Summer of Ella! (week 6)

This was the final week for the Summer of Ella. (well 2 weeks ago, still behind on blogging) I was sad to see it end. I enjoyed every Tuesday and Thursday with just Ella while McKenna was at summer school. I wanted to soak up every minute I could with my baby Ella before Kindergarten started. I told myself that during the Summer of Ella days, it was all about her. That meant muting most of my calls, no chores or errand running. I wanted everything to be about her and I spending quality time together. It really was so special and I love all the memories we made of it.

The last week was Ella's pick. For Tuesday we went to the bounce house place. Ethan and Harper met us there and they bounced the day away.

For the last day Ella picked bowling. We had a couple hours till the place opened so she wanted to do a little scrapbooking before we bowled. She has two different scrapbooks that she has been randomly working on for a couple of years. The pictures are so random. It cracks me up! She uses whatever ones she finds around the house. Some are pics of me in high school. It's pretty funny. Here she is scrapbooking a classic pic of Jeff during the 4th a couple years back.

We had Julie and her girls meet us for bowling and it was such a fun last day for the Summer of Ella! Ella and Katelyn were pretty good at bowling. They had the highest scores between all of us!

Since it was also McKenna's last day of summer school, I sent her with some treats for her sweet and amazing teachers.


I can't believe that summer time is over. I can't believe that Ella is going to be in school 5 days a week. I pray that her sweet and tender spirit shines through her shyness and that friends are drawn to her. I pray that she is strong and sets an example of how to be a sweet friend and good student. I pray that any struggles she has in school only want to make her learn more and not scare her away. I pray for my worry. I know there are so many exciting times to come with school and making new friends but I also know there will be hurt feelings and unsureness of things. I know my mom brain is going a little crazy and overanalyzing too much. I really am excited for Ella to start school. I know she is going to love it. I just wish I could keep her home with me everyday always. I love that girl so so much and can't wait to see all that God has planned for her.

Summer of Ella! (week 5)

I have been so behind on blogging! If it wasn't for Instagram, I don't think I could remember what I did last week. That's why I love having everything documented on the blog. Now if I could just keep it up...

For week 5 of the Summer of Ella we had a lot of fun! We started it off with a fun craft I saw on Pinterest. We had seen Despicable Me 2 the week before so we made a Minion bowling set.

Thanks to our juiceaholic McKenna, it took no time to save up some plastic bottles. We poured a little rice in the bottom of each one so it would be a little harder to knock them down.

I first spray painted them all yellow. 

Then after about 15 minutes I sprayed the bottom half blue. 

We thought it would be fun to add a crazy purple one too. That idea came to me after I bought the spray paint so acrylic paint had to do. 

I downloaded a free printable here for the eyes. We taped those on and drew the mouth using a sharpie.

Ella loved it!

Before bedtime that night, we had a little family bowling game.


Strike for McKenna!


On Thursday Bob was post call so he got to join in on our Summer of Ella fun! Lucky for him that day was lunch at Chuck E. Cheese! It's one of Ella's favorite places and one of Bob's least favorites. He was a great sport though!


This horse was Ella's favorite. She rode it over and over.

For close to 500 tickets, Ella went home with her very own mini Chuck E. Cheese stuffed animal. Such a fun week!

Summer of Ella! (week 4)

We started off week 4 with some baking. Ella requested pink, purple and white rainbow cupcakes. 

After we filled up on cupcakes, we did a little shaving cream art. Ella loved smearing it all over the table and writing her name in it. 

She also loved covering her arms with it.

We put some on a cookie sheet and then put a few drops of food coloring in it. Swirled it around and laid a piece of paper on top. I scraped the shaving cream off with a spatula and the food coloring made for a pretty cool design.

On Thursday we had a special visitor during the summer of Ella. Brittany and Cooper! They were passing through town so we got to spend a couple of hours with them. It was so fun! We had a water day planned so we spent most of the time outside. 

I had made a water blob that morning which is always a summer favorite for my girls. I saw this brilliant idea on pinterest last summer and it really is so fun. I was such a rookie last summer and it was kinda a fail. This time was so much better. Instead of buying two plastic tarps and taping them together I bought a 3.5 mil plastic tarp that was 10ft by 25ft. I then folded it in half and then duck taped all the edges together. I also did all the taping inside this summer which was much easier than trying to do it in the wind outside. Duh. Nice to see that I get smarter each summer.

I then folded it in half again and duck taped the edges together. Folding it in half twice made it much thicker so it never ripped a hole and doing the double duck taped helped not get so many leaks.

Then stick the hose in a little opening in the corner and fill it up. So much fun! 

Before picking up McKenna we got a snow cone to finish off another fun Summer of Ella day.

I was excited for McKenna to get home and see the water blob too. I wasn't sure how she would like it because sometimes she is weird with textures. She loved it though! She was giddy.

Happy Summer everyone!