Hanging out at Mimi's

On Thursday and Friday Ellie and I wanted to spend as much time with the Brust cousins as possible. On Thursday Kelly came over while I finished getting ready and gave us a ride over to Mimi's. My main goal was to get some good pictures of Ellie for her birth announcement. I brought my basket which we didn't end up using for pictures but for naps. It worked out great. Mimi, Carly, Kelly, and the girls all helped with trying to get some good pictures of Ellie. I finally ordered the announcements so you'll see which ones we went with in the next week or so! BTW, Katelyn, I found a coupon for 20 free birth announcements of any price on shutterfly.com - it's THEBUMP20. So what I did is I just opened a second account, made the same card, and ended up with 40 free announcements (well, I did have to pay the ridiculously high shipping twice). But 40 for about $12 sure beats 40 for $90!

Nap time.

A typical 30 seconds in the life of Ellie: 

 On Friday we went to Grandma's house for lunch. Mom came and picked me up in Carly's van and it ended up deciding it wanted to spend time in Geigertown, since it refused to start even after Jon came home from work to try to jump it. So Mom and I just hopped into the good ol' LeSabre and arrived for the second shift of lunch. Lunch was delicious! Grandma made a soup that could have been served at a gourmet restaurant along with BLTs and applesauce. After lunch we headed to Mimi's and Carly, Kelly, Mimi, and some of the cousins swam. After a bit I took Ellie outside in the shade and I joined them at the pool. When the boys woke up from their naps, we headed off to a yardsale in Morgantown to try to find some goods.

Ellie at work - she's testing this product for IM.

Ellie's first day yardsaling

We found out that we need to arrive early since the
Mennonites and Amish really swarm to yard sales! It's
dedication when you have to come in a wagon. 

 Ellie and I left the yard sale early since Ben and Jess were bringing dinner to us and spending some time getting to know Ellie. They brought over some delicious chicken chili and left behind all the leftovers. It was nice to catch up with them, too.

On Saturday Ellie and I stayed home and "helped" Jon work on the kitchen before the big event - Calla's surprise birthday.

Snoozing.

Supervising the garbage disposal instillation.

Daddy was being too loud!

 At 4:30 we headed as a little family to Ellie's first birthday part - Calla's first fifth birthday celebration. We definitely surprised her, as she was actually at a loss for words when we shouted surprise! to her. Mimi had the evening packed full of gifts, dinner, games, and s'mores. Ellie is already expecting a great fifth birthday party!

birthday girl 

Ready to open her first gift

Putting her gift to good use during dinner 

Hooter-hiders are great.

burping Holly while we sing to her

Clark loved Grandma's cookies

After the candy scramble

The empty nesters enjoying the fire

Cousins!

Ooop - Holly is hungry again!

 We all had a lot of fun at Calla's party! Jon even let Ellie and I stay late while he went home to work on the dishwasher. Below is a picture of the new garbage disposal and dishwasher in place. Boy is it nice to have these! It was well worth the wait!