Everybody has a bad day...

Tap on shoulder..."Mom, I'm stuck"
"What? Oh Lily!" snort, snort (trying to hide laughter)

Lily's Birthday Party: Part 4

Lily is blessed with an aunt and uncle who spoil her silly! Here she is with Uncle Alan's package.

He sent her this cute dress...

A new outfit....

And an ice cream playdough set...

I forgot to take pictures of what Aunt Becky sent, but it was a new outfit, and a My Little Pony Popcorn Theater. Tyler also through in a bell for her bike. Lily loved all the new clothes and toys. You wouldn't believe how happy I was to get this last package and FINALLY have an end to Lily's birthday. It was drawn out WAY too much! :D

Lily's Birthday Party: Part 3

Today was Lily's REAL birthday. She kept calling it her birthday with the cake on it. To try and help her distinguish her birthday from her "celebrated birthday" we showed her on our family calendar that this is the day we are going to celebrate, this is the day daddy leaves, and this is your REAL birthday. On the calendar her REAL birthday had a birthday cake on it. So that is how she distinguished it in her mind. I must admit it worked fairly well for her.

Before Russ left we agreed that we still wanted to make today special for Lily. We didn't know how to do that exactly so I kind of winged it. I made sure that Russ had signed Lily's card with a letter just like we have done every year since she was one. When Lily woke up this morning I helped her move our calendar marker on to her birthday. It was so fun to watch her face light up with recognition that TODAY was her birthday. She got a great big smile on her face and yelled, "Today is my BIRTHDAAAAAYYYY!"

Allie and clapped for her and got her the card from mommy and daddy. She enjoyed opening it and having me read it to her. For breakfast I made her brown sugar oatmeal (her favorite!) The rest of the day was very low key. We went to McDonald's for lunch, and I let the kids play for about an hour on the playground. This was how I made the day special for Lily. Normally I won't stay more than ten minutes. I get bored, and the place smells like little kid sweat, so I can't staying for long. But this is something Lily LOVES to do. I brought myself some books to look at, and just let her and Allie go. They loved it. Her and Allie had the playground to themselves most of the time, and they played nicely together.

The rest of the day was low key as well. However, right before bed time Lily gave me a hug and told me that this was the "bestest" birthday ever! My heart burned with happiness because we had really tried to help her enjoy her birthday even though Russ had to be gone.

Happy Birthday Lily!

Happy 4th Birthday Lily!
We love you so much, and are forever grateful to have you in our family. Your upbeat personality and ability to show love to everyone are your greatest qualities.

Love,
Momma, Daddy, and Allie

Just a note...

Many people have asked me lately why I say "today" in all my posts even when I haven't written them on the day they happen. For me this blog is my journal. I would like it to be written as I remember things, and in present tense. Since blogger allows you to post date things, I write each entry as if it had just happened to me that day, then I go back and change the date. That way everything shows up on the day it took place. Now blogger and google reader don't exactly get agree on this. Google reader says, "You wrote it today, I put the date as today EVEN if you post dated it" So when I get in a good blogging mood, sometimes your google reader gets flooded by me. Sorry if this annoying to some of you!

Quintana Beach

We decided that we wanted to do something fun before Russ left on his business trip. Something we had been trying to do since we moved here was to go to the beach. With map in hand we headed out for Quintana. We had actually checked this beach out a couple of Sundays ago. It was beautiful so we decided to come back one day when we could actually play.

As I was gathering some last minute supplies from the house, Russ got the girls in their carseats. Don't they look like they are ready for some FUN?!

Driving out on to the beach we were greeted with the beautiful ocean and some small waves.

Apparently being able to drive out on to the beach is a new thing for Russ. In California you have to park and then walk on to the beach. Let me tell you how happy I am that we get to drive on ours. It is so nice to have the back of the van just steps away loaded with everything we need. I would hate it if I had to walk to a parking lot every time I remembered something else that I had left in the car.

We parked away from most everyone so it almost felt like we had the whole beach to ourselves. Russ took Allie and I took Lily, and we all went out into the ocean for a swim. Surprisingly, Lily was VERY nervous about being in the water at first. I don't think she liked the waves and how they could knock her over. Once I showed her how to go up with the wave and let move her while she was on her tummy, the whole thing became more exciting. Then she got some water in her eyes and mouth, and she was DONE with swimming. I must admit the water was REALLY salty and it did hurt when it got in your eyes and mouth. Russ said it was more salty than Pacific. I'm guessing that is because the water kind of gets "trapped" in the gulf, and the salt builds up. I could totally be wrong, but that is my theory :)

When Lily was done with swimming we went back to the beach to build a sand castle. Lily wanted to put some water in the mote so she made some trips to get water. She made a lot of trips. The water kept soaking in to the sand and she wanted to fill that mote up. So she went back, and forth, back and forth....

Allie was content on plopping herself down in the shallow water and playing. She splashed and kicked, lifted the bucket up, put back down, and just had a lovely time. She had a really hard time standing up at the edge of the water. When the water would pull back out the sand would shift under her feet. I don't know if it scared her or if she really lost her balance but most of the time she would crawl in the water instead of walk. It made for some really cute pictures of her.

Daddy played with Allie while Lily and I worked on the sand castle.

This sand is quite peculiar. Instead of just becoming moldable when it got wet, it turned into a gluey mess. It was horrible difficult to get it out of the shovels and buckets. Because of this we were quite happy with the fact that this morning we weren't able to find a store that still had a beach set in stock! It would have been a waste of money!

After awhile Russ and Allie decided to come help with the sand castle. Allie did an extraordinary job at sitting in the mote so it didn't get filled in when the waves hit :D

I love this picture because it show how intent Russ and Lily were on making the "perfect" sand castle. It also shows how nice it was that we could let Allie just wander around wherever she wanted to go. I love CLEAN beaches!

Here we go a wandering!

Working hard...

I really got a good chuckle out of seeing the ice cream bus going down the beach. I'm not exactly sure why it was so funny to me but it was.

Building up the fort...

Oh we give up! Actually we realized that we would need to be going home soon and wouldn't be able to finish the castle. So we plopped Allie in the middle of the fort (that she had knocked down two seconds earlier) and buried her in the sand.

Lily manages to get dirt in her mouth every time we go to a beach. Allie?! Not one drop! You would think Lily was the 1 year old not Allie!

Oh what the hey lets bury Lily too!

What?! Two isn't good enough? Okay, bury mom's feet too! The girls thought this whole things was hilarious! Allie kept laughing and patting her "sand" tummy. Lily just had the giggles!

We cleaned up our stuff, washed off in the ocean, and started to head home. We were driving along in Freeport when Russ read a sign for ________ Rootbeer. He quickly took a detour to the little shack. I thought it was closed by the looks of it, but Russ checked and it was open. We each had a rootbeer float and Lily had a strawberry cone. It was so fun to find a little shop like that. The ice cream topped off the great day at the beach nicely.

Lily's Birthday Party: Part 2

Even though I couldn't handle having a bunch of Lily's friends over for her birthday, we decided we would still let her do the "activity" we had planned on doing. She had been asking for months to go to Chuck E Cheese again. I told her for her birthday. The day finally came that I HAD to let her do it or else be a horrible lier. In the Sunday paper I found a coupon good for 4 drinks, 1 large pizza, and 30 tokens at Chuck E Cheese. Even though it wasn't the best deal we took it.

Here are Russ and Lily waiting for the pizza. We of course had to order pepperoni so we could pick them off and make cheese pizza for Lily.Allie got lucky and was able to eat before the pizza arrived. Baby's are so lucky they get everything they want almost immediately!Lily did great at eating before getting all bouncy and ready to play. She was very patient which is unusual for her. When we let her loose she headed straight for the monster truck. Russ and I were quite surprised that she wanted to go on this. Last time we tried to have her go on it and she kicked and screamed at us until we let her run away from it. Funny how a few months can change things! Toward the end of the ride we plopped Allie in there to see if she liked it. She was a little nervous but seemed to enjoy it.

Russ and eventually split up. He took Allie and played some games, while I followed Lily around. Lily likes to try out ALL the rides even the ones she is a little big for. I get all cracked up every time I look at this picture because of how HUGE she looks, when actually the ride was just built for someone much smaller than her.

The horse race track has to be Lily's favorite ride they have at Chuck E's. I'm surprised she got to ride it. There is always a line for it, or someone takes like 10 turns on it. Oh, and if you look close you can see the special "Happy Birthday" sticker she got from Chuck E! She was so happy about it. We also got her a Chuck E balloon that she claims he gave her, but I forgot to take a picture of it.

More rides....

Are the tokens gone YET?! This was Lily's last ride by herself. We also had played a ton of SkiBall. She loves rolling those balls even if they only go in the gutter and she doesn't get any points :)

Daddy spent a lot of time on the car video games. Allie was mesmerized by them. Russ told me many times she would walk over to one, pat the chair, and then look back at him. So funny!Lily kept eyeing this blue screen the whole time we were there. I never understood what it did until I saw two other little girls use it. I made Lily go try it out, and she put on quite a show!

The last game we played before leaving was this car racing game. With Lily stearing and me pushing the gas we somehow manged to come in 20th out of 43 cars. How does that happen with a 4 yr old stearing?

We came home to cake and ice cream. I made Toodles from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. It was a pain! I piped all that frosting on there. I was too scared and short on time to try out fondant on it, so I got to pipe for 3 hours! And rest assured I cried when I filled in a bunch of it with the wrong color. Russ reassured me that you couldn't even notice. YEAH RIGHT! Lily picked out the ice cream which happened to be Blue Bell Strawberry. For all you Idahoans out there, Blue Bell is equivalent to Reed's Dairy just MUCH bigger scaled. At least I think it is equivalent....

Lily was thrilled with Toodles. I guess that is all that matters right?!

Don't forget to make a wish!

It was a fun day! I'm pretty sure Lily enjoyed it.

Lily's Birthday Party: Part 1

***Due to the fact that A. I take to many pictures and B. Lily's birthday was on multiple days this year, I have had to break it up into parts! Enjoy reading it!"

Today was Lily's "unofficial" birthday. Since Russ is going to be out of town for her birthday we decide to celebrate it today. Originally we had planned on inviting a few family and friends over to help celebrate, but our family members couldn't make it, and I started to feel to overwhelmed to host a bunch of kids out my house two days before Russ was leaving. So we cut it down to just our family celebrating with Lily. Which she was okay with :)

Lily saw me take pictures of Allie with balloons on her birthday, so she requested I take the same type of picture for her. These balloons are so much fun too! The kids played with them all day.

Her pile of presents ended up being taller than her! But what really cracks me up is what Lily is holding. A few days ago she got into our envelopes, wrote something on a piece of paper, and sealed it in the envelope she stole from us. She then placed it on top of the TV stand. A couple of times I tried to sneak it into the trash, but she caught me and would run it back to the TV. This morning Lily ran and grabbed the envelope and squealed, "I got a card from ME!" Yes, Lily had "sent" herself a birthday card in the mail. LOL She was so proud of that card that after she opened it she insisted it be in the picture with her presents.

Before she opened her presents we made her go wait in our computer room so we could bring in one last present. Check out her reaction to it.


And let the opening commence

This girl has a SERIOUS shoe fetish!

These were from Allie.

Grandma Lala and Papa Joe gave Lily the princess dress. She's such a knock out!

We know for a long time that we had to buy this for Lily. She loves to jam out on guitars.Allie preferred to dance with the guitar when she got a turn on it.

Russ got into the jamming out a little too! In case you are wondering that is a tutu I made for Lily's birthday on Russ's head. Not exactly what I though it would be getting used for :(

Then of course Lily wanted to put her tutu on her head.

And jam out...

Allie just thought everyone was plain nutty! Of course she was secretly thrilled that she had received Lily's OLD tutu. She looks like the perfect ballerina!

Oh look at my beautiful ballerinas! Now you can see what the tutu is REALLY supposed to look like! Except the fact that I made it about two inches to big. What can I say, I wanted her to have room to grow. It is on my to do list to fix!

This is a fun video of the girls dancing....

So ends...part 1 :)