I'm a Ballerina!

I'm not sure where Ella got this...it must have been school. But her new thing is to announce that she's a ballerina and then she spins with her arms in the air.

Here she is yesterday dressed in her ballerina outfit from Gaga. This has been in her closet for a year and she's had no interest in dressing up until just recently.

Another Busy Weekend!

We had another action packed weekend this past weekend.

Friday night we went to Chuck E. Cheese for Ella's "potty party". We promised her that when she was 100% day potty trained that she could have a party at Chuck E. Cheese. She's really been 100% potty trained for about 2 weeks but with Ricardo traveling so much we haven't really had a chance to go.

She had a blast! She played a ton of games, ran around, and even want potty there. I also learned that she can count backwards from 10. When we got in to the car I asked her to countdown again from 10 so daddy could hear and she did and this time ended it with, "It's time to go to bed now." HA! She learned to count backwards because we do it when it's time to end something...as in, we're going to up to bed in 5 minutes...3 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minutes, 30 seconds, 10, 9, 8, 7....See, she does listen! :)

Saturday our good friends from San Diego, The Fenilli Sisters, Marianna and Monica, AKA: Mar and Mon were in NYC for a Bachelorette Party so we drove in and met them in Central Park.

It was so great to see them again. Mar and Mon came to the hospital when Ella was born. And they haven't seen her since she was 6 months old (when we moved from San Diego). They also have never met Sofia in person and of course she charmed the pants off of them.

Mar and Mon with Ella the day after she was born

Monica taught Ella how to ride a trike!

Trying to take pictures with Sofia....

Oh, you're pretty

Oh, but you're pretty too

Oh, I'm supposed to look at the camera?

Mar, Sofia, and me

The girls with Mon and Mar...poor Ella was just spent. It was about 3pm and she obviously didn't have her nap. So tired.

Our attempt at a family photo...yup, that's about right.

Marianna is getting married in September in Coronadoand we are so sad that we won't be able to go. Not only because we love her...but the Fenellis KNOW how to throw a party!

Sunday (today) my amazing neighbor came over to "teach" me how to mulch. We have a ton of weeds so she was showing me how to lay down newspaper to block the weeds from growing. She took me to a wholesale market and garden center in Clifton called Carrado's on Thursday to place my mulch order. 100 bags! I thought she was crazy but we used 60 bags on the front yard alone!!!

Unfortunately, we had a crazy storm pass through for the majority of the day but around 3 it cleared and when I went back out to finish what we started in the morning before the storm hit, Susan was out there too and she didn't just teach me, she worked her butt off next to me laying down the paper and mulching. It was hot and humid and we were both sweating up a storm but every time I told her to go sit down or go home, she just shooed me and kept mulching. When it comes to neighbors, we hit the jackpot with Susan and Rick. They take such good care of all of us (including Mikka-they watch her whenever we go away). I don't even know how I can begin to repay them. Ricardo says we just need to pay it forward when we're in our 50's and a young family moves in next door and is as clueless as us!

This is what our front yard looked like when we bought the house in June 2006-look how bad the grass was!

And now-June 2008. Now that the mulch is down, I need to plant some pretty annuals to add some color, but still a MAJOR improvement.

Ricardo leaves on another business trip to LA tomorrow. He won't be home until 1 amish on Friday morning. Ella also started camp tomorrow, so hopefully the week will fly by for us without Daddy around.

Choo Choo Train, Father's Day, and the Beach

Saturday and Sunday were both action packed days, which is why today we are laying low.

Ella had been dying to take the train for probably the last 6 months since we see if go by almost every day.

Saturday morning Gaga, Ella, Sofia and I took the train from Westwood to Hoboken, which is a town in NJ which is on the Hudson River and is directly across from NYC. What a great town and WOW what a view of NYC. Daddy met us in Hoboken with the car (great idea Gaga, since both girls started melting down at lunch) and we all had lunch together, got a parking ticket, and came home.

Gaga, Ella, and Sofia waiting for the train inside the Westwood train station-look everyone is looking at the camera!

On the train! What fun-every time we stopped at a station Ella yelled, "No, I don't want to go home yet."

We were going to go to Chuck E Cheese for Ella's "Potty Party" (seriously, what has become of me?) that night but everyone (read: Ella) was too tired so we just cooked at home.

Sunday Morning was Father's Day! Happy Father's Day Daddy! The girls and I gave Ricardo his cards and he requested a beach day for Father's Day. So we packed everything up and headed down to Pt. Pleasant again.Our friends, The Lomaxes, kids Ben and Jessica-with whom Ella is slightly obsessed with, met us down there too.

Ella thinks she's a mermaid because we couldn't get her out of the water! Sofia just manned the cooler and halfway through the day we saw another family with a tiny baby pool and thought it was a great idea so we bought a little baby pool at the store on the boardwalk (only $8!) and filled it with ocean water so Sofia could play in the water without worrying about the waves. She LOVED it-of course I didn't get one picture of her in it.

Sofia and Daddy

Ella and Daddy in the water

Sofia at the cooler-I want to eat those legs!

I tried to get a picture of the Ella, Jess, and Ben. Jess and Ben cooperated. Ella looks like she's yelling, "C'mon MOOOOOMMM, just let me go to the water!" Oy.


Sofia just chilled, happy as a clam.

Around 3pm the beautiful blue sky began to turn a horrible shade of black. Within minutes the lightening and thunder started and the lifeguard were blowing their whistles getting everyone out of the water. Man, I've never seen a beach clear so fast. For these Californians, it was actually pretty cool getting caught in a summer thunder storm. Of course, we all got soaked! But we didn't mind, we were too busy talking about how fast the rain came and how fast it flooded the roadways. With that, we decided to pack up and head back home. I tried to get some pics while we were loading the car but I don't think it's accurately shows the amount of rain that was falling!




Kind of a cool way to end our beach day!

Today Ricardo left on a business trip to Miami again, but not after getting over the GW(George Washington Bridge)and realizing he left his wallet at home! Oops. Good thing the driver picked him up a little early or else he would have missed his flight.

Hope everyone had a nice Father's Day!

Thursday and Friday

We've had such a wonderfully busy 4 days that I'm going to break them up into Thursday/Friday and Saturday/Sunday.

Gaga arrived bright and early Thursday morning after flying in on a red-eye from San Francisco.
There's no rest for the weary in the Martinez Household and Ella was on her like white on rice the minute she arrived.

Thursday afternoon we had the YJCC's End of School Year Picnic. Ella had a blast.

Ella and Gaga walking in

First there was a concert put on by the Little Maestro's band. This is actually the band, yes BAND, that performs for the music classes that I'm taking with Sofia this summer while Ella is in camp. It includes a keyboardist, drummer, guitarist, and a lead singer. It's so awesome. I can't wait to do it with Sofia.

Ella loved it too (and so did the hysterically funny little boy in red in front of her!)

During the concert, Sam (Ella's friend Jordy's little brother) couldn't keep his eyes off of Sofia...or maybe it's her pretzel.

Naw, I think it was this face he couldn't stop looking at.

After the concert we went outside for the picnic. Ella just ran off and had a blast playing frisbee...look at that athleticisms-in air shot!

She then had a popsicle...or two.

The picnic was a blast and Ella had a great time.

Friday evening, Ricardo and I had the wedding of one Ricardo's close college friends, Tyson. Tyson and his now wife, Hannah live in NYC now, but a ton of Ricardo's old buddies from his SCU days were there. It was like a mini-reunion.

The wedding was AMAZING! Seriously, one of the most amazing weddings I've been too. I can't even bring it justice in this blog. It was at OHEKA CASTLE in Huntington, NY (Long Island). This place was beautiful and we had the ENTIRE castle to ourselves. The ceremony was outside, the cocktail reception was in one beautiful ballroom and included 8 appetizer stations, the dinner and dancing was in another ballroom, there was an entire room devoted to dessert which included (but was not limited to) wedding cake, chocolate covered strawberries, 8 different cheesecakes, a sorbet bar, freshly made crepes topped with rum covered bananas, and fresh fruit tarts. The evening ended with a walk across the grounds with sparklers to end in the library for after dessert cocktails.

It was such a great evening, in addition the breathtaking scenery and mouth water food, we were lucky enough to have great company. I always love being around Ricardo's college friends. Inevietably, Ricardo winds up in tears from laughing so hard.

Before we left Gaga tried to get a picture of Ricardo and I (btw, Ricardo did wear a tie, he just didn't put it on until we got there)...

But what you don't see in the above picture is this:

Awww, so of course we had to get a picture with her!

I tried getting pics with my pocket camera but they really don't do justice to this place, definitely take a look at the website.

When we walked in we were greated by this beautiful floral arangement, which was surrounded by our amazing placecards. They had gotten a picture of every singe guest and used it as our placecard instead of our name. It was amazing and I can't even imagine how much time this took. Luckily there were only 120 guests!

Here are our placecards. They took these pictures when they came to our house for Easter Sunday.

We then walked outside to the cermony location...breathtaking.

The new Mr. and Mrs. Brown


Our amazing centerpiece at dinner.

ok, something is up with blogspot and it took me 2 hours to post this (no lie). So I apologize for any typos but I just went a little blind trying to get this up (cue the violins) so I'm going to bed now! Saturday and Sunday (train ride to Hoboken and the Shore) coming up tomorrow, maybe more pics of the wedding if I can get the pics to load.

Ella's last day of preschool, sniff sniff

Today was the last day of preschool for the year. We had such a wonderful year AND a wonderful class. The kids really enjoyed each other and played together so well. And not that I'm biased, but I'm pretty sure we also had the best teachers in all the 2's classes. :)

I'm so thankful that I sent Ella to preschool this year. She has learned so much-both intellectually (is that possible at 2?) and socially. She now sleeps in a big girl bed and is fully potty trained and I really do think a lot of that is because she is the youngest in her class and saw the older kids doing so much.

When we left the house this morning for school, I said, Ella let me take a picture of you in your pretty dress, and the is what she did:

But then I tricked her and told her I put the camera away and it was time to get in the car and go to school. HAAA! Gotcha!

I dropped Ella off at 9:15 and then came back at 10:45 and the kids sang some songs for their moms (well the teachers did most of the singing).

Ella sitting on the rug with some of her classmates before singing commenced

Her fake "beaver" smile

Here they are singing a butterfly song (video gets boring after the butterfly song but I don't know how to edit it-sorry)

Ella took of her shoe mid-Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee and just slid over to Fran to get her to put back on her shoe and continued to sing. Poor Jordy (sitting next to Ella) was sad that school was over.

Ring around the Rosie

After singing, they all went back to their snack table and got some ice cream and cookies. Yum!

We tried to get all the kids to sit down on the rug again with their teachers so we could get a class picture. If I didn't have enough respect for school photographers before, I do now. Wow, was the impossible.

As you can see, Ella is busy making Elephant noises.

After school, most of us met at a local park to play and have lunch. Unfortunately we couldn't stay long because we had to get back to let our sitter who was watching Sofia go, but we did play for a bit. It's nice that the kids enjoy each other so much.

Summer Camp starts in one week and Ella will have a blast there. They get to go swimming and on field trips and she's even going to eat lunch there! Such a big girl. It's going to be great, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little sad to see thee end of this wonderful year.