Wrapping up April

"Summer" has officially began for Erika since she finally wrapped her THIRD year of school after turning in her final papers yesterday....ah. What a relief! Despite the fact that summer school will ensue all too soon, at least there's only ONE class and NO internship! Could be worse, right? Since it seems that so much has gone on this past month, we'll let the pictures tell the story for this post:

Who new a visit to Petsmart could be so much fun? Ella has a MAJOR fascination with birds and thoroughly enjoyed the bird aisle. Here she is "signing" the word bird...

...and squatting for a better view.

Here's Erika at 19 1/2 weeks - we'll have to post some updated pics since the belly has grown in the past 2 weeks! It looks so tiny here! And, speaking of Baby, we had our ultrasound last week and everything looked great; baby was healthy and ACTIVE. Uh oh.

Easter weekend and dinner at the Carlson's - here's Ella with her "Martini Grandmothers!"

Ella showing off her usual happy demeanor - and enjoying a banana!

Looking through her Easter basket with daddy

The Easter bunny brought Ella some goodies, including some stickers which held her attention for quite some time!

Easter basket grass sure is shinier than the real stuff!

How's this toothy grin, mom?

Showing off her Easter dress from grandma

Ella's second Easter.

Ella and her mommy after Easter mass

The Easter bunny left a little gift for Ella on the doorstep while we were at church (thanks to our neighbor!) and Ella notices that this egg rattles....hmm, what's inside?

Say cheese!

Posing with Grandma

Celebrating Baby Murphy at Ami's shower in Richmond - Ami is about 34 weeks here and Erika is 20 weeks.

Johnson's, Murphy's, and Carlson's hanging out post baby shower

And, while we enjoyed a day in Richmond, Grandma and Pappy had Ella (and Cooper) duty in Williamsburg!

Stopping to smell the flowers...

Is anything sweeter than a sleeping baby? Ella created a nest with all her blankets...

Yellow polkadots!

Ok. Ella LOVES the playground, particularly the slide. What we've learned to do when it's time to leave and have Ella wave "bye bye" to the slide and playground - somehow this helps subside her frustration that it's time to leave! So now, when we leave, she always says "bye! bye!" Hey, we'll take any little trick that'll work!

Posing for a post-bath picture

Getting ready to head out to dinner for Uncle Grant's 26th birthday!

She was a little busy bee before dinner; we were lucky to get even this shot!

Posing with daddy

Ella with the men: Daddy, Uncle Grant, and Opa (with his eyes closed, oops!)

We'll start catching up with this....

Just when we thought we were all caught up on our blog posts! Just goes to show that time goes by way too fast and that we've been a little busy around here. We've had some fun times recently but will use this blog update to share our running adventures during the Cherry Blossom 10 Mile run. On April 5th, we joined Sandra, Shaun, and Meredith along with 15,000 people or so for a beautiful spring morning run! Since last year's run was miserably rainy and cold, we were thrilled that the sun was shining this time around. After filling up on a pasta dinner, we stayed over at the Johnson's home so we could get up bright and early the following morning of race day. Since this was Baby Carlson's first face, we held back on our pace and Erika made sure to drink plenty of water along the way (per doctor's orders, of course!). Shaun and Sandra kept us company although our fast-paced friend Meredith went for the gold! At the end, we treated ourselves to a delicious, and much deserved, brunch at Whitlows. The team sipped Mimosas, Bloody Mary's, and coffee (for the pregnant lady) and just enjoyed the post run morning!

Baby's first race - one day shy of 18 weeks

We did it!

Brunch at Whitlows - ah, so tasty!