Creating Christmas Cards

Step 1 - Create snow with white paint on green paper, grass, rocks, hair, arms, legs, and feet.

Preparing for Camping

Ellie spent a two partial nights in the tent with us last summer as practice for camping this year.  Now, as our first camping trip nears, Ellie is helping us put together our new camping equipment.  She helped take all the parts out of there cases and look over the directions.  Once the table and benches were set up she decided it was a good place to sit for a well-deserved snack.  She also stocked our camp kitchen with all her play food and dishes.

The Return of “E”

To Ellie’s surprise her Elf on a Shelf “E” returned to watch over her for the month of December.  Ellie has extended his name; he is now “Henry E. Elf”.  He has been hiding all over the house, on lights, paintings, off the curtains, in a hole in the ceiling. 

Feeding the Animals

Ellie is always helping feed our animals.  She knows where the food is stored.  At feeding time, she will prepare food for the rabbits and the alpacas.  She also likes decorating the rabbits with their greens!

Summer, Sand and Water

This was our first family summer outing to the beach this year.  The ocean was warm and Ellie laid on her stomach at the water's edge splashing and cleaning rocks to share with Mummy and I.

Ahoy Matey!

Ahoy, pirate Ellie was in search o' gold and chocolate treasure at a friend’s birthday party.

Finding Rabbits

Ellie took Grandpa Bobby and me on a search for bunny rabbits in our paddock.  Spike had caught one earlier in the evening and Ellie wanted to find one herself.  Off she went into the tall grass swinging a stick hoping to scare one out, but no rabbits appeared.  We went back up to the house and found Spike playing with his bunny.  All four of us then spent the next 10 minutes running after the bunny and Spike. 

Over the Fence!

Tonight, Ellie conquered the fence without any help.  The alpacas weren't as impressed as she was and just to prove she could do it, she climbed up and over two more times.

Finding our Christmas tree

We went to our local Christmas tree farm to pick out this year’s tree.  Ellie wanted a pink tree, but the tree farm only had green ones!  After running around all the trees and asking about a few very tall trees she picked the one pictured.  Then she used as much paint as she could, to paint the trunk of our tree so no one else would take it. 

Climbing

Ellie is getting very confortable climbing on the gate now.  She will climb up and go from one side of the gate to another and then sit on the post and watch the alpacas.  Last night was the first time I had ever seen her swing her one leg over the top of the gate and sit straddling on the top.

Recreating old pictures

Ellie was sitting in the chair next to the white tables that she sat inside as a baby.  I mentioned to her that when she was a baby she sat in the table and I took a picture.  She wanted to see the photo, so I found it on the blog.  Ellie thought the picture was funny and wanted to try sitting in them now.  So she studied the old picture and posed for a new picture.  Then she picked a few more to recreate.

This post is jumping back about 3 weeks, before her new haircut.

Ellie Taller

Ellie is 3ft 2inches or 98.5cm.

Tonight Ellie was talking at the dinner table and said “(she would) Get really tall and turn into a boy and have whiskers”.  This started a conversation about what Ellie was going to do when she was older and taller. (She always talks about being taller, so she can change the light bulbs.)

Here are some of her thoughts, in her words:
Swim with mummy and daddy; not bunnies, kitty or packas
Surf with Daddy, and not packas have no arms, share pink surf board
Going to fly with mummy and packas when get older
Drive tractor by myself, cut big grass
Climb mountains with daddy and little mountians
Going to get really tall with Mummy and packas and my costume has a little tail (Halloween)
Change light bulbs when verrrry tall
Daddy snowboard, not ellie she skies with arms (arms moving up and down – with handles?)
Ride big girl bike and scooter

Halloween Party

Ellie, a tiger, celebrated Halloween with all her friends, a clown, cat, pumpkin, Kiwi bird, fairy and others.  Thanks to all of Victoria’s hard work and preparations the party was a hugh success.  The kids played games and ate plenty of treats.

Guess

Can you guess what Ellie was for Halloween?

Baby Duckling

Victoria, Ellie and I were outside feeding the bunnies, when Victoria noticed Spike coming up the neighbor’s paddock.  As Spike came closer, you could see he had caught something and was bringing a new friend/playmate home.  Victoria started chasing Spike when he came to our side of the fence and Spike dropped his friend, which turned out to be a very young duckling from the neighbor’s pond. 

The duckling seemed OK and Ellie was happy looking after it, while we prepared to return it.  Ellie then placed the duck in a plastic box with hay and we carried the duck back to the pond. (This sounds much easier than it was.  I carried the duck and Ellie up the drive and then down the neighbor’s drive before Ellie started walking down the paddock.) We reached the pond and let the little duckling go.  Ellie was happy to see him walk back towards us, before hearing the mummy ducks quack.

Happy Halloween

Rabbits Everywhere

Rabbits, rabbits, and more rabbits, we can’t get enough.  Ellie no longer has to go on morning rabbit hunts or rabbit poo spotting down our paddock.  She now has two of her own. (They are actually Victoria’s rabbits, but Ellie thinks there hers.)  They are both girls and their names are Honey and Cola.  Ellie likes to be in the rabbit run with them and goes out every night to help feed them.

Water and Spike

We have been trying to teach Spike not to jump up on the kitchen counters.  Ellie has joined in on the fun and gets excited when she sees the cat being naughty.  She will grab the spray bottle and proceed to squirt the cat.

Tractor Driving

Ellie is now big enough to get on the tractor (mower) by herself.  She knows where the key is to start it or turn it off.  Don’t worry; it takes more than just the key to start it. When she wants a ride, she will yell for me and say “Daddy, made room”

Reading Sheep

Ellie enjoys reading books.  She normally shares them with her dolls and other stuffed animals.  But today was different.  After a family outing to the library, where Ellie borrowed a children’s story about sheep, she got out of the car and took the sheep book over to the fence to read it to the sheep.  It was very cute to see her turning the pages and holding the book up for all the sheep to see.

Swinging

“Go Higher” That is all we hear from Ellie when she is on the swings.  She is slowly learning how to use her legs to make her swing “like the big girls”, but would much rather Mummy or Daddy to push her.  She is also swinging very high laying on her tummy, which even scares me at times.

Rain is Coming

It has been raining a lot lately and Ellie knows we can all go outside and play in-between rain showers.    She is learning to watch for the next storm and says “rain is coming”.  Then we either hide under the tree or run to the carport. 

Mustard On Toast

Ellie has moved on from butter, jam or Vegemite on her morning toast and now enjoys mustard.  Not just any mustard, it has to be the wholegrain variety made in France.

Pants

Who need pants when saying good bye to a best friend.

Feeding Baby

As we were making breakfast for Ellie, she fed Baby.  She went into her playroom to get the food, lined it all up and placed Baby in her chair. Then proceeded to feed her until Ellie's breakfast was ready.

Rabbit Hunt

It was early in the morning before breakfast when I happened to see two large rabbits hopping around in the paddock.  Ellie and I decided that we needed to go on a rabbit hunt that was more like a rabbit chase to Ellie.  Don’t worry about the rabbits, as Ellie makes plenty of noise, there is no chance of us getting anywhere close to them and the cat doesn’t help either.  By the time we started down the paddock the rabbits were nowhere to be found. 

Snow and Mountians

Our next trip was to the mountains for a little sledding, snow ball throwing, and snowboarding for daddy.  We stayed in a house that we were sharing with Ellie’s little friends and their families.  Ellie decided that she was finished sleeping about 1am the first night and kept us both up, which made for a very long day.  The first day up the mountain it was very windy with little snow. The picture above was the first day with Ellie getting ready for the wind and snow.  The weather was much better the second day so the Dad’s went up earlier to get a ½ day of snowboarding in and then met up with everyone else around lunch time.  Victoria made a snow tunnel that some of the kids were going through and others were throwing snow balls.

Alpacas

Ellie and I surprised Victoria this weekend with an early surprise birthday present. Two alpacas!  Many of you might be thinking, why would we get alpacas for Victoria, but why not?  Actually, Victoria went on a school field trip with Ellie a few months ago to an alpaca farm and has wanted them ever since.  We even had the alpaca people out to look at our property to make sure that our paddock was suitable for them.  With the help of our friends, we made the necessary changes to the fence on Saturday evening and then the alpacas arrived Sunday morning.

Just a note: I jumped ahead in the blog entries, to share this with you and will jump back to the correct order. 

Holiday Time - Part 6

The trip to the lake was enjoyed by all.  Ellie had 8 days of playing in the water and getting many, many shirts and pants wet.  She loved it!  We got home on Sunday and we are off again on another trip on Saturday, this time to the snow.