Busy Bees

Pics and updates:

Blake, Tina, Peter and I went to the Taylor Swift concert last weekend. My camera ended up dying half way through the concert, but Tina was able to get some good shots.

Easter Sunday--sitting with BooBoo and talking to Granpa on the phone.

Checking out the loot.

Pink egg!

Blake was very helpful, showing Ella where to put her eggs.

Easter smiles

Our pitcher!

Chillaxin'

Lorelei and Ella at Barnes and Noble

Ella at Seaworld

Lorelei in her front yard

Ella playin with a Lorelei's bike.

Playin' together

Raga'muffins!

The Hanley's are staying busy this Spring. After I got back from the trip to San Diego with Ella, I jumped right back into work where I am pitching in extra time to work baskeball and soccer games and to do some afterschool tutoring. I also had an interview last Friday and am waiting to hear back from them sometime this week!

Peter has started to play tennis on Saturdays so now he is playing three times a week. (Which isn't really much for him-I'm sure that will increase as summer nears). He will also be adding softball to his schedule one night a week.

Blake baseball season has started. He has pratice once a week and games on Saturdays. He has improved tremendously since last season! He is so fun to watch. He is a great pitcher and has given him self the goal of hitting one double each game. He is 2 for 3 on that goal and just plans on hitting two in one game to make up for it!

Ella continues to add words to her vocabulary each day. She is also getting better at pronunciation. For ever she was calling my mom "Grager" and over the weekend she all of a sudden started saying "Gramma". She also is becoming better at using "yes" and "no" to answer questions. The next journey for her is potty training. I think I am going to attack this one pretty slowly.

The weather has been gorgeous the past few days. A bit windy, but still warm. We just got back from the park where Peter and Blake played some baseball (with Koa's help) and Ella and I played on the playground.

Spring Storm

(Didn't I Post Similar Photos Last Year At This Time??)

Colorado Spring is here again! We are set to get 6-12 inches tonight. Yay!! Maybe we'll actually have a snow day tomorrow!

Pretty purple flowers hopefully hold up.

This was at about 5:30pm

This is an hour later!

(And that's Blake--not Peter!)


Blake and Ella coloring--trying out the new Tinkerbell table!



Heellloooo Nurse.

She likes to play Peek-A-Boo with her fav bwankie.

Filling up her cup for bathtime.

FINALLY! She has learned to enjoy bathtime!!! Yay!!!

A few quick updates:

On th job front: I have had two phone interviews over the past two weeks and am waiting to hear back from the managers. One is a position at University Physicians which would back on my old stomping ground-the Fitzsimons campus. The title is Education Coordinator, which is a fancy term for clerical work that keeps the training department running, also it sounds like some upkeep of their website for providers...something like that. It would be quite a bit less than what I was making at the credit union. The other job is for a Senior Accountant at Credit Union of Colorado. This is definitely more up my alley. The only downside is that it is located downtown. Keep your fingers crossed for me!!

I am on Spring Break next week...finally. And last minute I scheduled a trip to San Diego to see Whitney and Lorelei!!! I can't wait. It's just me and Ella so I'm a a bit nervous about the flight, but am thinking she'll just sleep anyway so it shouldn't be too bad. We'll see.

On the kid front: Blake starts baseball this week. Yuck in this weather, but what can ya do?! He just wrapped up CSAP testing a few weeks ago and has been off track for March. He just got back from a trip to Texas with BooBoo. We're glad he's back! He heads back to school next week and then will be taking a short trip to Toronto with BooBoo. This kid has been far more places then I will probably ever go!!! Lucky! He and I have both read the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series (which I highly recommend) and the movie just came out last week so we plan to go see it ASAP!! It looks hilarious!

Ella is growing and learning faster than we can keep up. It's crazy. Every day her words get easier to understand and she adds multiple new ones a day. It's so much fun. She still is weird with her sleeping in that she gets up and wants to go sleep on the couch. I'm not going to worry about it. When she's old enough to understand I will start explaining that normal people sleep in their beds allllll night. heheheh.

My goal is to have her sleeping in the bed and potty trained by the time we have the next one.

What!? Next one!!?? Yep....I've had baby brain for the past few months and can't stop thinking about little ittty bitty babies. I was driving somewhere the other day and a sign said "Got programs?" And I swear I thought it said "Get pregnant?" It was so weird! Anyway, sometime this year hopefully we'll jump on the baby train....we'll see.

Anyway, those are the updates. I'll be in touch after our trip to San Diego....70 degrees and sunny--here we come!!!!

Can't Wait for Spring...Break

Happy March everyone. Again not too much going on in our end of the pond, but thought I should put a few pics up.

I'm a few months in to my new job and have to say that it has been quite the eye-opener. The way schools are run is something I am not used to at all. The good things come in the way of having less oversight when it comes to daily duties. I don't feel like I am being watched like a hawk. The bad things come in the way of having to deal with pre-teens who have no respect for adults. It's disheartening. The nice thing though is that its a K-8 school so when I want to kill the 7th and 8th graders I can turn around and get a huge lovey hug from a 1st grader who still likes me!

All in all I have enjoyed my experience. And at this point it is going to be a pretty brief experience. The district has to make a 20 million dollar budget cut for next year and so I (along with most of the paraeducators) are on the chopping block. I'm bummed that I won't be able to keep my foot in the door for future prospects, but am not going to fret because I know many more people have it worse than I do. Our principal has been nice enough to keep us abreast of the situation so I have already started applying for other jobs. I am under contract and will paid through July, but I would rather find something now and not have to take Ella out of daycare and then put her back, so keep your fingers crossed for me that I find something before the end of May!

Peter is out of town now. He has traveled twice in the past two months for work. It has only been for a couple of days though so it hasn't been too bad.

Blake finished up an excellent basketball season a few weeks ago. He seemed to really enjoy it. It was fun to watch him play and improve throughout the season. He starts baseball here in the next few weeks. ( I personally think it is far too cold to be thinking about baseball just yet!)

Ella is a talker (like her mama). And she's bossy (like her mama). She like to tell you to sit down and if you don't hear her or ignore her, she yells, "Siiit down!" It's so funny. She also likes to name everything. If there's a bunch of us in the room she will go around and point and say, "Daddy, Mommy, Koa, Bwake, Daddy, Mommy, Koa, Bwake" and just keep going. Or if she is looking at a book, she likes to name everything on the page, she is getting really good at remembering what things are called after I have told her once or twice. She has a few Sesame Street books and she picked up "Big Bird" after only telling her a few times. She's also starting to distinguish between different drinks. Before, all drinks were "Milk", but now she knows, "milk", "water", and "jui" (juice). She still a fruit fiend. And everything is affle (apple), she calls bananas and oranges, "affles", but for some reason she knows blueberries are "bluebers". Weird.

Anyway, here are some recent photos. Take care, and love you!

She says "cheeeeese" now!

I was trying to show how long her hair is now.

Got the pillow and the cell phone, got her legs crossed. Ya know, just chillin'



Perhaps the biggest news! Ella's new big girl bed! Yay! For the most part she sleeps in it all night. For some reason she wakes up at about 5:30 and wants to go sleep on the couch. Whatever....
The pic above-she likes to "pretend". She crawls in the bed pulls the covers up, demands her "bwankie", lays her head on the pillow and says, "Sweep?"

Say Cheese!

Okay, so I have lots of pictures finally posted. I apologize for the delay. You'd think since I work less I would have more time to do this, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Anyway, here are photos from December. I don't really have too many others after that. I never seem to have the camera around lately for those perfect moments.

Ella in her grass skirt-a Xmas gift from the Gomes'

Celebrating the New Year!

We let Maddie and Taylor have Sparkling Grape Juice in REAL champagne glasses to ring in the New Year! Don't those bathrobes crack you up!?

Going shopping with her new cart-a Xmas gift from Patrick and Kelly. She put the baby in there all by herself.

Maddie and Ella coloring.

Ella taking a rest in the cool play tunnel that Papa got her for Xmas.

Figuring out how to use the spoon!

Connor and Ella playing at the diner that Boo Boo got Ella for Xmas. It's a kitchen on one side and the diner on the other. It even has a little jukebox that plays music and a bell to ring for service. Ella loves this! She plays with it all the time!

I felt like Ms. Hannigan this day! My floors were shining like the top of the Chrysler building! They all wanted to play with the mops and brooms. Who am I to argue....heheh

Maddie handing out presents on Xmas morning.

Blake and Ella in the tent that came with the play tunnel.

Roasting marshmallows using the handy electric marshmallow roaster turny thingy that Santa brought for Peter and Blake.

Eating marshmallows!

Showing off the jewels that Tina got her for XMas. The earrings (which she loves) and the pretty heart necklace that matched her outfit perfectly!

Blake's itchy fingers just dying to open that present on Christmas Eve

So that's that. It was a ton of fun to have the Gomes' stay with us. I loved spending so much time with them. Maddie and Taylor are wonderful nieces. I love them so much!!!

Ella is a little chatterbox these days. She just goes on and on. She's fairly easy to understand, but there are still a few things that I don't quite understand.

As of last week she started sleeping in a twin bed that we bought her. It's been so nice to get her out of our bed! She seems to be doing fine with it so far. At most I have to go in twice a night and just sit with her for a few minutes until she falls back asleep. No complaints from me!

She's rolling up on two pretty quickly. I can hardly believe it!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. (Seeing as how this didn't take me that long to update, I should hopefully be better about updating it more frequently! heeh...yeah right).

Latest(news) and Greatest(cat)

Okay, finally. Here are some more pics. Unfortunately they are not the most recent. My camera is still not working so I haven't been taking any pictures. Need to get it fixed before Jenn and Francis get here though, so hopefully there will more pics soon. She is getting sooo big!

Playin' in the leaves

Kathy sent Blake some popcorn balls for Halloween that you could decorate with all these different edible candies. So Blake and I built them....

and then we ate them...



She loves our IPods

Okay so there's your baby fix.

The big news that I wanted to update everyone on is that I am leaving my current job to take a job as a Paraeducator at Aurora Frontier K-8!! I will be the library assistant. (Actually, assistant to my friend Elizabeth!) My last day at the credit union is December 10th. I can hardly believe it as I have been there for 7 1/2 years. But this opportunity presented itself and I really didn't want to pass it up. It's actually a part-time position. I will be working five hours a day. This will free up time for me to spend with Ella and to also go back to school to get my teaching certificate. And once I have been at the school for a year, they will pay for me to complete my certificate!!

Ella has such a personality now it's so much fun to "hang out" with her. She talks up a storm and moves her arms and hands like she's really concerned and having a serious conversation. When she laughs, sometimes she bends over and slaps her knee like it's just sooo hilarious! Anytime she sees a napkin or tissue she will ball it up and pretend to blow her nose. And she's devious! You'll tell her no, and either she'll cry (which is the usual response), or she'll wait, and then do whatever it was she was doing before with a little evil grin and then look up at you and just wait to see what you're going to do!!

Anyway, she's a ball of fun and I am looking forward to spending more time with her as she gets closer to turning 2!

I have already applied to Metro State and will be attending the Teacher Licensure meeting in a few weeks. I'll be registering for a class for Spring and then I'm on my way!!!!

I'm really excited about this new chapter in my life (even though Peter is a bit nervous).

The other good thing to come out of this is that I will be off the whole time the Gomes' are visiting!! I can't wait to see them all!

On a sad note, our cat Hobbes got really sick over the weekend and my mom and I had to put him down. I got a call from my mom on Saturday afternoon, the vet had just told her that he was pretty bad and that there wasn't really anything they could do. The vet is only 5 minutes away so I left right away. As I walked in to the office it hit me.....Wait....I don't want to do this. I've never had to do this before.

The vet and the techs were very nice and allowed us some time with him. He looked so frail and thin and my mom noticed that he wasn't even purring. And he always had the loudest purrer! It was like an engine!! I really think he was ready to go. But it didn't make it any easier. Once the vet administered the drug, I think I was mostly surprised at how fast he went. In the movies it's always such a slow process. As mom said though, now he can go chase all of the balled up paper and rubber bands that he wants to! What a fun cat he was!! He will be missed.

Okay...

I promise to have a camera fixed by the time all the festivities roll around.

Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season.

See all of you soon, I'm sure.

It's November!?

Yikes! How time flies. I'll try to do a quick run down of the last few months. And before I forget, can you believe Ella turned 18 months yesterday!? Yay!! She's so much fun. But more about her later.

My camera is being dumb and it won't turn on. I don't know if I need a whole new battery but I feel like I just bought one, so I'm not sure. Anway, there are no Halloween pics yet because I had to use a disposable camera and I've yet to get those developed. Hopefully this weekend.

Anyway, so the last time I think I mentioned our wasp infestation. Well here are some pics.

Peter armed and ready. You can see where we (actually just Peter) cut a whole in the ceiling to get to the nest so that we could finally get rid of them.
Here is what he pulled out from inside the ceiling. You can kind of see the comb like stuff that's the next. The bright yellow spots are the wasps (dead).

The window sill in our bedroom. AHHHHH!!!

Close up of the hole he cut. To the left you can see a tiny little hole. That's the hole that they originally made themselves and got into the house. We had taped over that and sprayed hoping they would just leave, but as you could tell, they had a pretty nice nest going so we had to do a bit more work. So we've patched the hole and caulked all of the little openings on the outside of the house. Hopefully that should do the trick and we won't have any little visitors next summer.
About a month ago, Tina was housesitting for a friend who owns a boxer. Her name is Karma. She's about 8. Tina brought her over one night so Koa and she could play. They got along really well. It was fun to see Koa with a friend.

We had just thrown some chicken bones away and they were over there scouting out the goods. Karma's in the red collar.

How silly! Karma's on the right. Ella was pretty funny. She would have to do a double take to figure out who was who.

This was taken quite a while ago, but I've been wanting to get it on here so everyone could see how cute they are! Connor just cracks me up.

Ella has started to use the walker now more than she ever did when she actually needed it! Look at those long legs! Ha. She looks so silly in it, but she just tools around upstairs like it makes perfect sense for her to be using it!

Blake played another season of baseball this summer. They were the Purple Dragons this year (even though Blake voted for the Rockies). He was awesome! He was the talk of the team for awhile after he hit a monster triple in to center field!! It was way cool. He's also going to sign up for basketball this fall. This will be his first season playing. Hopefully he likes it as much as he likes baseball.

The last pics are just random ones of Ella. She loves to sit at the computer and play. For some reason this day she wanted to wear this hat, which is actually an infant hat so we really had to squeeze it on her head. But she would freak out if it came off, so we just kept putting it back on her!

Out in the backyard leaves.

Squishy, puffy cheeks

Doin' a puzzle

More crazy hat time.

She has gotten so big over the last few months and has started doing and saying tons of big kid things! It's crazy. She says mommy, daddy, Blake, Koa, Gramma, Papa, doggy, milk, blankie, shoes, socks, more, cat, balloon. And of course if she can't say it she just screams! She follows instructions really well and is very concerned about things being in the right place or with the right person. So if she sees one of our cell phones she has to bring it to us and we can't just set it back down or she'll had it back to us until we put it in our pocket. She will also take Peter's wallet and try to put it in her pocket! She can figure out how things work pretty quickly as well. I brought a laptop home from work and it took her about two seconds to figure out where the power button was.

Her 18 month appointment is next week. I'm guessing she'll be a tad skinny for her age, but we'll see. I'm not too worried about it, she's an eating machine!

I'll try to post this weekend if I get Halloween pictures.