Guest Post: A weekend with "Princess Ella" by Katrina S.

A weekend with "Princess Ella"

This past weekend I had the privilage of spending a whole weekend with my god-daughter Ella.

A couple of days before the weekend I wrote her Mom (my awesome cousin) and asked if I could "steal" her daughter for the weekend and she said yes!

Friday night I picked up Ella, and we headed for my parents place. On the way I said to Ella "I have a big bed at my house that I sleep in, do you think you'd like to sleep in my bed with me?" to which Ella replied "umm, you'll have to ask my Mom"!

When we arrived at the house she was a bit shy but it didn't take long for her to open up, by the time she went to bed we had painted her nails, taken pictures of her in a leather dress with heals and read a few stories. We brushed our teeth together and she said "I think you should have my strawberry toothpaste, it's funnest".  She had a bit of trouble falling alseep so I ended up crawling into bed with her and soon enough it was morning.

On Sat morning Ella popped out of bed at 6:30am and we had breakfast with my Dad (sugary cereal, don't tell her Mom!).

My family isn't very fast when it comes to going away so it took a while before we departed and Ella couldn't understand what the hold up was! Her and I went to get the mail and when we got back Ella said "I'm just going to wait outside", thinking that it's not going to be long till we leave... I ended up having to convince her to come inside and she spent the next hour being like "ok guys, lets go to the FARM!" lol

Finally we were on the road, unfortunately it's a bit of a long drive so we had to come up with a way to entertain Ella, we started off by looking at the different farms, but at a lot of them were really run down which led to a lot of questions and led to some pretty outrageous stories about Heffalumps falling out of the sky on to the barns when they ran out of pixie dust! Haha

When we finally arrived Ella was very excited. We went inside and saw Opa and Oma, and though she was shy it didn’t take her long to be running around and giggling as she played soccer in the house with Opa!

In the afternoon we explored “the brown barn”, Ella loved feeding the rabbits and chickens (even if the chickens were a bit scary). We spent a lot of time picking grass for them and even collected a bunch of eggs. Later we checked out the cows and spoke “cow” with them. Ella couldn’t figure out why the cows would just look at her when she was speaking “cow” and not answer!

I, having spent so much time on the farm growing up had to make sure that she did everything that you are supposed to do on the farm! So she ran on the silage bales, climbed the ladders up into the haymows, sat on the snowmobiles, and all that fun stuff.

Later we went next door to visit “the red barn”, there we pet the horses, saw all the cows (the ones who are milked) and met some cute calves. On our way over it was super windy and when we were walking she was getting angry at the wind and holding her shirt down. I was very impressed with how little fear Ella had, she pet everything, put her fingers in the calves mouth repeatedly even though she was convinced he was biting her! Haha

By the time we had visited both barns I was pretty tired! So we went inside and visited with Opa and Oma for a little while. I promised her that when Opa went out to milk the cows (in about an hour) we would go with him, so her being very smart asked Opa when we were going to milk the cows and he said “OH about 5’O’clock”. At 4 years old I didn’t expect her to realize when it was 5 o’clock but when the clock started chiming she wanted to know what time it was so we went over and looked at it and when I showed her how to read it she says “5 O’clock! Oh time to go milking!” (There’s no fooling that girl!)

Inside we watched hockey for a little bit and she was saying "go blue, go blue, go blue, go blue!!" and we tried to teach her "go leafs go" but she didnt like that as much as "go blue", haha.

When she finally got Opa off the couch and ready to go she was pretty comfortable with him and together they walked hand and hand across the field! Cutest thing ever! Of course to me it was important she got to do all the things I used to do when we went milking as well.

I showed her how to scrap the manure into the gutter and she thought that was a great job! The only thing is that’s a job that never ends, as soon as you scrap all the poo, the cows poo again and you have to scrap more poo! Ella thought it was the funniest thing when just after we would finish scraping poo we would have to go right back and do it all over again! She also was able to help move the wheelbarrow and rip up papers for Opa to clean the cows udders with. She wasn’t scared to get dirty (once I told her it was okay) and started announcing to people that she was a “farmer-girl”. At one point she told “big Mike” that she was going to be a princess and then a farmer-girl and he told her “once you go princess, you never go back!” So after that she was saying farmer-girl first and princess after. Haha

By the time we came back from milking it was probably 7:30 when we had dinner, and Ella was soo patient and ate whatever was put in front of her and didn’t even get grumpy! By 8:15 she was asking to go to bed and so together we went to bed since it’s rather scary to sleep on your own in a big old farm house. In the morning she started tossing and turning around 6:30 so I grabbed my book and started reading (in my head) and she got her book and did the same, so cute! By 7:15 we were downstairs talking with my Dad and I told him about how we had been reading and she said "I was reading in my head too". Then I said “would you like to go to the b...” and I hadn’t even finished my sentence and she was at the door! So by 7:30am we were back in the barn, feeding animals and collecting eggs.

Together we all had breakfast and then went to church, she was so well behaved at church, she just played with some toys, coloured and drew on the papers we had brought along.

In the afternoon we of course headed back to the farm! My sister Rachel (who loves horses) and cousin Samantha helped her feed the horses which was great and we went and saw a calf that has just been born and was still learning how to walk.

Soon enough it was time to go home! We were very sad to leave and say goodbye to Opa and Oma but we were all pretty tired and Ella and I slept in the back of the van most of the way home.

When we arrived back at Ella's house we were greeted by her whole family which was awesome! I think we both had a fantastic weekend and will have to do it again someday!