She's Two!

Our baby girl is 2! We had a happy weekend celebrating our funny

little girl. Dave had both Saturday and Sunday off (amazing) so we

spent Saturday at the Aquarium seeing turtles and penguins (two of her

favorite things). The area around the aquarium is fun and we spent

time looking in a cute little toy store, eating lunch, and playing

music with these guys that bring a bunch of little instruments for

kids to play with. Then we stopped in for Rita's opening day and got

some ice cream. On her birthday, she woke up to streamers on her door,

birthday morning decorations and presents! She got a new dress that

has a twirly bottom. When I first put it on her she said "pretty

dress" and made it twirl around her :) She had fun at nursery, enjoyed

a late nap on the couch, went for a walk in the 70 degree weather, ate

noodles and broccoli for dinner, ate birthday cake, and had a bath

(all these things are her favorites). She sang happy birthday right

along with us, and blew out her own candle. It was a happy weekend for

a happy girl!

Since blogger likes to mix up my pictures, and I don't like to un-mix them... here are some from her birthday weekend in random order.

Yeah... I know. This was the ONLY picture we took inside the aquarium.

 She looooves ice cream.

 Music outside the aquarium.

 Birthday morning!

 Happy birthday girl!

 In her "pretty dress" (ignore the mess and the ugly pillow in the background)

Some things that I love about 2 year old Kate:
-Her happy, friendly personality. She is definitely an extrovert, and I love how outgoing she is.
-Her amazing, curly blonde hair. It usually looks like some kind of wild mullet/mane, but I even love that too.
-She has strong opinions and sticks to her guns. Like, the other day when she insisted on going to the grocery store wearing pajamas with a swimsuit on top. There was not a thing I could do about it (she's really strong too).
-She loves her brother and always wants him to do whatever she's doing "Owen sing" "Owen jump" "Owen dance"
-She's always asking for a "daddy wrestle", but whether I like it or not...remains a mama's girl :)
-I love hearing her little voice say things like "yook at dat!!! I'm dancin!!"
-At the end of every book she says a loud "AMEN" as she closes it up.
-She loves water and her swimsuit, and could spend forever in the pool, shower, bath....
-The way she says "yum" and opens her mouth wide when she wants a bite
-How she called noodles "noodleoodleoodleoodles" (she just barely quit doing this, but I wanted to record it anyway).
-The way she dances to anything and everything.
-The way she makes us laugh, makes us happy, and reminds us not to take everything too seriously. (The other day I was trying to get mad at her for something and pointed my angry mom finger near her face. She looked at it for a second, gave the tip of my finger a lick.. and went on her way).

We love you Kate! Happy birthday, Big Girl!

Mexico 2013

It's hard to sum up a trip like this with just a few pictures and stories. The week was heavenly. I'm wondering how long it would take for me to actually feel ready to leave this place? I definitely wasn't ready to go home after just one week, but when you compare Mexico in January to Dayton in January... there really is no contest! We met up with some of my family at a resort just outside of Playa del Carmen. We were steps away from the beach, even closer to the pools and hot tubs, and neighbors to the rest of our family that also came to stay. We played, swam, went on adventure beach walks, ate delicious food (El Fogon), sang Karaoke (a first for me), snorkeled, wandered the streets of Playa del Carmen, and visited the always lovely, Xcaret park. Some of my favorite memories from the trip
- watching Owen learn to swim and snorkel. (His favorite sea creatures he saw were the upside down jelly fish) He even conquered his fear of sea kayaking (thanks to being tipped out on a previous kayaking journey). I think he collected his weight in beach treasures, and was always up for a beach walk. I'm pretty sure he could have out-walked my dad which is impressive. I loved watching little baby quail hatch out of their eggs with him. He loves birds and eggs and was especially thrilled to see this tiny little baby bird emerge. I was impressed with how willing he was to try new foods, and he discovered that he really liked real, authentic Mexican tacos (who doesn't?).
-Kate also loved to swim and woke up each day begging for her swimsuit and swimsuit diaper. She wanted to actually swim under the water, and was a brave (and sometimes scary) little thing in the pools. She did not, however, like to be all the way out in the waves of the ocean. I took her out to play in the waves and she cried and cried. She had on these little pink goggles, and when we got back to the beach I took them off and discovered they had filled with tears. Poor baby (mean mama?). She seemed to have been made for the beach, however. She got this lovely golden tan (which she STILL has, 2 months later) and the most incredible beach hair. I loved watching her watch the Mayan show at Xcaret. It was pretty intense, full of scary looking costumes, loud drums, fire etc... she watched very intently and at the end burst into enthusiastic applause, asking for "more owl show" (there was an owl costume in the mix). She also showed some pretty sweet dance moves at the big theater show at the end of the night, going out of her wake to make sure her little skirt twirled around her.
-One of my favorite days was when we went snorkeling at Yal Ku lagoon, and then went to Akumal beach. The lagoon was very pretty and the perfect place for Owen to try out snorkeling for the first time. The beach down there is so incredibly beautiful, a little more wild with lots of beach creatures and big crashing waves. I loved our walk out onto the rocks where we watched (and felt) the waves crash around us while the sun was setting. So, so beautiful.
-We spent many hours in the hot tub, watching kids swim, hanging out with family. Mexico is hard to beat, as far as family reunion destinations go.
-Here are some photos from the week...

An old canoe we saw on one of our beach walks. Owen is convinced it is "a million years old". 

 Pinata Party "We want candy!"

 Sunset beach walk, hands full of coral and shells.

 Pool time

 Wearing goggles and learning to put his face under the water gave him the confidence to confront his sea kayaking fear! 

 Owen and I catching a big wave. This is NOT was I was trying to get Kate to do... just for the record. All I did with her was walk out a few feet. 

 Goggles are filling with tears...

 Recovering from the trauma.

 One of the costumes from the "Owl Show"

 Other than the ocean, water is her happy place

 The boys, climbing some ruins.

 The little girls and their BFF, grandpa. 

 Snorkeling at Yal-Ku Lagoon

 Owen got the hang of it pretty quick. I love his big parrot eye in this picture.

 Akumal Beach

 Beach hair

 Owen and Jonah on a beach walk

 Daddy and Kate... one of my favorite photos from the trip.

 View from the room. Do you blame me for wanting to stay forever?

 O and the iguana

 Pretty beach baby

 This one makes me laugh...

Christmas 2012

Some Christmas pictures, in no particular order.....

Kate meets a reindeer. She likes to call them "Santadeer"

 Opening presents from G&G Dahl

Spreading out the "magic reindeer food" in Nana's front yard... you can also see the aftermath of the legendary Christmas Eve Snowball fight. 

Owen loves his mini library of reference books about things like weather, rocks, crystals, and dinosaurs.

Owen's Christmas program at preschool. They sang songs and acted out the nativity, and I melted into a puddle. 

Christmas morning. Kate was the last one to wake up, and still looks quite sleepy here.

Owen asked Santa for a really random, specific thing... he wanted a "toy earth". Not a globe, but a tiny toy earth. Luckily there are such things as "earth marbles"

Kate loved her babies, babas, and new baby cradle. 

Cousins PJ picture

Still loves her babies. Nana made matching blankets for Kate and her baby.

White Christmas! 

Big boxes = just as fun as the presents that came in them.

Birthday Boy

A little late here, but much has happened in the past month. Our Owie Boy is now 5 years and one month old! I love having a 5 year old. They can tell you what's going on inside their amazing little brains, are able to have great conversations, can laugh at the same funny things, and he can be a really great little helper when he agrees to it :) We decided to have another birthday party this year, he decided he wanted it to be a Star Wars/Airplane theme... which was really convenient since last year was Star Wars and the year before was Airplane.We busted out the bounce house again, had a pinata, pizza, games etc... The house was crazy and full and overall a big success! On his actual birthday, he had a birthday morning with decorations and one or two little presents to open, he went to preschool and was celebrated there, and had a birthday dinner of his choice, and got to go to the toy store to spend some birthday money then we came home for a cupcake, birthday song, and he got to open the rest of his presents. Pretty much a perfect day for our favorite little 5 year old.

Jedi Kate, in character, ready for the party.

 Friends and presents

 Friends and pizza

 Birthday Morning!!

 Friends and cake

 Birthday dinner at this awesome Vietnamese restaurant by our house. He picked the restaurant and was super excited to go. There was a lady there also celebrating her birthday (85th), we thought that was a happy coincidence. We were all sitting there, happily eating our food, Owen was munching on a spring roll or two, when we hear him say, kind of quiet and under his breath, "should've gone to chuck e cheese..." haha. But I think overall he was happy with his birthday dinner.

 Happy Birthday Cupcake

 Opening presents