Flies, Flies, Flies!

Yesterday we visited the Wildflower Center.  Ella wasn't sure how she felt about it (especially the long drive down), but when we got there she decided it was exciting.  She would see a flower and have to tell us about it, over and over (seeing as it is a big place with a bunch of different wildflowers growing in it).

As we were wandering around, we came across some flowers that had a lot of butterflies on them (Gregg's Mist if anyone cares to know).  Ella was super excited for the butterflies and kept saying "flies, flies" and giggling.  Elissa was trying to identify potential flowers to use in our landscaping (anyone know what this plant is called?  It didn't seem correctly labeled), so we ran into the butterflies over and over again, Ella was just excited each time.

Later on, we went to the 'Family Garden' where they had an area for kids to play at, and they had a craft thing we could do for free (which is questionably free since we had to pay to get in).  Ella really enjoyed the caves and the waterfall, as you can see from the pictures.  The craft was this cool photosensitive paper that you could put things on so some of it was exposed to the sun and some wasn't.  After a couple minutes you put it in water (in the shade, I think) for another minute, then let it dry.  The parts that were in the sun turn dark and you get a cool gradient effect on things.  Ella enjoyed picking out some things to put on the paper, but wasn't too interested in the paper itself.

4th of July

This year we had a pretty low key 4th of July.

We went to the All Abilities Park. Ella had a great time going down the slides, climbing and jumping with Daddy.

We went to the recycled reads store. I bought books. Ella and Daniel had a book reading party! (Ella made sure that everyone had a seat!)

On the 4th we made ice cream in our ice cream ball! Ella loved to help stir up the ingredients. She wasn't so sure about eating the ice cream though.

We also went for a walk, and played around the house.

Ella the Kitty Cat

Ella got a Cat towel for a baby shower gift. (Long before she was born.) We would use it on and off to dry her after her baths. Recently she has really gotten into being a kitty-cat when she puts the hood on. She will say "meow," and beg to not take of the towel. She even asked to wear it to bed.

Park Fun and Other Ella Cuteness

Ella has finally gotten big enough to use the park equipment independently. It is lots of fun that she can climb up and then go down the slide over and over on her own. She also loves to "drive" at the park.

Ella also likes to climb into the empty cabinets in the kitchen. She is getting smart though so she slides open the drawer above so it won't be too dark when she closes the cabinet door.

She likes to climb into her basket and hang out with all of her stuffed friends. She will ask until every stuffed animal is in the basket with her.

Ella also loves shoes. Sometimes she gets into Momma Shoes!

Splash Pad Adventures

This week we went on our first summer splash pad adventure.

We played in the big sand box.

Then we played at the splash pad!

Ella had a great time and would run back to me with a happy squeal after getting all wet.

Birthday

This year Daniel made me a delicious pie for my birthday. He knows my feelings about frosting, so he went to the effort to make a pie.

I decided to use my birthday money to buy a project (Before and After). It was supposed to be a microwave cabinet, but it ended up being too big. We finished it up and decided that it would make a great craft room storage unit.

The Puzzle DASH

No, it wasn't a mistake that I capitalized 'DASH', and I'm also not yelling the word as I write the title.  It's just the acronymn for the activity Elissa decided would be my birthday present.  A couple years ago we heard about the 'Different Area Same Hunt' and thought it sounded like fun, but we were going to be out of town when they did it, and the next year we had a happy addition to our family and suddenly found ourselves with a lot less time and energy for something like that.  Well, Elissa was really thoughtful this year and thought she would register a team for me to go with some friends while she selflessly stayed home devotedly missing her dear husband.  (I really hope she had a good time and did something interesting while I was away).

I find it really hard to describe the format of this thing, but I'll try to give a quick description.  It consisted of 9 puzzles (+ a pretty-much-mandatory-if-you-want-to-be-competitive bonus puzzle) over the course of ~8 hours.  Each puzzle starts with a prompt and some materials (a diagram, tiles with words on them, etc.) and you had to figure out what the puzzle actually was, how to solve it, and obviously solve it.  Usually there was a pretty obvious hint how to get started. For example in one case we had to figure out how to place game tiles, then assign each tile a letter, then look around until we found a message with a new hint, then we had to flip the whole thing upside down and unscramble some words before taking a single letter from each word, finally constructing the single word answer.

All in all we had a good time and finished with a probably respectable score putting us ahead of 1/4 of the contestants, which seems pretty good for it being our first time and choosing the "Expert" difficulty instead of "Novice".

Hopefully I'll be able to find equally nice to do for Elissa (maybe we'll send her next year or we can be a team or something).