Happy Two You!

August 25th was Alice's second birthday and we threw an 'Elmo' party for her. I put this sign up a few days before her party to get her into the spirit of things and she just loved it. She knew what it meant before I even explained it to her. In her words it means 'Happy to you, Aya' or sometimes, 'Happy to you, Elmo.' She must have remembered it when we put it up for Bruce's birthday in June. A couple of days after her birthday I took it down and she was just devastated. Every once in awhile she'll point to the wall and say, "Happy to you!!!!"


We got an Elmo pinata and hung crayons and cutouts of Dorothy (Elmo's pet goldfish) from the ceiling and put Elmo faces on the wall.


The big hit was the birthday present we got her--a slide! Bruce put it together the night before and Alice was so surprised when she walked into the living room the next morning. It's taken her about a week to get tired of sliding down the slide--she now walks down it. Elmo now lives under the slide. He uses a dish towel as his blanket and it quite happy to be the lone resident in the castle.

We invited Alice's three favorite friends to the party--Liam, Tori, and Jacob. Their parents came also and everyone had a great time. While the kids were coloring their treat bags, the parents took a 'How well do you know Elmo?' quiz. If anyone is interested in how well they know Elmo, I'd be glad to send it to you!


After the quiz and coloring, we went outside to play games. The first game was the Big Bird game. Big Bird laid some eggs but forgot where he put them! The kids had to find the eggs to help him out. The eggs had jelly beans in them, which was a big motivator.


Next was the Oscar the Grouch game, where the kids were supposed to toss the garbage into Oscar's can. Only Liam (in red), who was the oldest kid there at 2 1/2 years really tried to toss it in. The other kids just walked right up to the can and threw it in. But they still had fun. After this game, the kids got a little baggy with some gummy worms in it, representing Oscar's pet worm Slimy (or is his name Smelly? I can't remember).


The next game was by far the most popular, because water was involved. Each child was assigned a fish bowl with Dorothy (a rubber fishing lure) in it and they had to take their cups, fill them up at a bucket located a few feet behind the chairs, and carry the water to the fish bowl and fill it up. Alice completely missed the bowl the first time, but really got the hang of it. The kids got a little baggie of goldfish crackers after this game.


The last game was inside--pin the cookie on Cookie Monster. Alice was fine wearing the blindfold (we actually used a hat so it wouldn't slide off) until she got close to the board, then she lifted the hat up a little so she could see before she stuck her cookie on the board. She was pretty sneaky about it too, though I'm sure she didn't realize she was cheating. After this game, the kids got a little bag of cookies, of course.


We then had pizza from Papa Murphy's, Caesar salad, pasta salad, and fruit salad. I got an Elmo video from the library for the kids to watch once they were done eating, so parents would have an opportunity to eat as well. It's amazing how glued kids are to the TV once it's turned on. It was a nice break for everyone.

After that we had cake and ice cream. We had gotten Alice's old high chair out for Jacob, one of the younger children, but Alice insisted that she sit in it! That was fine though--she was the birthday girl. She just loved the cake, absolutely loved that everyone sang Happy Birthday to her (a song that she'd been singing to herself the whole week), and blew out her candles without us prompting her to. She's an expert birthday girl!

I would not choose red for the main color of a cake ever again though. It took 2 1/2 bottles of Wilton icing dye to get it to a decent shade of red, but because of that, the icing was very bitter tasting. It also stained clothing, teeth, tongues, faces, hands, and was pretty nasty in the diaper the next day. I read about that part though, and warned parents about it so they wouldn't worry that their children were passing bloody stools!



After cake and ice cream, Alice opened her presents, gave her friends hugs, and then we did the pinata. The pinata was a little disappointing. It's one of those made for younger children where instead of hitting it, each child gets to pull a string, and one of them opens the trap door. The strings were very hard to pull so Bruce ended up pulling it open. The kids still loved it though!


Alice's favorite part of the pinata was the pinata itself, which she didn't want to let go for anything.

Another funny thing Alice has been doing is refusing to say 'two' after we ask her how old she is. She'll either say 'one' or 'three,' knowing full well she should say 'two.' She does this a lot with other things as well--she knows the right answer but it's too boring to give the right answer. She'd rather see our reaction when she gives the wrong answer. The little stinker!

Weekend at the Straw Poll & State Fair

We went to the Straw Poll on Mitt Romney's ticket this weekend. Bruce was really getting into all the free food, t-shirts, etc. and we both really liked listening to the candidates speak. Some were a little out there (John Cox, who ended up getting only 41 votes) and others we were very impressed with--Romney, Huckabee, Brownback. Alice slept through most of the program, thankfully, because it was about three hours long. The MC was Laura Ingrim and Newt Gingrich also spoke.

Here's a picture of Laura Ingrim shaking hands with all the candidates.

The next day we went to church in Des Moines and sat behind Mitt Romney and his family. It was funny to see him chasing his grandson down the isle. As soon as the meeting was over, he was swamped with people wanting to shake his hand.

Here's Alice at the State Fair, planting her plastic seed. There was this whole set up for kids to help teach them about farming and how things are produced and sold. It was a little funny to me at least, that Alice was planting fake seeds, picking fake apples, tomatoes, carrots, etc. and also harvesting corn and soybeans (they just handed her bags of each) when she'd already done all of those things for real. I wonder if it confused her at all.



This is one thing she hasn't experienced--milking a cow.

Alice also got to pet all sorts of newborn animals--pigs, sheep, goats, cows, and chicks. Pigs were definitely her favorite. I think this little guy is 4 days old.

She also had fun playing in the corn box.

My favorite part was the 4H building where all the projects were. I was very impressed with the quilts, sewing projects, artwork, woodworking, cooking experiments, etc. the kids did. We also saw a 1400 lb. boar and a life-sized cow sculpture made out of butter.

Alice went without a nap that day and it took her all of half a minute to completely zonk out in the car on the way home. She had two fruit snacks in her hand that melted and got everywhere!