A fun day at the park...

Hello world! I'm off to the park to feed the ducks and play!
This duck almost got me, but don't worry...I wasn't scared!

Look at all these geese! I ended up stepping in goose poop and getting it in the van. Oops! But it was definitely worth it, cause I had a lot of fun!

Out of food, so the geese decided to move on...

So, off to the park to play in the fountain and on the slides!

Mommy and I had lots of fun going down the slides together while Daddy watched Alexa in the stroller and was nice enough to take our picture!

It was a fun, fun day!

It's Papa Barry's birthday!

Alexa says "Happy Birthday Papa Barry!!!!"
Wish we could have been with you on your big day, but at least wanted to say we love you and hope your day was wonderful!

See how I'm growing up so fast?

It was a beautiful day in Manhattan today so we got to go outside and play!

Ellie took good care of Alexa...who is now sitting quite regularly in her Bumbo chair!

Love you so much and can't wait for you guys to come and visit sometime soon!

Grandparents always welcome!

Alexa Joy at 3 months

Our sweet Alexa Joy is just growing up TOO fast!!! As you can see from the pictures, she is turning into quite the smiley baby. Thanks Aunt K-Lo for the sweet outfit. It's one of her favs!
Ellie always wants Alexa to have some sort of doll or baby with her, so for this photo shoot, big sister gave her her yellow baby to hold. :) So sweet!
A few fun facts about our 3 month old:

• Alexa is holding her head up so well now and gets a few 15 minute stretches a day in her bumbo chair!
• She has a killer smile and it just melts her Daddy's and my heart! She is especially smiley every morning when she wakes up and her whole face smiles. I LOVE IT!
• She is starting to "talk" with us now with her little coos and gurgles. Oh they are just precious.
• Alexa is getting more tolerant of all the "Ellie love" that she receives a million times a day. I am so excited for my girls to be good friends!
• She is still waking up in the night - some nights even twice. So, I'm a little sleepier this time around with the middle of the night feedings! But she is worth it!
• Alexa is a HUGE Momma's girl! It's nice to be loved so much :) but sometimes makes it a big tricky if I need to leave her for any period of time. She can be crying her head off and the minute I take her, she will stop crying immediately. It's still funny to me how she knows.
• This girl does NOT like to be hungry. I've never seen a little person get so fired up as she does if she does not have her food every three hours! I think we have a little firecracker on our hands for sure!
• Our baby is definitely living up to her name and bringing our family great JOY!

Ellie at 25 months

I feel like I was just writing our "Ellie is TWO!" post and now another month has already passed by! Not sure if I will keep doing these monthly updates for the rest of her life or not :) but for now, I will continue because Ellie just keeps growing and changing by the day it seems! We just celebrated each of our girls monthly birthdays while we were on a staff retreat in Great Bend, Kansas!
Here are a few fun facts about our Ellie at 25 months...

• Her vocabulary continues to grow leaps and bounds! Yesterday she said her first 5 word sentence. Now, this is still an exception to the rule, mind you, but it's so fun to be able to really start to communicate with her!
• Ellie is becoming more and more of a little "mommy" these days, carrying around her baby dolls and taking care of them.
• She is definitely my big helper! Ellie loves to help me unload the dishwasher, the dryer, hold the dustpan when I'm sweeping, help us water the yard, etc. She will say "Ellie help" or "Ellie clean up!"
• She continues to grow as little miss independent! SO...everything takes us a little longer now. She wants to buckle her own carseat, get out of her high chair by herself. Her key phrase is "Ellie do it!". She has also become very choosy about which outfit she wears everyday and how she gets her hair done and what shoes she wears. Oh my!
• She has quite the little personality and is a bit of a prankster. Her big thing right now is she will run up to you and say "bug, bug!" pretending that you have a bug crawling on you and then she will LAUGH! She gets quite the kick out of herself. :)
• She continues to love Barney and now has added Veggie Tales to her list (thankfully!)
• Bottom line, our Ellie is a BLAST! I wish you could get a sense of her BIG personality from these posts... I will try to post a couple of videos soon cause writing just doesn't do it justice.

Thirsty!

Did a little running through the sprinkler today... well, sort of! Do you like the swimsuit and aqua shoes? :) Ellie insists that whenever she is even close to water, she has to wear these shoes! Thought this video of her trying to get a drink was too cute not to post! Enjoy!

Excessive HEAT Warning...

If you live in Kansas, you know that the last few days have been full of EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNINGS! Many days over 100 degrees actual temps with 110+ degree heat indexes. This combined with little to no rain has meant we're having a hard time keeping our grass alive! While Daddy has been out of town, Ellie and my job has been watering the grass and flowers early in the morning and later in the evenings. Well, yesterday Ellie decided we should water in the middle of the day, too! It was a great reason to get her outside and she loves to "help"... So here she is in action...watering one of the dead spots in our grass!

If you know Ellie, she hates to be dirty! I can almost here her saying in the above pic "Mommy, TOWEL!" which means "please come get this dirt off of my hand!"
She has actually been doing a great job watering and also pulling weeds... She's my right hand lady in the yard!

We're having lots of fun on these hot summer Kansas days!

Happy Birthday Papa Richard!

Today was Papa Richard's 55th birthday and since we didn't get to be with him on his big day, we took a few pictures to say Happy Birthday! We love you Papa!

Catching up...

Oh the blog... I am so sorry I've let myself get SO far behind this summer! I was almost too overwhelmed to even try to catch up! I think that's why I kept putting it off... But at least wanted to get some pictures up of my sweeties... All THREE of them! We have had a very busy, but WONDERFUL summer. We've travelled over 5,000 miles by car (minivan, actually :) and the girls have done fabulously! They are little road warriors! We have gotten to be with students, see family, ministry partners and also are now starting to get to know our neighbors in our new neighborhood in Manhattan. It's definitely been a summer of relationships, which I love. As you can see above, Ellie and her Daddy continue to bond and have great times together!

As have Ellie and Alexa. If you know much about Ellie, you will know that she has some major personal space. The only exception to this rule is her sister. We can't seem to keep Ellie off of her! It's hilarious. She loves to snuggle her and kiss her and hug her and try to sooth her when she's crying. She is a wonderful big sister and I know that someday Alexa will appreciate it, even if she's not quite sure what to think of Ellie right now. :)

And then we have our little doll baby Alexa. What a sweet addition to our family she has been. It's funny, but only after a few short weeks, I can't really remember life without her. She lives up to her name and definitely adds JOY to our days.

More to come soon, I promise. I hope to get back into the blogging groove now that we're settling back in at home and getting into "somewhat" of a routine! As routine as life can get at the Johnson house! Love you all... Thanks for being patient with me!