Birthday Party

I am behind on my posts.....So, here we go.....

This year we had a low key b-day for Elaina. We just had a family birthday party. It was fun. Not much to report other then there was cake, presents, ice cream, and one excited 3 year old girl. What else do you want out of a birthday party??

Speaking of cake.... our dear friends, Carl and Sabrina, offered to make her cake this year. They made her cake on her first birthday too. They brought it over mostly constructed but had some assembly to do so it was a perfect project to enlist the help of Elaina on. She loved helping and it was cute to watch her do it.

Here is a pic of the cake they made on her first birthday...

Here is Elaina and Carl working on putting her 3rd b-day cake together...

Here she is helping Sabrina make her cupcakes for the top

And placing candles on top..

The final product. SO incredibly cute. BTW- Elaina picked this cake out from some books Sabrina had. It's pink - that's all Elaina cared about was that her birthday party was "pink."
Here are some pics of the b-day girl with her finished cake.

Once everyone got here, it was present opening time..Needless to say, she was thrilled about this. This is her opening her princess soccer ball. My dad, who is an avid lover of soccer, was thrilled she got this - NOT.

All smiles....

After everyone left, Erik and I realized we did not give her her big gift from us - her scooter. DUH!! We completely forgot - what were we thinking?? So, we brought it down after everyone left. She love this thing and rides it all the time.
She did not get a nap that day so this was her during dinner.. She was actually eating with her eyes closed. I just kept shoveling it in and she would open her mouth and chew - eyes closed the entire time. It was very funny.

Thanks to all our family for coming to spoil Elaina on her b-day. She had a wonderful time and loves you all so much

And, a special thanks to Carl and Sabrina for the cake! You guys are amazing friends and so special to us... and great cake decorators/bakers :)

4th of July parade

This 4th of July, we attended the Farragut 4th of July parade, again. The Parade was on the 3rd.... My neice, Alexandra, marched in the parade with her twirling team. She is a freshman this year and twirls on the Farragut High School twirling team. I find that SO hard to believe that she's in high school. She is growing up to be such a beautiful sweet, young lady. And, I know I've mentioned it before, but she is SOOOO talented at twirling. Really. I love to see her twirl. We had a wonderful time at the parade. The weather was nice - not too hot so that was nice.

Elaina enjoyed sitting on the curb watching the parade.....
Alexandra marching with her team... wouldn't you know that as soon as I took this pic my batteries died. By the time I got new ones in she was long gone up the road.

Elaina and her Aunt Kate waving to the helicopters

Elaina and her daddy

Family photo

Elaina and Alexandra

Elaina Claire is 3!!!!!

Yesterday was Elaina's 3rd Birthday! We can't believe she's 3 years old. It's bittersweet. We love this age but it is so sad to think that our baby girl is now 3. I guess the days of calling her our baby are over. Well.....maybe not. She'll always be our baby, huh?

Erik and I took the day off to spend with her. First stop....breakfast. We let her pick and she picked "Chicken-Lay"... that's Chick-fil-A for those of you who don't know.

Our little 3 year old ready to go inside.... Birthday smile :)

Next it was to Target to let her pick out her gift. That took foooooooooorevvvvvvvvvver. It was a good idea in theory but 3 year olds tend to not be very decisive. Oh well - she picked out a princess cash register. We also snuck in some other prizes for her to open on Saturday during her party with family.

Next stop - the splash pad. Turns out, she is NOT AT ALL into the splash pad. She wasn't very much last year but I thought it was an age thing. Nope, she's one year older and still not into it which is weird because she loves the pool. Go figure! But, they had a playground next to it so she played on it for a while.

After the splash pad, she konked out in the car. She had a busy 4th of July weekend and was tired from all the action. So, we let her take a good nap, then stopped by her school for cupcakes with her school friends.

It was a fabulous day spent with Elaina. Unfortunately, I had to get on a plane to go to Aiken for work. That was hard to do but I did not have to leave until 7pm so I was able to be with her. I am lucky that work let me fly so I was able to take a later flight rather then spend the day driving. Happy Birthday Elaina Claire!!! We love you!

Pool fun

We are big lovers of the pool. So, why not do a post in honor of our favorite summer past time... Elaina is no different then us - she LOVES to swim. I am a big believer that swimming is an awesome way to develop muscle and it's just all around good for kids. So, we do it as much as we can. Elaina is starting to get really brave and my hope is by the end of the summer, she will be swimming from me to the wall. We'll see. She's got the genes to do it :)

Catching a pool time pose with mommy.....

working on her kick

Just a sweet pic that Erik caught - nice shot, Erik!
This was at my mom's pool.... she wanted to lay her towel out like everyone else did and lay on it like a big kid.

Elaina with her cousins. So this was about 10 days into the whole potty thing so pretty much, Elaina's hand stayed where it is in this picture all the time. She's doing better now but you know....

Celia, Quentin, Elaina, Sadie

Look how Elaina is looking at Sadie - there is something so sweet to me about this.
This was an attempt to get Elaina to move her hands - everyone threw their hands up. Cute
Another mommy daughter pose....

Potty training

So, this is a big post for me.... A week ago today, we took another stab at potty training and I am happy to report that we finally had success. She is not perfect, but I can say that we are officially a non-diaper household and have been for 1 solid week. YAH!!! Third time's a charm (so they say). It was not near as exhausting as the prior tries. It did still take some pretty heavy convincing with Elaina but she was cooperative for the most part. She even went to church on Sunday and had no accidents. In fact, she told the teacher she had to go on her own and went... Also, on Saturday, during her birthday party she was attending, she let me interrupt her play and we went to bathroom and she went. All week at school and home she did not have any accidents (except for the #2 part - she's still working on that but close). I'm excited that we're there because that was one of those things that was difficult for me. I let it bother me too much but she was ready and when she was, it was pretty easy. We had to encourage it a bit but the timing was just right this time.


So, that's the latest from the Stringfellow household... No pics of the potty training business. Sorry. Just wanted to share this with all our fellow blog readers.

More funnies from an almost 3 yr old

So, to document some cute stuff Elaina has said lately....

1) "I want some skunscreen." That is "sunscreen" to all you adults reading out there.

2) "I just ready did it!" means, "I already did it!"

3) Erik told Elaina she was being Miss Demanding. Elaina said "I'm not Miss Amanda, I'm Elaina!" Her teacher at school is Miss Amanda.

And to go along with cute stuff - here a pic of Elaina in some glasses she got at a birthday party on Saturday. She was chilling in the back seat and put these on - I got a shot from my camera phone.

Sprinklers

We hope everyone had a safe/happy Memorial Day holiday. I am not sure about you all but this weekend was too cold for me to get into any pool - as much as I love to swim, the water is not warm enough yet. So, we opted to have fun with our garden sprinkler this weekend. Elaina was not so sure about it - like she is with most things, but over all I think she had fun. Here is video clip from day 1, she did not do much but let the water sprinkle her. No running through the sprinkler as I thought she would.

Day 2, she had help from her Pappaw, my dad. She had a bit more fun with more people around to help out but still not that into it.

And then we moved on to tee ball in our bathing suit. Check out her stance :) Just some video action of her and her Aunt Nell fielding the ball. Enjoy!

Celebrating 9 years....

On Sunday, May 16, 2010, Erik and I celebrated 9 years of marriage. We had a enjoyable, low key day at home with Elaina. We went out to eat Friday night by ourselves so we celebrated a little early.


On Sunday, I got up early with Elaina and let Erik sleep. Elaina and I made a trip to Dunkin Doughnuts (Erik's favorite) for some doughnuts. We surprised Erik with them. To avoid getting doughnut crumbs all in the bed (with a 2 year old), we ate them in the floor of the bedroom on paper plates and napkins. Kind of fun and different. Here are some shots of the fun time....

Post powdered doughnut :)
Happy Anniversary Erik!! I love you so much! You are the greatest husband and father EVER. It's been the best 9 years and I look forward to many many more!

Sorry to everyone else for enduring through the sappy "I love you's" but they had to be said :)

Birthday Parties

On Saturday, Elaina was invited to 2 birthday parties. Both for friends of hers and daughters of good friends of our. Addie had her 4 year old birthday party - it was a carnival themed party with a blow up slide, carnival games, face painting, cotton candy, snow cones, and hotdogs... She had a blast - her are some shots of her enjoying her time there...

Up the slide - she must have done this 100 times.

Face painting... she requested a red sparkly heart. That's what she got.

Party #2 was Olivia's party. It was a garden themed party with lots of digging in the dirt for buried treasure and they got a chance to plant their own flower. Super cool idea and the kids loved it - especially Elaina.

Here she is digging in the dirt...

With her marigold that she planted in a pot to take home and take care of
Watering her flower
Waiting on cake and ice cream with her friend, Olivia (the birthday girl)
And the most awaited part of the day - cupcakes and ice cream - YUM!
Thank you to Addie and Olivia for inviting Elaina (and us) to your parties. We had a blast!

Random pics

So, no one thing we have done over the past few weeks has justified a blog posts all to itself. So, I thought I'd just post some random shots I've taken over the past few weeks.

Erik and my brother in law, Kevin, worked hard one Friday a few weeks back to build this retaining wall around one of our front flower gardens. I did not take before pics but it looks SO much better. I love it.

And they built this garden around my mail box... love it too. Thanks guys for the work Elaina had a play date with her friend Olivia a few weeks ago and they did this....

On May 1st, my company had its picnic at the Knoxville Zoo. It was a wonderful day. Elaina got to see her friend Caitlin and hang with her.

Everytime we go to the zoo, Elaina loves to play with in this old car. We've got pics of her in this same pose from the last time we went. Looking at the elephants with her daddy...

Posing in front of the gorilla cage

Finally, I had a Pampered Chef Party last week and my friends Lisa and Tanya came which was super exciting because I don't get to see them a lot. We all have girls that are a year a part. Elaina is almost 3, Isabella is almost 2, and Sydney is almost 1... We tried to get a shot of the 3 of them - you know how that goes. Here is the best I got. They are all so cute...