A Successful Birthday Party

We had a great time at Samantha's birthday party on Saturday! Here are some pictures and video. We had it in our backyard. It was a beautiful day - just perfect!


I love this video. There's nothing better than a huge sandbox! Every child is perfectly content, and I think the background music gives a nice effect. Watch it more than once so you can see what each separate child is doing - it's pretty darn cute.
This was a "sticker walk" that I made with some of our future patio bricks (just another project added to next spring's list). I drew shapes with different colors on them with chalk then I picked a color and shape out of a basket and whoever was standing on that shape after we finished singing a song won a sticker.
The butterfly cupcakes I made. I found the idea online, of course.
Samantha trying to blow our her candles. She still blows up instead of out. Maybe by next year . . .
Opening presents. She loved every one!
The kids enjoying their cupcakes. Most of them just ate the tops and left the cake.

Samantha's Third Birthday!!

Yesterday was Samantha's Birthday. She's having a party with her friends on Saturday, but we had a little family party last night where she opened all her presents from family. Thank you so much for all the wonderful gifts (you know who you are)! She really enjoyed them all!
Samantha is getting so big - already 3 years old! Here are some things we love about Samantha:

• her big brown eyes
• her sweet singing voice, which she uses ALL THE TIME, she's constantly humming to herself. Her favorite songs include "Zip-a-dee Doo-dah", "Twinkle, Twinkle", "I am a Child of God" and many, many more.
  
• her laugh
• how helpful she is (doing dishes, folding towels, making beds, etc.)
• she loves nursery, and is very helpful with the smaller children (sometimes too helpful - she takes toys away from them to put them away during clean-up time)
• she loves being outside and going for walks to collect pine needles and rocks
• she loves going in the kayak with Daddy and riding a pony. She climbed all 297 stairs to the top of Bunker Hill Monument and back down, and she can hike up rocks many adults would struggle with and she wants to do it "by myself" - she'll try lots of adventurous things!
• she's the best big sister. she takes great care of Anna, and is so sweet to her.
• she loves to read and loves going to the library

She's been a great two year-old, so I'm gearing up for the terrible three's! We'll see what happens.

Here's a cute video of Samantha and Anna playing together the other day. As you can see, Anna really trusts her sister, so she will be a good accomplice to Samantha in the future (or it will be the other way around). The mess all over the floor is from the stuff that came in the box. Or I could describe it in just one word, spelled A-N-N-A. Anyway, enjoy.

New Family Photos

So here's a collage of some of the pictures that we had taken the other day. The girls did really well. They pulled a lot of funny faces - not exactly smiles - but they're still cute. By the way, just click on the picture to make it larger (for those of you who don't know :)).