Happy Birthday Ellie!

I would normally start a post like this out with: "Wow, I can't believe Ellie is 3!" Yeah...not today. I CAN believe Ellie is 3, and I feel like she has already been 3 for a really long time. In fact, I can't believe Ellie is ONLY 3. She is like a teenager trapped in a little 3 year old body.

Ellie always keeps us on our toes. She is sassy and spunky and has an attitude that makes me cringe. She never ceases to amaze me with the things she knows and the things that come out of her mouth. She is funny, witty, sarcastic, and keeps us laughing. She gets a little funny itch in her when we all sit down to dinner, and pulls faces and talks with accents and we all wonder where the heck she came from.

Things Ellie loves right now:
Trolls (hence the Princess Poppy Party) Makeup (She is already talking about how Santa is going to bring her a makeup set for Christmas) Minnie Mouse, Barbies, anything pink, dessert, (a-zert) and anything Disney princess. She loves "snacks" and asks for them about 5 seconds after breakfast is cleaned up. She LOVES books. I have no idea how she sleeps in her bed, because there are literally books all over her bed. She has a cute imagination, and will turn anything into a pretend family. We had the markers out coloring one day, and Ellie disappeared into the corner pretending that the red marker, and the blue marker were taking the baby green marker to the doctor. The mommy marker was yelling at the kid markers to "get your buckles on!"

This year on Ellie's birthday, Jeff had the morning off for the ACT so we all had breakfast (she chose muffins and cereal), got balloons and drinks (dang that month of free fiiz is really coming in handy!) and went to Jungle Jims for a fun afternoon. (FYI - Jungle Jims is only $2 on tuesdays. Score!) We went to "old mcdonalds" for dinner of course, and went home for presents, cake and ice cream.

Rylee got to eat a muffin too! Had to sneak in some pics of this cute chubby thing!

Trying not to fall asleep on the drive home.

Cute Girl!

A little Ellie Interview:

1. What is something mommy always says to you? Clean up

2. What makes you happy? To go to someone's house

3. What makes you sad? Someone yell at me

4. What makes you laugh? Rylee crawls and gets one of my toys and then I take it away and that makes me laugh

5. How old are you? Mmmmm...this many (holds up 3 fingers) How many is that? Mmmmm 5.

6. How old is Mommy? I don't know. Um. 5.

7. How old is Daddy? 2

8. What is your favorite thing to do? Play with you guys.

9. Who is your best friend? Mommy and Daddy and Rylee and Emmy

10. What do you want to be when you grow up? A Mom.

11. What are you really good at? Playing games.

12. What are you not very good at? Not playing nice.

13. What did you do today? Went to Jungle Jims and Old McDonalds.

14. What is your favorite food? Hamburgers.

15. What is your favorite song? Princess Poppy

16. What is your favorite animal? Minnie Mouse

17. What is love? Hmmm…I don’t know. When you love someone.

18. What does daddy do for work? He does...um...watch olympics

19. Where do you live?  Um, here.

20. Where is your favorite place to go? Old McDonalds

Anniversary

I had fun looking through some old pictures this month, so I'm going to throw it back a bit in honor of our 8th (Say what?!) Anniversary on the 11th. Here we are at our High School Graduation. Man, we had NO idea what was in store when this pic was taken. If we had, we might have both run in opposite directions. 

 I'm pretty sure the date was actually 06/06/2006 - 12 years this year?!

This post has sat in my draft box all month, because I really don't know how to put into words how I feel....I never liked dating in high school. I remember it always being super awkward, and would literally cry and throw a fit (ask my mom) when a boy would call the house asking me out, because I hated it and felt obligated to say yes every time. (And I did. I never said no to a date, no matter how badly I didn't want to go) 

 I hated when they walked me to the door, the most awkward part of the whole night...and would literally open the screen door and stand behind it while we said goodbye just in case one of them tried something. I remember sticking cash in my back pocket just in case for some reason my date forgot his wallet - totally happened before. It makes an awkward thing even MORE embarrassing and awkward. (How many times do you think I can use the word awkward in this post?) As AWKWARD as my whole dating experience was, I never ever felt that way with Jeff. Our friendship just evolved into something more, and I was always 100% comfortable. I was almost weirded out by how easy it was. I'm grateful we were able to be friends first, and grateful for how that friendship has benefited the relationship we have now. There is nothing I find funnier than the way Jeff reacts when I do or say something that he thinks is lame or stupid. We spent a good hour on our anniversary laughing hysterically (ok, I was laughing hysterically...but he was laughing pretty hard too) at these photos...

Doesn't he make a good looking woman? hahah. When we tell most people how we started dating, we get asked a lot how we got out of the friend zone. It was super weird for me. (Weird - but never uncomfortable or awkward) I don't know about Jeff, but I do remember the first time we held hands I was like, whoa, man - what the heck are you doing? 

Fast forward almost 4 years....Can't believe how much has changed in these past 8 years. We were definitely thinner...I was tanner, and Jeff had more hair :-D Some of the pictures are pictures of pictures (You get what I'm throwin down??) so they aren't the best quality.

The one on the bottom left will always be my favorite picture....he has always kept me laughing, even though we all know I'm actually the funny one ;) I smiled a lot that day.

Some of these I found on my friends blog. She was so awesome and took our bridals/engagements/wedding photos to build her photography portfolio. A few people asked if the photography company was named after me...Nope...random coincidence. MeTree was her actual photography name.

They attempted to get some "model" shots in...I won't post the majority here because I was a painfully awkward model, and they didn't have a lot to work with. I remember one of them saying: you want to pretend like you could shoot fire out of your eyes. What the heck? The harder I tried to make fire come out of my eyes, the more...well, confused and special I looked. Lets hear it for all the models out there...their job is definitely harder than it looks! Ha!

  No one knows....

Poor cardboard Brady had to stay in the car

Can't wait to see what 8 more years brings!