Easter Dress

When Robert was here in September, we stopped in a children's store and saw an adorable corduroy dress. It was expensive, so I half-jokingly said to Robert, "Make that for Ellie!"

Well, he did. Not exactly, I'm sure, since he didn't have anything but a rough sketch and his memory to work from, but very similar, and very cute! And thanks to a chilly, rainy day on our visit to Texas, Ellie got to wear it as her Easter dress this year!

I'm Super Ellie and I'm here to help you!

This is one of the random things Ellie spouted while we were in Texas. She had a dishtowel cape on and ran into the room before stopping in front of Robert and declaring, "I'm SUPER ELLIE and I'm here to help you!"
"Are you going to save me?" Robert asked.
"No, I guess not." she answered, and walked away.

Not sure I'd want that super hero to come to my rescue! Poor Uncle Robert...

PIZZA NIGHT!

These two little people made pizza yesterday! =D We had a blast. Ellie helped me dump in the ingredients for the dough, and then I divided the dough into 3 balls to make individual crusts for each of us. Ellie got to roll out her own.



Getting ready to roll!









Putting the pizza crust in the oven! Mmmm!



3 little pizzas, one for each of us! Ellie made hers a heart. =D She was very excited about her heart pizza.



Made with LOVE! Mwaaa!



Ellie got to top her own pizza, too, with spaghetti/spinach sauce, canadian bacon, and soy cheese. I had a canadian bacon pizza, too, and Leif got a yummy Greek pizza complete with onions, peppers, olives, spinach, and feta. What a yummy dinner!

Teeny Tiny Teenager

One of the first nights we were in TX, Ellie was having a particularly hard time going to bed. She kept getting up for various things, which eventually resulted in spankings when she got out of bed. Then she stayed in bed, but resorted to letting me know she was unhappy by screaming. In one such screaming fit I heard these words shouted from the other room:

"I will never, never, NEVER obey Mommy!!"

Needless to say, she got in trouble for that. But where did that huge attitude come from in such a teeny tiny toddler? I remember a story from when I was little once where my mother told me that I was not to talk to her like that until I was a teenager. I was about Ellie's age. I think that means she got it from me. She's my teeny tiny teenager.

We're home!!

Ellie was particularly thrilled with the short tram ride from Concourse A to B. It brought back scads of memories of my growing up years when we got to ride the tram around DFW. I remember riding it around and around and around, for hours on end. In reality, it was probably just the once that I got to ride the tram at DFW, with the Newlins when I went with them to drop their grandparents off at the airport. I don't know why I was with them, but I do remember riding to the airport in their station wagon, sleeping on the floor of the car. Strange memory, but there it is. But I digress...

So Ellie thought the tram was great. And thankfully, she was happy to ride in her carseat in the stroller for this little adventurous trek around the Denver airport. She wanted to walk in DFW while we waited for our flight and that was, well, a little on the crazy side of things. I let her have a bite of Dad's bagel on the way to the airport this afternoon and I'm afraid it must have had some milk product in it, because she was crazy! Thank goodness she was much calmer at Denver, when we had a 3 hour layover.

So, the layover... it was great. We made it to our gate B80 (waaaaay at the end of the airport) after stopping for a frappuccino, muffin, and soy milk. Ellie watched a smidge of Little Einsteins on the netbook and then fell asleep. Let me tell you, a sleeping 2 year old on a 3 hour layover is a beautiful thing!! While she was sleeping, I decided to go looking for some "real" dinner. Overpriced dinner, if it must be, but some froufrou coffee and a shared banana muffin was not going to hold us until we got home at 11pm. But searching for food while Ellie was awake was a bad plan, as she wanted ice cream from every place we passed. It turns out that when you start from gate B80 in the Denver airport and go looking for fast-ish food, you don't find anything until you get to gate B30. That's a lot of walking! But I found a McDonald's and got a Southern Style Chicken Sandwich (if you haven't had one, you should. It's actually good.) for myself and a pack of chicken nuggets for Ellie when she woke up.

I assumed Ellie would wake up before we got on the plane.

She didn't.

Hmmm.....

May I just say that I'm extremely thankful for the woman who offered to help me get onto the plane, extending her sympathies because she, "has a 2 year old at home and knows what it's like"? Thank you, lady! She carried my 2 carry on bags (small plane, so I had to planeside check one when I checked the stroller) and I carried on the little girl, still sleeping in the car seat.

It's 10:37 right now, and she just woke up. She's eating the chicken nuggets. I'm glad, too, because after she slept through the layover and most of the flight, I was afraid I was going to come home with an overpriced, uneaten box of nuggets! Whew! Frugality crisis averted...

So, we're almost home. Well, by the time this gets posted, we will be home. =D But right now we're sitting in the comfort of seats 12C and D. When I saw the ticket assignments (which were originally not next to each other... that would have been exciting for some poor person who got stuck next to Ellie, ha ha!) I was happy that our seats were closer to the front of the plane. We were in row 20 on the last flight and I was looking forward to having fewer rows to haul stuff down this time. Well, there were fewer rows, but not because we were closer to the front of the plane... we are sitting in the very back row, right next to the bathroom. =D

I have had a great many flights go wrong. Missed connections, late flights, canceled legs, landing in the wrong state, sleeping in the airport, taking a taxi to the next closest airport to catch a flight... Lots of flights gone wrong. You'd think I'd be used to it, but each time it throws me for a loop. It really does. So tonight I'll just be thankful to be home, sleeping in my own bed.

And tomorrow I'll drive back to the airport to pick up my bags that will be arriving on the next Frontier flight.

The Denver airport has free wifi!

That means I can give you up to date info on my flight so far, in more than 160 characters! =D Here's what's been going on today...

First, we got in the car around 12:15 to drive to DFW and fly home from Texas. The drive out there was fine. We made okay time, which was good, because I couldn't get frontier.com to cooperate and let me print my boarding passes. Thankfully there wasn't a long line at the Frontier desk and we were able to get our bags checked and boarding passes printed without too much trouble.

I'm taking a car seat back with me to MT so I can take it with me when we fly in July. What that means is that Ellie will be flying both flights today strapped into a car seat. It also means I have a full size car seat strapped into an umbrella stroller and a 2 year old strapped into the car seat. Add to that 3 bags hanging off the back of the stroller and you've got a pretty good idea of what we look like traveling through the airport. It's a sight to behold, but it is even more a sight to watch as we disassembled the whole rig, plus the clear baggie of liquids, a computer, and our shoes, onto the security conveyor belt. Thankfully there wasn't a line for security (in Dallas! I was thankful) so we could take our time getting through security.

So security? No problem. Finding the gate? No problem. Flight listed as on time? No problem. We sat and waited to board, when the board changed and said our flight was due to depart at 1720 instead of "on time". On time would have been 4:15. Whaaa? I asked a gate rep about it and she looked at me like I was stupid and said, "It's military time, Ma'am."  (I'd like to interject here that none of the other times, which were all after noon, were listed that way, so there was no need for the snippy. I was just asking...)

So... flight's an hour late leaving. My Denver layover was only 45 minutes, so I asked what would happen if I missed my connection. I'd be rebooked on the next flight. That's all she could/would tell me, so I waited for the next person to help me. That didn't happen for quite some time.

At 5 or so, when we were supposed to be boarding our plane, there still was no plane at the gate. Hmm... At this point I realized that I was sitting right in front of a giant sign that said, "Running Late? We're not! Frontier Airlines." It struck me as sort of amusing.

My flight was no longer listed as departing at 1720, but was now listed as "on time." Again, confused. So I asked tthe gate attendant, who was more helpful than the last. She offered to rebook me on the next flight from Denver to Bozeman since I'd missed my connection. That flight left... tomorrow. I wasn't looking forward to sleeping in the airport with a toddler, so I asked if she could rebook me on the United flight I knew was flying out at 9 (thanks to a call in to Leif, who told me about that flight). She booked me on that, and I was thankful.

We boarded the flight to Denver and all was well. Ellie sat in the car seat, and they gave us free DirectTV to compensate us for the late flight. So I let her watch cartoons the entire flight. She was happy.

On the way off the plane, I realized just how strange I must look boarding and unboarding a plane. I had Ellie on a leash (a cute little monkey backpack leash that she loves and named "George") hauling her own little pink wheelie backpack, and I was following her carrying 2 of my own bags over my shoulders and a carseat on my head. Yeah. I am traveling in style!

So... Denver. Here we are. We got off the plane at gate A20-something. Our flight out was at B80. Those are pretty much on opposite ends of the airport. Lots of walking, a couple elevators, and a train ride! Fun. Good times. And a 3 hour layover that meant we didn't have to rush.

Now they're calling us for boarding, so you'll get the rest of the story when I get home. And boy will it be good to be home!
--
Elizabeth Wickland
Independent Beauty Consultant
http://www.marykay.com/elizabethwickland
elizabethwickland@marykay.com
406-570-4199

Ha ha! I just found out that the United flight we got rebooked on didn't sit Ellie next to me. That would've been fun for the person next to her! It's fixed.

Ah... Peace & quiet. Child sleeping in the stroller. Starbucks in hand. Moving sidewalk. Flight out at 9. This is good.

Frontier's motto is: RUNNING LATE? WE'RE NOT! It's written everywhere. My flight's an hour late. Still no plane. Missed my connection already. To be continued

She loves Little People

And she told me this one's name was Eliana. Just like her. It's funny to hear her playing with her little toys, because, inevitably, one of them is named Eliana.

My mom picked up a small Little People pet shop set for Ellie to play with while she's here, and she's been enjoying it. We will occasionally "lose" her, and follow the little sounds of make believe play to find her in her room having conversations with the Little People.

The other day Eliana came into the room and said, ''I'm a cowboy and you're a hippopotomus!''

Perhaps my dad said it best

when he said, "You know, Ellie says so many funny things that there's just no way you could write them all down."

So many funny things.
Every day.

I can post to the blog via text message now! Hopefully that will make it easier to remember all the funny things Ellie says when I'm not near the computer...

Dear Jesus...

Tonight Ellie was having trouble obeying and staying in bed after she was supposed to be going to sleep. So, after she got in trouble for getting out of bed, I asked her if she wanted to pray and ask Jesus to help her obey next time she was tempted to get out of bed. She said she did. So we rehearsed the prayer she should pray the next time she felt like getting out of bed instead of going to sleep:

"Dear Jesus, please help me to stay in bed and obey Mommy. Amen."

When we had finished, Ellie said to me, "No, Mommy, we should pray...

'Dear Jesus, please help Mommy's cooking.'"

Now... how is a mother supposed to take that?! I made her cheesy eggs for lunch today and they were just fine... she ate all of them! Well, it looks like I know what I should be working on when we get home from Texas...

baby birds...

Ellie just informed me that baby birds eat eggs.

I guess I should explain to her sometime that no, they don't. They sort of hatch from eggs instead.

But then I'm scared that we'll have to get into the whole eating eggs is like eating baby birds thing, and I just don't want to go there. What if she stops eating eggs?!

Sigh. For now we'll just stick with the fact that baby birds don't eat eggs, they eat worms.

... and hope she doesn't pretend to be a baby bird while we're out in the back yard sometime.

Dinosaur Rex

Ellie's favorite animal right now is.... the mighty dinosaur. She loves to pretend to be a dinosaur, and she loves to talk about dinosaurs. The other day I asked her what her favorite dinosaur was and she told me, "Mike!" Mike is the dinosaur pictured above, who stands in front of the Museum of the Rockies. When I asked her what kind of dinosaur Mike was, she proudly told me, "He's a dinosaur Rex!"

It has been brought to my attention...

... that I've been slacking in my blog duties. So here's a recap of our last 3 weeks...

- The weather's been snowy and/or rainy, with the exception of 2 beautiful days this week that we got to spend outside (and sunburn our scalps)!

- Ellie and Leif have been sick for the past 2 weeks. I finally sent them to the Dr. yesterday and they came out with the verdict that they just have nasty colds, but nothing serious.

- A couple days ago I had my first skinned knee duty as a mom. Ellie fell on the sidewalk and skinned up her knee. It's not too bad, but it did require some cleaning, mothering, and loving. Now she has a scab on her knee, just in time for TX.

- Oh yes, we (Ellie and I) are going to TX for 10 days. We leave tomorrow!

- I got a new netbook (like a mini-notebook computer) this week! It's little and I can take it places with me much easier than the laptop (aka the "big" computer). I like it! (Though I'll like it more after Leif finishes working his magic on it and customizing it just for me!)

- I went to Salt Lake City in March for 3 days to attend a Mary Kay conference, which was wonderful! I'd never been to SLC before (aside from layovers in the airport) and it was my first MK conference, so it was newness all around. Plus I got a little 3 day break from the wee one, which was nice for me.

That's pretty much all there is to it. The couple weeks of sickness have pretty much wiped out all the fun activities, since Ellie has only been in the mood to lay about and whine until recently. But never fear! I'm sure there will be pictures from TX upon my return... I will resume my blogging duties. =D And if I get behind, just leave me a comment and I'll get back to blogging again. =D