Fun (and creative) Time with Ella

I traveled to MA this weekend and enjoyed an awesome visit with Ella and Greg.  It was delightful!  Ella was funny, polite, well behaved, a great helper in the kitchen and very creative.  Greg was patient, a welcoming host, a great cook and a wonderful, loving dad.  

We started our visit by making Halloween decorations, then moved on to coloring with pencils. 

This was as far as I got before we moved on to sculpey creations.
 
We spent a good hour or so working with this fun clay and Greg was able to get some outside work completed.  I tend to be am a perfectionist.  Everything I do needs to be perfect, which of course, it never is; therefore, I'm never happy with things I do or make.  I stress over everything being perfect...even sculpey!  Thanks to Ella, I was able to work on being satisfied with less than perfect.

I brought home a nice ball, a square of squares and a not-so square of squares.

The purple and white square pieces reminds me of red onions for some reason and the bright yellow reminded me of cheese.  Weird, I know!  Ella cut the green/yellow/blue squares, which are obviously not all the same, therefore not perfect and there was no way I could make them perfect.  Soooo, I satisfied myself with less than perfect.  It was a good life lesson ;o) and I like them both equally.

Next up...cooking dinner.  Greg chose a recipe for acorn squash and apple soup.  Ella loves helping Greg cook and she does a really good job.  She has learned a lot in cooking class.  I'm quite sure Greg and Wendy were not helping me cook this much when they were seven and I know for sure, they were not handling knives this big.

 

The soup was delicious so I had seconds.  Lemon bites for dessert!

After dinner...games, games, games.  We played Loopin' Louis, Sorry Sliders and Mr. Diamond.  Ella won a few and lost a few and she was a very good sport!  

Time for bed.  We did some problems in the Big Book of Brain Games and took some selfies, which didn't turn out very good ;o(

 

 

Cracks me up that she knows exactly where to look!

After a great night's sleep and a morning wakeup call compliments of Ella, accompanied with some snuggling, we had breakfast and still had a little time for more creating, this time with kinetic sand.

 

I don't have any idea what this stuff is but it's very cool.  It doesn't stick under your nails, doesn't smell and just sort of falls apart when you hold it in your hands.  Any guesses as to which creation is mine?  Ella's is quite obviously a turtle while mine is quite obviously...nothing recognizable.

They headed off to church and I headed home.  I had a lot of fun with Ella and thoroughly enjoyed my time with them both.  Hopefully, I can do it more often.

Thanks for stopping by...
;o)