Ella had her first ballet performance last month. It went really well. Her class was the first to perform. They were so terrible that it was adorable! Charley and I laughed so hard we cried. She had a blast doing it and worked very hard practicing for months.

We took Ella to the water slides for the first time at the end of June. She played for hours in the little kids' section. I was able to relax and just read a book in the sun. The next day we went to the Turtle Bay Museum and looked around. It was quite hot and I was pretty miserable, but she liked looking around at all the stuff. Her favorite part was the butterfly house. They have one in one of her strawberry shortcake books, so she was thrilled when she got to visit a real one.

We've made a couple river trips and plan to take a couple more. We are planning one more camping trip as well. A two night stay this time before school starts.

Ella went to a kids' camp with grandma, auntie, and her cousins. She was gone for two whole nights. It was a nice break for us even though we missed her bunches. They did lots of activities and played in the water.

School will be here soon and we are still trying to figure out all of our schedules and how we are going to work it all out. I guess we won't know for sure until we get there. I decided to only work the weekends at work while I'm in school. It will be nice to devote my week to school and pick up extra shifts when I have a little extra time. Ella will be going back to preschool 3 days a week. We have been looking into a more advanced preschool for her for next year, which would be her third year of preschool. She seems very eager to learn and we want to make the most of that.