Road Trip!

In mid-March we took a drive to Fargo for the weekend to meet Marshall's dad and stepmom at a hotel. It's about 1/2 way between Mandan (where they live) and the Twin Cities..so it's a good meeting spot and we've done that many times now over the years. Caleb was really excited for this, of course..he loves swimming now (he used to hate it!) and he loves to spend time with them. We had a crazy drive up there (usually about a 4 hour trip)...it had snowed the night before and the roads were awful. From Alexandria to Fargo, 1-94 was actually shut down, until just before we got that far. It was scary, but we drove slowly and we made it eventually.
At the hotel, the kids went swimming with Grandma and Grandpa and cousin Alex. Caleb just LOVES Alex and had so much fun being with him. And Alex really does a great job with Caleb, too. It's not easy having a 4 year old who talks nonstop follow you around, let me tell you. It was Ella's first time really swimming and she did ok. Grandma carried her around in the pool and as long as she couldn't see me, she was fine. She looked so darn cute in her swimsuit..the pictures of her here just crack me up. She is looking in the mirror on the closet door and then looking down at herself, like whoa??? What am I wearing?! Caleb went down the waterslide probably 100 times and was in the water for hours. We went out for dinner later and everyone was just exhausted. Caleb could barely hold his head up at the table! We had a rough night with Ella sleeping...apparently she's getting too big for the pack and play. She never slept much in it anyway and I had a really hard time getting her to fall asleep. It was a fun time but it's really a challenge to travel with kids! It will be easier when Ella is a little older.

Ella and her baby

One night several weeks ago, I could not get Ella to put her baby down for dinner...so she ate like this, holding the baby. She is certainly a good little "mother" to her babies. This one in the picture is her favorite, but she has several of them and she carries them around, hugs and kisses them, rocks them, pats their back, puts them to sleep in her baby crib and pushes them in a baby stroller. I've given her a few pacifiers and a bottle to play with and she puts that in the baby's mouth, pretends to feed the baby food, and even takes out wipes and wipes the baby's face. I am sure she's learned all this from daycare, there's a baby there several months younger (she's probably 7 months old now?)...Lila. Denise (our daycare provider) always tells us about Ella "helping" with Lila. She puts the paci in Lila's mouth, takes it away, takes her bottle away, pushes her swing, etc. Even this morning, when I dropped the kids off at daycare, Ella zipped up the stairs, couldn't care less that I was leaving, and started looking around for Lila right away. She wasn't there yet. IF (and that's a big if) we ever have another child, I'm sure Ella will be thrilled to help...if not super jealous!