The Weekend

Over Memorial weekend we got to introduce Ella to a lot of people who have loved her since before she was born but had never actually met her before.

I was afraid she would get stranger-anxiety but she was positively basking in all the attention, she loved it!

She loved it so much she never wanted to sleep, which meant that by the end of the trip she was hugely sleep-deprived.

But that ended up working in our favor because she slept the whole drive home. 

And on the drive there she was so good!

Occasionally she would make quiet little moaning noises to let us know she wasn't thrilled about being locked into her seat for so long, but then I would just throw her toy or a bottle and she would be content again.

Also, I took a ton of pictures, but somehow I missed getting pictures of so many people!

Okay, seriously, this girl is in love with napkins.

She can spot a napkin a mile away.

And she does everything she can to get her hands on it so that she can stuff it into her mouth.

Pretty soon she is sitting in the middle of a large pile of torn, slobbery, chewed-on and disintegrated napkins.

That bottom left picture, that is just mine and Ella's stuff, all packed up for a mere two days vacation.

Holy cow.

One bag stuffed with bottles, another bag full of toys, another one with multiple outfits in case she pooped through a couple of outfits and then there's her entire bed that needed to be packed up and a stroller and car seat.

I had no idea how much stuff Ella needed in a single day until I had it all packed.

Also, Adam and his grandma introduced me to Words with Friends this weekend and now I am hooked.

Adam just scored a 39 point word against me and I am now losing, and I was majorly winning before, so things are getting intense.

Things are also getting intense in the two separate games that Adam and I are playing against his grandma.

She is really good at Words with Friends.

She has us both working hard to try and keep up with her high-scoring words.

I pretty much love that Adam's grandma will play that game with us.

And this wonderful couple introduced us to Draw Something.

That is an awesome game!

I drew a picture of Yoda and they guessed it before I even had drawn the lightsaber.

Whoa.

And then, of course, there's the good old fashioned games that you don't play on your phone, like croquet and hillybilly golf and Forbidden Island.

Basically, it was a wonderful weekend!

The End.

Moments in the life of the Baby of Cuteness

My favorite part is at the end

Clip One

 I just love that little grin of hers and how much she loves to play with her dad

Clip Two

She loves that song so much, it makes her smile every time she hears it, without fail

Clip Three

Ella in her bed, flailing her hands and playing and stuff

Clip Four

How much she loves splashing and swimming

Clip Five

This is the first time she's ever done something to make herself laugh

One more time in HD

It was brought to my attention that the video of Ella gagging on her veggies isn't such great quality and it's hard to see her facial expressions, so here it is again in HD so that you can fully appreciate her trying to throw up:

Dancing

Did you guys see So You Think You Can Dance last night?

It was wonderful!

I had started doubting whether or not it really was as wonderful as I remember and then it came on and it was just as amazing as ever!

I was crying right along with Mary Murphy (who, by the way, I just love, I love her smile and how she screams when she sees a dance that she loves, she just seems like someone who you want to be around because she is so happy and nice and stuff).

And Nigel's faces at some of the auditions, not only were they great, but I agreed with a lot of them.

Adam liked the hip-hop auditions, I like the contemporary ones.

This was one of my very favorite auditions:

That may have been one of the auditions where I was trying to hide from Adam the fact that I was crying. 

Because seriously, who cries over an audition?

I couldn't help it, I just loved it!

Go Hafen family!

This weekend, Ella is going to meet some of her great-grandparents and some great-aunts and uncles in the Spanish Fork/Provo area that she has never met before.

We are so excited!

But we're dreading Ella's reaction to the long drive.

We'll see how it goes.

Once upon a time I was determined to be an ice skater

When I was little I was determined to one day be an ice skater.

I had my whole life planned out based on that dream.

I decided that when I was in my early 20's I would represent the U.S. in the olympics with my ice skating skills.

And I would be amazing.

I watched ice skating all the time-- I loved it so much!

The thing is that I can't quite figure out is how I was so determined to be an ice skater when I had never once been ice skating.

Never.

But this posed no problem in my plans.

I think I had figured that when I first stepped foot to ice I would naturally be jaw-droppingly amazing.

Really, I'm pretty sure that's what I thought.

I don't recall ever even asking my parents to take me ice skating.

It wasn't a necessary part of the ice skating plan.

I was 10 years old when I first ice skated

And it's a good thing I had dropped my ice skating dreams by that point.

Not only did I not possess the natural skating skills I had once assumed that I had, but also because 

I'm about as flexible as a rock.

(When I was a junior in high school, my gym teacher applauded me in the middle of our stretching exercises during P.E. because she noticed that I had managed to touch my toes without bending my legs for the first time ever. It was a proud moment for me).

Anyway, that story has nothing to do with these pictures, but you know, it's fun to write down random memories sometimes.

Just hanging out at the DMV because it's fun and stuff.

She holds a bottle ALL BY HERSELF! Her skills are amazing.

I don't even know.

She just loves sitting in this basket so much.

Really.

Sometimes I just put Ella in a onesie and some shoes and use some water to paste her hair down and call it a day. 

Who needs a full-fledged outfit when you have shoes as cute as those?

And you see the balls in front of her?

Seth, Matt and Jake got them for her and she loves them.

I love that they thought of her when they were out having fun and would get them for her.

They also got Adam and me those cupcakes from two posts ago-- I don't even know why they're so nice.

Sweet Peas

We fed her some sweet peas.

I should have known when I saw that she had the same love for ice cream that I have that she would have the same opinion about vegetables that I do.

A dance and Ella's shoes

So You Think You Can Dance begins this week and I'm pretty much dying with excitement because I love that show so much. In anticipation of it, here is a wonderful dance from a previous season:

 

8 Pictures 8 Things

One.

When the guy at the cupcake store saw Ella and told us, "Good job, guys, you can breed again!" 

Thank you, kind man, for your permission.

Two.

How much she loves paper (as seen above by the way she holds the church program so tenderly to her heart, right before she stuffs it into her mouth).

Three.

Her uncle Seth says she's like a crane because she reaches out her arm and lets it rotate around her until it runs into something and then her fingers automatically lock onto it and will not let go until it has been brought back to her mouth to be chewed on. 

Four.

She likes to grab a lock of my hair and stuff it into her mouth along with her thumb and suck on it.

If I try and pull my hair out she grabs it again and re-stuffs it in her mouth with her thumb.

The ends of my hair get soaked. 

The things she eats are bizarre 

Five.

When she is laying on her back on the floor she holds her legs right above the ground so that they just hover there. 

She stays like that for a long time, never letting her little chubby legs touch the ground, they just hover a 1/2 inch above the ground. 

How are her thighs so thick if she works them out so much by holding them above the ground all the time? I don't even know.

Six.

She also rides an invisible bicycle with her legs in the air all the time, just peddalling away.

Seven.

When Ella wakes up from her nap she makes happy little squealing noises to let me know she is awake.

I go in there and usually find that she has scooted into the very back corner of her bed so that she can play with the toys that dangle down in that corner.

I turn on the light and she has one hand clutching her dangling toys and a huge grin on her face.

Eight.

Perfect moment: when she was sitting in my lap and I was singing her songs to lull her into sleep and she had my hair and her thumb in her mouth and she leaned her head against me and we just sat like that and I almost bawled my eyes out because I loved both her and that moment so much.

Wiffle Ball and Sonic

Adam's brother and cousins and some of their friends have been visiting this past week.

It's really fun to have them around!

Ella thinks they are wonderful, especially since they all play with her.

On Monday they had a wiffleball game in the park.

Ella was content sitting on her blanket and watching them for so long.

And then there was Sonic for 1/2 off drinks.

And last night Seth and the cousins babysat her so that Adam and I could go on a date.

Also, this video, called Caine's Arcade, that I found through this blog is so cute and worth watching.

Little White Lace Dress

Maybe I just really like Instagram, okay?

Last week there were a couple days where I just never changed out of my pajamas.

I get so much done on those days because I save so much time by not getting dressed and putting on make-up and all that.

And Ella didn't care that I had raccoon-mascara eyes all day long.

Poor Adam, though, coming home from work to find me still wearing his gym shorts and having bed-head. 

But you have to have those days every once in a while.

Just not all the time.

But when you do have one of those pjs-all-day-long days, make sure to take a picture on instagram because it can make even your slumpy self look cute (see above picture).

You will look slumpy AND vintage, and vintage-anything is automatically cute.

That's how amazing instagram is.

On Saturday I actually did get dressed and Ella and I went to the Saturdays Market. 

I didn't buy this headband that's as big as Ella's head,

but it was cute enough to be worth a picture.

Especially an instagram picture, since instagram makes even enormous headbands look cute.

Okay, I'll try to suppress the instagram rants from now on.

This holiday is pretty great

Puffed french toast in bed, a box of See's, a cute-faced husband and a cuddly girl.

Mother's Day was pretty great. 

I definitely would not be opposed to it coming again.

The cute-faced boy served breakfast in bed to both his girls.

My brother, Matthew, who is on a mission in Brazil right now, got to skype for Mother's Day. 

Adam and I skyped with my little brother on the ipad and he held the ipad up to face the computer where Matthew was skyping with my parents, so we could all see each other even though we were in three different places.

That was followed by a 4-way conference call to Adam's brother, Ethan, who is serving a mission in Costa Rica.

It was so fun to hear their voices and stories.

Yay for awesome technology!