3!

A couple of weeks ago my baby turned 3!!  This little girl is spunky and fun, girly, messy, feisty, sweet, and is almost always is saying it's too hot!  She will come and give me a big hug and then tell me to go away because I am making her hot.  haha.  (She is lucky she lives in England.  I don't think she'd survive in AZ/NV/TX!) She makes me laugh every day with the little things she says and does.  Her little voice saying I love you sooo much just melts me.  I love you Ella!!  

 Some of Ella's favorite things at 3:

♥ She says that her favorite thing to do is play tea party and princesses.  She spends a lot of time jumping on the trampoline and is still a big book worm.  I asked her what her favorite book was and she mentioned just about all the books we own.  

♥ She loves playing with her brother.  She misses him when he's at school.  

♥ Her favorite girly buddies are Amelia, Liberty, and Olivia.   

♥ Favorite movie/TV shows all involve Dora the Explorer.  

♥ Every night she requests that we sing The Itsy Bitsy Bider before bed.  She loves to sing Snuggle Puppy and Sesame Street's I love my Hair at the top of her lungs (click here to hear the hair song if you haven't.. it's pretty cute).  

♥ She's a big fan of water.  Loves bath time and swimming lessons.  She can often be found making soup with water from the hose, rocks, grass, and whatever she and her friends find outside.   

♥ She isn't a picky eater, but when it's her turn to choose she usually wants spaghetti.  She loves fruit too.  

♥  She loves animals.

♥ Oh, and to throw one more favorite into the mix,  she loves the color pink.

Miss Ella, here are some pictures from the day you turned 3.
You wanted to open your presents bright and early.... before your dad left for work a little before 7.  We ate waffles and then walked Luke to school.

Every time we pass the bakery in the commissary, you want to check out the cakes.  On birthday week you finally got to pick one out!  We looked through their big cake book and you were set on having a Dora cake. We picked it up early in the afternoon and you kept climbing onto the counter wanting to look at it. You were pretty good about not touching :)  

We went to the park and played with some of your buddies and then the Willeys came over for dinner.  You were sad this year again when it was time to blow your candle out.  Just like last year.  Everything was great until we lit that candle.  Dang scary candles...

You wanted spaghetti for dinner. Oh, and dessert didn't come first, guess I'm just putting these pictures in the wrong order.

You scored some fun presents. This was the year of the pink scooter, dress-ups, and fun little pets. You were spoiled by grandmas and grandpas. It's exciting getting packages in the mail! Trying out your new Rapunzel dress...

Okay, Miss El,  I think that was most of the big day's highlights.

Can't wait to see what this next year brings for you.  ♥, mom

First Day of Kindergarten

Luke started Kindergarten Sept 6.  Here he was just as we started walking to school on his first day.  He was not in the mood for pictures and didn't want to even look at me.  I got this one though!   Little stinker.  This boy isn't a fan of waking up earlier than 8:30.  Stinks when school starts at 8:10! 

I got another picture when he was lined up with his class.  There are 16 munchkins in Ms. Morales' Spanish Immersion class.  So far Luke is enjoying the kindergarten thing.  He likes his teacher and thinks it's awesome that there are so many other boys in the class!  At his last school the boys were seriously outnumbered.  

 

The Lake District

 I'm getting too far behind on here!  So, a few months ago, I thought it would be fun to do some camping.   I had heard that the Lake District is gorgeous and has a lot of campground options.  It's England's largest National Park and there are around 18 lakes in the area.  We planned to go over a four day weekend that Jake had off work.  Somewhere between planning and reserving a place to camp at, we remembered that we aren't really fans of camping.  Especially taking the chance that we'll be camping in the rain.  Love the outdoors and all, just not a fan of sleeping outdoors and going without showers.  So,  Jake found a cute holiday cottage to rent for a few days.  It was great.  We took off early Friday morning, Aug 26th, and played in the Lake District until Monday.  It's about a 4 1/2 hr. drive.  Here's the cottage we stayed at.  More like town home if you ask me.

     

Check out how pretty this area of the country is.  Took this next one out the car window.

Remember how we drive on the Left here?  And our family car is an American spec so the driver is on the wrong side?  It's scary to be passenger in the front when roads are narrow and speed limits are 55.  People go 60-70.  One car swiped our mirror on this trip.  On my side of course.  Love that.  The roads in the area are teeny tiny.  Made for tiny Euro cars and built forever ago.  First day in the Lake District we just drove around to see the area.
Quite a bit of panicking goes on when you're not the one driving.  You feel like the oncoming cars are going to take you out in the passenger side.  They pretty much almost do.  Jake got sick of me telling him to slow down and to pull over, and that I was in the lane of oncoming traffic.  This picture is totally out of focus and crappy, but you get the picture.  This is a 2 way road.

Pressing on, the first area we visited was Windermere.  Lake Windermere is probably the biggest tourist area of the Lake district.  Mountains, the lake, and a cute little village full of shops make it fun.  Found a great outdoor/fitness gear store.  They were having a sale, so we got Luke's coat for the year early.  While in the town, we went to the World of Beatrix Potter attraction.  It was pretty fun seeing all the cutie little characters in her books.  A friend gave us a set of Beatrix Potter books when Luke was tiny, so the kids were familiar with the stories.  It was fun.  Not worth driving up just to see the place, but it was a fun little add-on to the trip.  Beatrix's cottage is not far from here, too.  My favorite part was seeing Mr. McGregor's garden.

Ella wasn't sure what to think of some of the characters.  Some looked a little too real.  Haha.

A few more pictures of Beatrix Potter's World...

Got some cute chocolate mice at the gift shop on the way out.  Yum.

After walking around town for a little while, we headed over to the lake.  There are some little paths and parks around that were fun to explore.  Jake tried to teach Luke how to skip rocks.













































I love that Brits have tea time.  I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.  So, not really related to tea time or this trip, but there was a tiny little kid at the park a couple of days ago that kept telling us he had a  Lovely, Lovely doughnut for a pudding after lunch!  It was just lovely!  It was the cutest thing ever, so had to write it down somewhere.  ha!  You hear cutie things like that all the time here, but that phrase just stuck with me.  Lots of restaurants have good tea time specials.  Random sign on our walk through Windermere...

More Windermere pictures...

Super pretty lake.  We thought about renting one of those little wooden boats for a few hours, but it started to rain.

 Just liked these colors :)























The kids had fun rolling down the hills...  you can't see them very well in this next picture, but they're there.

The next day we went over to Ullswater.  Another lake.  Not as commercialized as Windermere, so if we were to really go camping I'd choose a campsite here.  It was pretty chilly.  At first the kids just wanted to go back to our little cottage, but after we walked around a bit they found some cool trees to climb and big puddles to jump in.  If there are puddles and trees, life is good.

Stopped at the ruins of Penrith castle on our way back from Ullswater.  You can climb on most of the ruins around.  Fun, but makes me nervous sometimes!  Not a soft landing if you trip.  It's a good thing my kids have Jake around or they wouldn't get to do as many adventurous things.
 

Luke thought it was awesome that Jake climbed up and looked out of this high window, so he had to do it too.

More pictures taken from the car while driving around.  Got to love the cricket uniforms.

Liked this view...

Heather is everywhere now.  Lots of Lavender too.

Um, ya.  Pretty sure I take too many pictures.

Love mini coopers.  

On the drive back home, we went through the Preston area.  I spy an angel Moroni.

Stopped to check out the Preston temple for a while since we hadn't seen it before.  The England Missionary Training Centre is right next to it.  Would be fun if Luke ended up here 14 years from now!  

So, that was our Lake District adventure.