The Birthday Girls

I finally turned the age I will be for the rest of my life!  I had a nice, relaxing 29th birthday and celebrated with cake and ice cream in the front yard with all the neighbors.  (Just hanging out with all the neighbors in the evenings is the best thing about summer!) One of my amazing neighbors made this awesome cake for Cassie and me.

We celebrated with a family dinner at my parents' house the next night.  Right now, I think Cassie likes that our birthdays are so close (June 1st and June 5th), but we'll see if she ever gets a little more diva in her. ;)

Opening Presents

This is payback for my little brother stealing my phone when I wasn't looking and taking ridiculous pictures.  I have to keep my eye on my phone when Bubba is around, or I end up with shirtless Taylor Lautner as my wallpaper and fart sounds apps...

Just hangin' out on the back steps and eating some after-party yogurt.  Cassie's favorite birthday gift was the goggles from Uncle Vaughn.  Obviously.

I threw Cassie her first real birthday party this year!  I felt kind of guilty that she had never had a friend birthday party before (and especially guilty that I was gone for most of her birthday last year because I was attending my uncle's funeral), so when Cassie's list of friends that she wanted to invite numbered in the twenties, I decided to suck it up and make it happen!  We played water games in the back yard with about 26 kids, and luckily I had several moms who stayed to help out!

Playing duck, duck, goose while we wait for all the party quests to arrive

Water relay race

Singing to the new 5-year-old

I love this one of Cassie!  She was so excited about the cupcakes with My Little Pony toppers!

Opening gifts- she got spoiled.  I guess you can expect a lot of presents when you invite that many friends....

The pinata was a big hit! (heh, heh)

The preparation for the party was quite a bit of work (I stayed up until midnight frosting cupcakes), but I have to say that the aftermath was way worse.  It got windy right as everyone was leaving the party, so I had to quickly get everything inside- presents, wrapping paper, gift bags, tissue paper, pinata pieces, decorations (I didn't even get a picture of them!  But they were cute, I promise.), towels, garbage can, paper plates, napkins, folding table, cupcake stands...you get the idea.  I just dumped everything inside and we drove to pick up Trevor from work (he had to work late that night) and went to a restaurant for Cassie's birthday dinner.  By the time we dropped Trevor back at work and I got home with the kids, it took all my energy just to put them to bed.  (Let's be honest.  At that point in my pregnancy [about 4 months along], I was totally exhausted every night after putting the kids to bed!)  So...absolutely no cleaning got done that night, or the next day, or the next day.  Seriously, that party had me wiped out for a full 48 hours afterwards!  I am proud to say that I did finally clean everything up.  And since my guilt is now gone, next year's birthday will be much lower key. :)

Flat Stanley

In April, Cassie got a big envelope in the mail from her cousin Lucy, who lives in Pennsylvania.  Flat Stanley was inside! (instead of explaining, how about I give you the link to the Wikipedia article?)  We were excited to take him with us on all our adventures and take pictures with him.  I really am grateful that Lucy sent him to us, because it really motivated us to do fun things and take pictures along the way!

He came with us to the Tulip Festival at the Thanksgiving Point Gardens.  (Grandma K gave us a pass to Thanksgiving Point for Christmas and we love it.)

He came furniture shopping with us at Ikea...we finally bought bar stools!  It has changed our life. ;)

Can you find him on the table?  I did a pre-school co-op with other moms in the neighborhood last year.  It was really a good experience since we were able to trade off every 5 weeks- it gave us plenty of time to come up with fun ideas, and I don't think any of us got burnt out.  Okay, maybe I got a little burnt out at the end since I was in my first trimester with baby #3.

Driving cars at the mall...sshhhh!  Don't tell my kids that you can put quarters into these things to make them actually move!  They get so excited when we go to the mall- they love playing on the cars, no quarters necessary.

Riding ponies at the Thanksgiving Point Farm.  I love this picture of Mr. B!

That cow is eyeing me suspiciously...

Unfortunately, since Stanley is made of cardstock, he got ripped accidentally and had to have surgery...

which involved a piece of packing tape.

At the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point...are you noticing a pattern here?

Don't worry, Stanley saved them by giving the shark a paper cut.

Throw Back

I got my first smartphone this year (I know, I'm kind of ahead of the times...that's just how I roll).  In the past, when I got a new phone, I just had them transfer all my pictures from the old phone to the new one, but none of my phones were awesome enough to have the capability of transferring pictures to my computer.  When I got a smartphone, I again had my pictures transferred to the new phone, and since I had a better camera on my phone, I started taking more pictures.  And I finally transferred all 5 years of my phone pictures onto my computer.  How about we take a peek at some gems from the archives, eh?

 Yep.  That's pretty much how I remember Cassie in her first year of life.

Our good ol' Wymount apartment.  This is probably early 2009 (?)

Happy bald girl! 

I promise I put bows on her...I guess I just never took pictures of it. 

Whoa!  She has hair!  October 2010, after our move to Riverton.  Then I got a new phone, and the camera on it never worked.  So let's skip ahead to...

 January 2013- Sledding near our new house

 Ah, future blackmail.  Cassie dressed Benson in her ballet clothes and "taught" him how to dance.

Saturday morning story time with daddy 

 Hair cuts!  Cassie's hair was pretty wispy and thin on the ends, so we had it cut into a bob, and it was a super cute look for her, and made her hair look much thicker.  It took a little coaxing (she was a Tangled fanatic at the time), but I'm so glad we did it.

 We take photos of artwork around here instead of saving it...we only have so much storage space!

 Inside the jaws of a shark at the aquarium with preschool friends

 Playing tag on the driveway on our first warm spring day

Our swing set- I think we're all glad we bought this!

Princess poses with a friend

Cruisin' in the neighbor's Mini Cooper.  As Cassie always says, safety first!

Happy Birthday Mr. B!

I was definitely more excited about Benson's second birthday than he was...in fact, I'm pretty sure he had no idea what was going on, but I sure was excited to make it a fun day!  A few days before his actual birthday (which I should probably mention is March 13th, since I'm writing this post about 5 months late), Grandma and Grandpa K came by with a few presents.  The biggest hit?  A little red ambulance that Grandpa picked out.

Now, on to the big day!  Benson came downstairs to a bunch of balloons in the living room and a pancake breakfast (again, I think I was more excited about the food and decorations than he was...) and he got to open a gift after breakfast.

Cassie had preschool in the morning, so Benson and I went on a little date to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point.  He loves that place!

Me and my handsome buddy...being eaten by a shark

We picked up Cassie from preschool and headed to the park for a picnic lunch.  As you can see, the kids were pretty happy about the park!

Benson took a great nap while Cassie and I made his birthday cake...which was kind of a disaster.  I just used a box mix, and I decided to follow the high altitude instructions, which made the cake way too crumbly.  Luckily, I was making the cake with two 9 inch round pans, so when the first one completely fell apart, I decided to just frost and decorate the second one right in the pan.  Lesson learned, though!  Just follow the regular instructions, even if you live 4,500 feet above sea level.

Dinosaurs!

Just snuggling and watching some 'toons after naptime

When Trevor got home from work, we got busy eating pizza and opening presents!  We didn't get Benson anything very exciting..I figured a two-year-old wouldn't have many expectations for his birthday.  He got some clothes, a swimming suit, bubbles, a magnadoodle, and a stuffed puppy, and he was totally pleased with the haul, as simple as it was!

I promise I tried to get some pictures of Trev...but he was yawning in the only one I got.

Happy Birthday to our little handsome-face!