A Bubble Birthday

Evie Doll turned 2!  What in the world!?  We officially have a 2-year-old on our hands and we couldn't be more blessed to have this one!

Evie currently LOVES playing at the park and she LOVES bubbles, so we planned to have a family Bubble Party at the park.  The day had seriously been relatively nice, but about 10 minutes before the party the wind picked up and it got chilly.  The party went on and everyone came, including Evie's birth family, and were super accommodating and great sports regardless.  This girl is loved!

We just kept things simple and had some yummy homemade desserts and goodie bags.  While we brought lots of bubbles, the wind was too crazy to blow them.

Dessert Table

Goodie Bags

Bubbles, Bubbles, Bubbles!

The kids didn't mind the windy conditions one bit.  They played at the park and had so much fun!

We opened gifts at lightning speed.  Evie was spoiled by all.

Cousin HaLee was happy to help!

We gave her a bike.  She's WAY into bikes right now so
we thought she would love having her own.

After the party we took a minute to honor Evie's birth mom in our home.  She means sooooo much to us, and the day of Evie's party also happened to be Birth Mother's Day.  We gave her a Shutterfly book that captured pictures, as well as her development, over Evie's first two years.

Man, we love and respect this woman more than you know!

That night we took Evie to her favorite restaurant.  She loves to eat chips and salsa, so Mexican it was! It was just a quiet dinner with the three of us and Beau and I reflected on our last two years with this beautiful girlie, the amount of love we have for her, and the awesome privilege it is to call her our daughter.  All three of us are so very blessed.  It brings tears to my eyes!

I must add that a birthday wouldn't be complete at our house without a horse ride.  Evie is getting WAY into the horses and loves to ride with daddy.

We had a great time celebrating Evie's 2nd birthday!  We're so grateful for the amount of love that is poured out on her by her family and friends.  She's one lucky girl, and we cannot express the amount of joy we feel to be blessed by her beauty every day.  Happy Birthday to our sweet Evie Doll!

Family Pictures - A Nice Finish To Easter Sunday

As mentioned in the previous post, we spent the afternoon/evening with Beau's Mom's side of the family on Easter Sunday.  Because we were all together, Beau's mom arranged to have our family pictures taken.  The evening was absolutely beautiful and the pictures turned out darling!  It made for a fun way to finish off the Easter holiday.

Here are a few of our favorites!

The whole fam.  Pretty people, wouldn't you say?

Our little happy family.  I love them so!

Evie with her cousin HaLee.  They have so much fun together.

And, lastly . . . our pretty Evie doll.  What a gem!

Easter Eggs, Eggs, Eggs!

Evie was WAY into Easter this year.  She was excited to look for eggs, and even MORE excited to crack them open to see what was inside.  Every opportunity she had to crack an egg open, she took it!  She was all sorts of fun.

We had a fun Easter Egg Hunt with my family a week before Easter.  She loved looking for eggs, playing with the kids, and holding baby Mollie.  She loves, loves, LOVES babies!

We then had an Easter get-together with Beau's dad's side of the family the day before Easter.  By far, her favorite part of that day was jumping on the trampoline with her cousin HaLee.

And lastly, on Easter Sunday we put on our new Easter clothes, went to church, and then we let Evie discover what the Easter Bunny brought her.  She got a "basket" full of swim stuff.  She has new swimsuits, flip-flops, and pool toys.  She was thrilled.  Later that afternoon we had Easter dinner with Beau's mom's side of the family.

Here's a little Easter family picture . . .

And, here's a fun collage of Evie at all of our Easter events.  Happy Easter!!!

Happy Green Day!

To us, St. Patrick's Day is basically a green-colored day.  Evie's still too young to care, but it's still fun to do something "green" for fun.  And, I don't know why it is, but I just cannot NOT dress her up for any particular holiday.  LOL!

We started out the morning with green pancakes (served on green plates, of course).  We had green sandwiches for lunch.  If you care for the recipe and/or want to see what we actually ate, you can go to my food/recipe blog.  When Beau got home, we all went to dinner.  I'm mad because I forgot to snap a family picture, but we were ALL wearing green.  It would have been a cute picture!

Hope you all had a fun day!

Swim, Swim, Swim

Somebody started swimming lessons around here!  Evie gets SO excited to go "simming" that she can hardly stand it!  We're in a parent-tot class so I swim with her (sorry about the somewhat-blurry picture. . . it was taken with my phone).  She's already had a lot of swimming experience, so I dare say she might be a little ahead of the game (i.e., she's already used to the water, the splashing, can jump off the side of the pool, etc.).  Her teacher already has us working on underwater swimming . . . which is why this lucky little lady gets goggles.  Oh my heck . . . do you just want to kiss that goggle face?  We're having so much fun that the worst part is leaving the pool once lesson is over.  Serious!  Evie has a major meltdown and cries, "sim, sim, sim" all the way home.  At least we know she loves it, right!?

Hopefully this angel will REALLY be swimming in no time!

LOTS of Valentine Love

Our little family celebrates the Valentine holiday on both the 13th and the 14th!  Now, that's a lot of love.  :)

Beau and I went on our first date on February 13th.  So, instead of going out and "officially" celebrating on Valentine's Day, we celebrate Valentine's Day on the 13th . . . in honor of the day we first met.

I surprised Beau with a "Love Jar" that was filled with 50 paper hearts.  Each heart had something I loved about him as well as a favorite memory of mine over the past 10 years.  Beau surprised me with a beautiful and vibrant bouquet of flowers, a sweet love note, a delicious cupcake, and an overnight stay at the Blue Boar Inn in Midway.

We still don't love leaving our little Evie girl for very long, so we decided to go out to dinner . . . just the two of us, and then pick up our little love bug and head up to Midway for some hotel fun.

Here's to 10 years of dating.  Our first date was 10 years ago.
Still today, I love dating my handsome Beau.

As soon as we got to the Blue Boar, Evie was so excited.  She was given a cookie upon entering, and then she went right for the bed as soon as we got in our room.  That girl could run, jump, and fall in the pillows for hours!

We stayed up and played, laughed, tickled, and snuggled until 10:30ish when I found myself waking up to the three of us who had all fallen asleep together on the bed.  I gave my little Evie a kiss and tucked her into her GoCrib, and then I snuggled right back into bed with Beau.  We all slept soundly and then awoke for a yummy Blue Boar Breakfast.

After breakfast it was time to take Evie home and spoil her rotten.  Ha, ha!  How can we not when she's so stinkin' cute?!

We gave her two new Dr. Seuss books (she LOVES books), a stuffed animal that goes with one of the books, and a balloon (she LOVES balloons too).  We had to get to reading one of those books right away.

She then started getting spoiled by others!  The Valentine's Man made it to our door.  (He's always been good to my family since I was a child and he bring goodies filled with love to the door.  They mysterious thing is that he rings the doorbell and vanishes.)  Evie got a cute Valentine's book and a darling jar filled with candy . . . otherwise known as num-nums.  Beau and I got a bag full of Dove Chocolates.  Yum!

Grandma Debbie and Grandpa Kay stopped by to spread some love.  Crazy thing is that they happened to stop by RIGHT after the Valentine's Man.  Hmmmmmmm…….

A few hours later we got a visit from Grandpa George.  He brought Evie a cute little Minnie Mouse Valentine filled with more num-nums.

After that it was time to go night-night.

The crazy thing is that the Valentine Love didn't end there!  Two days later, after checking our mailbox, we found more love!

Auntie Amber mailed us all some Love goodies!  Evie got spoiled with lots of Hello Kitty stuff.  Beau and I got a Kneaders Gift Card for all of our "Kneads."  It was so creative and we're so thankful!

There was also a fun card in the mail that day from Evie's birth family!  Yay!  It was filled with a sweet love note.  We love and appreciate them so much!

Aunt Traci (CiCi), Uncle Brodie, Carter and Mollie sent Evie a fun Valentine too!  They sent Evie some bubbles (Valentine, you "blow" me away).  We took those outside and had a lot of fun.

Nanna and Papa had also called to wish us all a happy Valentine's Day and said they had a special Valentine for Evie too.  We'll collect it from them the next time we see them.

So, needless to say, we definitely felt the LOVE this Valentine's Day holiday!  I'm so grateful to be loved by so many, and even MORE grateful that my little Evie Doll is loved and adored by so many too.  It sure makes life much more meaningful.

Pretty Little Cheetos Face

This girl might take after her mom a little.  I love Cheetos . . .  just as much as Evie's face and hands shows that she loves Cheetos.  LOL!  She asks for this "snack" daily.  All I know is she has the cutest Cheetos face I've ever seen.  Wouldn't you agree?