Happy five-and-a-halfth birthday Ella!

April 3, 2009
Ella has been eagerly awaiting her 5 -1/2th birthday so she can be like her classmates (some of whom are now already 6). We marked the occasion with a cake, of course. She is wearing her Easter bonnet here. Now that Ella is 5 1/2, she has only 6 more months to go before she gets the bunny she has been bugging and begging us for. We don't really feel she is quite mature enough but after promising for almost 3 years, what can we do... Also big news: one of Ella's bottom teeth is a little loose so she may lose her first tooth in a few weeks' time.

March

This month marked a couple of memorable occasions. For one, Ella has started attending Dutch School. We go Saturday mornings for 3 1/4 hours while Jim and Felix go to Trader Joe's. Juf Iris and Juf Janneke are fun and the classes are a mixture of learning words, drawing and crafting, and singing songs. Ella has been reminding me that we must speak Dutch together more, so that she will become better and better, so I've really been trying to do that, although with my 7th grade (Dutch) education along with not having been speaking it on a regular basis, it's going to get more difficult. I am hopeful that with the new friends we are both making, we will both become more fluent. We are looking forward to and preparing for the Koninginnedagfeest (Queen Beatrix's Birthday Celebration) at the end of April - the case of poffertjesmix that I ordered has already arrived.

Felix is coming home from preschool with new things all the time, singing songs like Skip To My Lou and Row Row Row your Boat ("barely, barely barely, barely"). Here he is with Miss Maria and Kara:



Next, we celebrated Byron's 10th Birthday. He and Toots got some tuna for cats to eat, we sang Happy Birthday and Byron got a new collar. The white bits glow in the dark.






Here is Ella helping me make one of her favorite dishes, Spanakopita.

February

February was an eventful month. We went to Palm Desert and Palm Springs. We stayed with Granny and Blair and the doggies and saw Grandpa and Bube Sue a few times too. We had a delicious dinner at the Spaghetteria with them. Unfortunately it was too cold to go in the pool and it rained some of the time. We were able to visit the Living Desert though.



In school, Ella's class read a story called "The Rag Coat". They all decorated a square of fabric for a quilt.

There was also a big celebration to commemorate the First 100 Days of School. The kids made a crown with 100 stickers, a necklace with 100 Fruit Loops and a poster with 100 things (of whatever they wanted). Ella made one with candy hearts. Felix wanted to try on the crown too ("Mama, take my picture!").


Finally, my beautiful, fluffy, wonderful kitty Fluff Puff died peacefully in his sleep at a too-young age of 13, a few weeks after being diagnosed with a heart condition. Here are a couple of pictures of his last days. We will always miss him, especially when I sing lullabyes at bedtime, when he would purr and march on me, and at night when he slept with us, and out in the yard, where he loved to peer at the birds and squirrels, and warm his fur in the sun.

January

Playing catch-up...

January 18
We discovered for the first time the Sepulveda Dam Wildlife Reserve which we had drive by many times but never stopped at. There are hawks, herons, swans, songbirds, rabbits, etc. to see in this sanctuary in the middle of our busy, built-up Valley. Left the stroller the car and we all, even Felix & Ella, took a wonderful hike around. A well-deserved rest and snack-break of crackers and apple slices

January 19
The following day, we visited the Long Beach Aquarium and used our birthday-present tickets from the Weber-Fergusons. There was a friendly seal who actually posed to have her picture taken. She would come right up to the window to say hello and darted and danced around and around. It looks like she is smiling.
For EMILE - click here-> a movie of the seals


There is a section that like a tunnel that you walk through with a wall of fish on either side. The blur to the left of Ella is Felix jumping.

Felix counts

There is a longer post coming but in the meantime, enjoy this little rhyme from FDVD.

A, B, C, D, E, F, G.....

Felix loves to sing. His repertoire already includes Jingle Bells, the Wheels on the Bus, and a couple of Wiggles' songs. He also knows this one:



And Ella, not to be outdone, can read!



The book is "Go, Dog, Go." She's been making good progress since she joined kindergarten. In fact, she's good at reading, but she's even better at math. Who would have thought? The other day, she was doing an exercise from one of her school workbooks where she had to count the items in a picture and write the number next to it. She then added up the numbers from all four of the pictures and gave me the right answer. I was impressed.

Christmas

Ella is off school for three weeks and on the first day of her vacation, Jim (who is off this week too) took her to the library and they got a whole bunch of Level 1 Reading books. She has been reading one book a day and doing a few pages of her workbook, so she will keep up with (and is actually improving) her reading. She has been writing sentences too, mostly without asking how you spell the words. Here is one that she wrote yesterday on her favorite toy, her white board (click on all pictures to enlarge):



On the second day of her vacation, Jim took her to the Getty (at her own request).



On Christmas Eve, we went down to Candy Cane Lane and Candle Light Lane in Woodland Hills. Couldn't get any pictures as it was raining but we also take walks and bike rides around the neighborhood. This one is in our own front yard:
and this one is a neighbor's -

FINALLY! Christmas Day. Here is Felix with his new "bakketball" hoop which he LOVES

and here is Ella with the thing she has been asking and asking and asking for, and even had called Santa up on her princess mobile phone to ask him for it... a scooter!

and here are the two monkeys in their new bathrobes.

The three of us having some cuddle time -


Finally, at the end of the day, Thing 1 and Thing 2 got into their new PJ's and jumped all over Dada