for Oak


Ella loves her car swing

Swimming and Toy Story 3

Saturday June 26th was a very busy day in the Nicholson house hold! The morning started off nice and quite with a few cartoons to help wake Ella up and get going. Pops was still in town visiting and helping with the kitchen. We decided that we should all have a day of fun since the whole week had been full of so much work! So we decided to take Ella to the swimming pool! Around 10 am we packed up snacks and all our swimming gear and headed off to the pool!!! As soon as we got there the very first thing Ella wanted to do was the slide! OF course. Between Pops, Jeff and myself Ella probably went down the slide about 15 or more times. Little Ella just loves going down that slide! I wish that we could get pictures, but we never think of the camera when swimming. Ella also learned to "jump" into the pool and have us catch her. She is still scared about right out jumping in, but we were able to get her to hold our hands and semi jump.

After swimming we grabbed some lunch and headed home for nap time. It ended up that all four of us needed a nap time. I even fell asleep laying on the floor in front of the window with the sun beaming in. That was probably one of the best naps I have ever had!

We decided to end our fun family day we would take Ella to see Toy Story 3. We got tickets for the Imax in 3D! What a great family movie for all of us. Ella sat and watched the entire movie. She only took her glasses off once to rub her eyes. She really seemed to enjoy it. Jeff and I both thought it was a great movie, with a very good story line. After the movie we were all hungry so decided to grab a bite to eat at this new pizza and gelato place. We all had a great time there, since it was later and a nice evening we sat outside. Ella was able to get up and walk around a bit and just enjoy our dinner. Ella loved the gelato, she kept saying "mmm" while she was eating it.

Our ride home, late at night for Ella, was a sad one for Ella. We talked about if she had fun today, of course she said "YES". We then asked her if she was sad because Pops had to go home on Sunday. She replied "yeah i sad" and started to make her self cry... it was so sweet and so sad at the same time. Ella loved having her Pops her for a whole week. We are looking forward to his visit again along with Grams too!



(Sorry there are not any pictures from this fun day)

Ella's 2nd Birthday

Opening some presents from Mommy and Daddy early Saturday morning before her birthday party later that afternoon!












The Monkey Card Ella got from Mommy and Daddy



Waiting for all her friends to come to the park for her party!!!!






Ella and Taylor looking at the ducks!



Going to play!!! YAY!!!





Opening some presents





Ella's Duck Cake -- For Word World



Yummy Duck Cake!!!

We had such a great day celebrating Ella turning two! It is crazy to think that our baby girl has grown up so much! We are enjoying every minute with her and can not wait to celebrate many more birthdays with her!! Thank you to everyone that came out to help us celebrate our wonderful baby girls birthday!!! We love and appreciate all of you.

Little Gym "graduation"

Friday June 18th was Ella's "graduation" from Little gym. This was more of a show off your skills you have learned from the last session in gym, and at the end you get a little certificate and a ribbon. Since this weekend also happened to be Ella's birthday weekend, Grams and Pops came into town early in the morning to make sure they could be there for it. Also Gamma also took a couple hours off work so that she could come and see all the things that Ella has learned. Here are a few pictures of Ella showing off her skills.





Working on her wheel barrow



Getting ready to do the "slide" on the parachute



"slide"



Grams and Ella singing the Turtle song under the parachute





Tummy Bubbles!!!



Her Certificate!!!!

Dinosaur Museum

On June 12th 2010 Ella, Jeff and I took a trip to the Museum of ancient life, or in Ella's words the "rawr" museum... We meet up with one of my very good friends Chelsey and her daughter McKenna, who also happens to be Ella's best friend. Ella and McKenna get so excited to see and play with each other, which as a mom brings me much joy to see my daughter have such a great friend at such a young age!



Fossils at the Museum




This is as she came running out of the "cave"



Best Friends







Mommy and Ella in front of the Shark....



This was a great trip to the museum, we all had so much fun and these are only a small handful of the pictures that were taken that day! Following the museum we all went out to dinner for a late birthday dinner for myself. We had so much fun at dinner as well!

taking time....

Alright so finding the time to sit down and blog has been extremely difficult for me! I have time in the evenings to blog when Ella is a sleep but I would much rather spend that time with my husband. SO we are of course back to finding the time to sit down and blog. I have finally seemed to get both Ella and Oaks ( the baby that I nanny during the week) on a same nap schedule and I am hoping that this means a little bit more time to myself.

So here it goes a few blog posts in one day that span about 2 weeks... Sorry!

Rachel

Random Ella Talk

This post is just to write down some of the cute things Ella has said in the last week to Jeff or myself.

Last Saturday night we had a small bbq at our house to celebrate my birthday. We were all sitting around asking Ella questions. Some such questions were "Are you a princess" her answer would be "NOOO" Well then Ella are you cute "YES"!!!! Over and over again she would answer questions like this, about being a baby or big girl, or if she was smart, she would always answer "big girl" "yes smart"! We all enjoyed her being the center of attention for the evening.

Another sweet thing was today we had to take a trip to the Apple store to have my power cord looked at. As we were leaving I looked down at her and said "Ella did you have fun?" She looked up at me with her sweet little face and said "um yeahhhh". It was so adorable it gave Jeff and I quite the laugh.

In the car on the way home she kept asking us to sing "twinkle twinkle" which we replied "you sing it you are a big girl". Well this obviously irritated the little girl because the very next thing we heard was "SING IT!" in a loud scream. So of course we both decided to sing twinkle twinkle the rest of the way home.

Baby Animal Day

May 31st


On this day we decided to take Ella and her friend MacKenna to baby animal day at this is the place heritage park. We also met the Mclean family there as well as Gamma ( my mom).
This day was one of the first warm afternoons we have had here in Utah this spring. Ella got to see baby ducks, chicks, pigs, bunnies, lambs, goats and even a turtle! MacKenna and Ella had so much fun running around petting all the animals.






She kept saying "OH BITE" so she did not want to pet the duck for very long.





She loved the goat, it was one of the only animals she really would pet.





The old style carriage!!!



Play time!!!!


This trip was so much fun and can not wait to do it again!

Saturday Swim

This past Saturday, 5/59/10 we took Ella to the Murray Park indoor swimming pool. At first she was quite timid in the pool and was holding on to either Jeff or I for dear life. At this pool there is a kid area, so we took her over to that area and let her try and climb on it. She played inside the tube that you climb through for a while. Then she climbed out the other side to get to daddy. We then went over to the big slide and Ella and I waited at the bottom for Jeff to come down. Ella got so excited when daddy came down. Then we had to sit out and take a break while they checked the water. We sat on the edge and Ella just sat and kicked her feet in the water.

When we were able to get back in the water Daddy decided he wanted to take Ella down the big slide. I was slightly nervous that she was going to hate it. When the got to the part near the bottom where I could see them she had a huge smile on her face. When the got to the bottom Daddy lifted her up to keep her from going under. Ella loved this so much, she immediately did the sign for more. So for the majority of the remainder of our time at the pool, Jeff and I took turns taking Ella down the slide. Each time we would reach the bottom she would do the sign for more. We probably took her down that slide about 15 times or more.

Again we had another time to sit out, we let Ella get a snack and she was not ready to leave so we decided to stay and go down the slide a few more times. This last trip back into the pool Ella was much more relaxed in the water. She was starting to let go more and even in the child's area she would walk around. We did the "lazy river" a few times where Ella would just let me hold her in her arm pits and she would kick her legs back and actually swim.

This was such a fun family activity and we are looking forward to doing it again soon.

New to this blogging thing

Well I have decided that I think I should start writing down somewhere some of the cute things that Ella does these days! I know she is almost 2 and has done a lot of cute things before now, I just have never been on the blogging wagon until now.

I am still new to all of this and how it works so I hope it does not take me too long to figure it out!