Water Logged

A couple of weekends ago we went camping at Somerville for Shawns 30th birthday. Neal, Ella & I went up on Thursday evening with my parents camper and enjoyed a little time to ourselves. It was sunny & hot and Ella enjoyed every second of it outside! She loves to crawl up and down the steps, in and out of the camper OVER & OVER! But hey, whatever keeps her happy, we didn't care that we were air conditioning the whole park - we weren't paying for electricity! Friday afternoon a few friends joined us with their campers and boats so we thought we would take Ella out for a little boat ride. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, it was sunny, hot & windy! So needless to say, the water was really choppy which called for a really bumpy boat ride. Me and Ella rode with Big Wess on his big boat and boy was it a ride! I was sitting with Ella in my lap holding on to her for dear life, and I'll just put it this way, my butt was really sore after the ride! So of course the wind was blowing like crazy in Ellas face so I turned her around so she was facing me. When we finally got to wherever we were going I sat her up, or tried to sit her up and this is what was going on....

Yep, she was fast asleep! Now how the heck did that happen? So i guess that's what she thinks about boat ridin'.

And of course, you know me, I had my camera with me because I just knew I was going to get some really cute pictures of her in the boat and maybe even swimming. Nope I get sleeping -but I did manage to get a couple before we left.And check her out about a year ago in the same little life jacket. I think she has grown a little - what do you think?

Auntie Chels came and picked Ella up on her way home from work Friday evening and kept her for the rest of the weekend while we (or the guys) got busy fishin. Poor Neal had a heck of a time getting his lines put in, in fact he had such crappy luck I could write an entire post about what all went wrong for him, but I think I'll just stick with saying he had crappy luck. But in the end, everything worked out fine and this is what he brought home:So I guess it wasn't all that bad!

Ok, now on to a little advertising! This is for all of you who would like to camp but don't have a camper, and are too old or just don't want to stay in a tent. I never knew there was such a thing, but check out what our neighbors were sporting all weekend:

I don't know about y'all, but I think this is hilarious! Where do you find these? Oh yeah, I guess you could just call 1-800-RV4RENT and find out!

We had a really nice time camping and enjoyed hanging out with everyone and celebrating how OLD Uncle Shawn is, but we were ready to get home as usual after a long weekend. Really, we were ready to be home and unpacked lounging on the couch. But what do you know, we get home and the dang air conditioning is out in the house! UGH!!! I guess that's what I get for wasting air conditioning while Ella climbed in and out of the camper all day!

One last thing...click HERE!

New Blog

Just thought I would share with y'all that I have created another blog:

My Amateur Hobby

I have been rounding up some of my friends kiddos and using them as practice for taking pictures. I have had requests from several people wanting me to e-mail them the pics, so I thought this would be easier. That way you can all check them out whenever you want & it's a lot less work on my part!

I hope y'all enjoy! And if anyone wants to volunteer their kids, bring it on!

Dancin' In The Rain

Yay for the rain!!! I was really starting to get a little worried that the world might be coming to an end from lack of rain. So after we had like 57 inches of it, we decided to make the best of it. We stuck Ella in her ADORABLE little rain boots and threw her in the puddles! O-kay - we didn't throw her, we just gave her a little nudge. She was a little hesitant at first but she ended up having lots of fun stomping around and throwing rocks. Of course she hated being cooped up in the house the rest of the weekend, but hey life's not always fair is it? I don't know why, but she just can't understand that!

We gave couples shower for my cousin & his future wifey in Columbus on Saturday and the plan was to have it outside but since it was raining....well, you know we moved it inside, but that's not the point. What I'm trying to get at is that I figured all the kids would be outside anyways so that's why I dressed Ella in this really boring outfit with the really cute boots. You know I HAVE to have her matched to a "T" everywhere we go, but I didn't have a cute shirt to match the boots. So here we go, dressed with plans to get muddy in the ADORABLE (& appropriate) rain boots & a white shirt. What kind of since does that make??? Of course the shirt only lasted about 20 minutes, but I was prepared with another cute outfit, minus the boots - I know, the sacrifices we have to make to look good....it's so hard being a woman!

Moving on...I know I owe y'all some Easter pic's so here we go:

We only had to go to 2 Easter's this year which was sad because we didn't get to see one side of Neal's family, but it was kind of nice because we actually got to spend the whole day with each of our families - we had my families at my parents on Saturday & Neal's family on Sunday.

And look what we had to eat at my parents:

Don't hate!

Anyways, Ella started her Easter festivities on Thursday already with an egg hunt at Dig It and one at her new day care, Ms. Keri's(I'll get to that later.) She ate sooo much chocolate and candy that day that when I got her out of bed Friday morning I saw that she had thrown up in the middle of the night - gross! You would think that would have taught her a lesson - are you kidding me? She ate nothing but candy for 4 days! She probably had the most fun and actually "hunted" the most eggs at my parents on Saturday. She was so stinkin' cute in a mad rush to get all the eggs. She didn't want help from anyone and WOULD NOT look at me to get a good picture for anything - she was on a mission.

By Sunday, after another hunt at the church she had figured out that there was candy in the eggs so at Grandpa Skip's we cut her loose with her basket and she ran to the first egg she saw, put it in her basket then sat down, opened it & ate the candy. She could have cared less about picking up any of the other eggs. So I had to play the mean mommy and take the candy out of all the eggs since she had literally only had candy for dinner the night before and for breakfast that morning - hence this picture:

Hee Hee! Poor Baby

O-kay, moving on again. This is a little late, but Ella has been begging me to give a shout out to Braxton's brand new baby brother, Tyler Jacob Dahse. My BFF Krystal had this little bundle of joy about 3 weeks ago and I went over last week and took some pic's of him - isn't he so freakin' cute!

And of course everyone loves those little hands & feet pictures!

And last but not least, Ella started going to a new day care this week. Not that there was anything wrong with Dig It, we actually loved it there. We just wanted her to be at an "in home" day care where it's more family orientated and personal and I think we have found the perfect place for her. She will be staying at Ms. Keri's along with several other kids and from the report we got at the end of the day today I think Ella will LOVE it! Keri actually has a blog about her day care where she post pictures and cute little slide shows of what all the kids are up to. I have added her blog to the side of mine because I know Ella's Nannie & Grandma among others will be checking up on her over there.

Ahhh - is that it? I think I'm finally caught up - I need to get back in the habit of writing more often so I don't have to do these marathon posts. Hope y'all have a dry & warm week! :)

Camping & Bluebonnets

I was hoping to post all of this right after it happened, but you know how that goes sometimes. Also, I'm pretty tired tonight so I'm gonna keep it short & sweet....

Bluebonnets:









Neal's Surprise Birthday Camping Trip:






O-kay, so that was really really short & sweet - sorry! But if you want to see more pictures I have a butt load of new ones on the Shutterfly website.

Hope you all have a great week!