Grace's 2nd Birthday Party!

Today was Grace's 2nd birthday party. She had a great time...photos don't lie!

I took a few photos before everyone arrived and got Grace to smile pretty well. Here are a few of them...and one where she actually held her balloons!







This next set is a typical Grace and Evan series. Notice how serious Grace is :)







A unique moment.



We had many active children at the party, so we brought out the long balloons for a balloon sword fight. It went pretty well and all had fun...well...







Notice our friend Ralph in the chair smiling. He is watching his daughter and the other kids having a great time. He thinks that he is in a very safe place...



Oh no...what's happening Ralph!



Ralph is over taken by children and balloons!



Here's our sweet little girl enjoying her birthday cake...



...yummy cake...



...real yummy cake!



Grace and her birthday friends...





Here are Grace's birthday presents. We waited until the party guests left to open them. It was just easier to focus at that time and we even got Grace ready for bed first because it was well past her bed time. She loved all he generous gifts!













So the party went off really well. I think that everyone had a lot of fun. I just need to share two more photos. We order 12 pretty balloons for the party with extra long strings because of out high ceilings. You can see why we did this in the photo below because all the balloons eventually headed to the very top.



Even though it was chilly out side, with so many people in doors, it got a little warm. So someone decided to turn on the ceiling fan...near the balloons...with the extra long strings :)

Early Brithday Present

We gave Grace her birthday present from us a few weeks early so that she could have some fun playing with it first.

It's a water table. For those of you like me who did not know what a "water table" is...it's a table that you put water in :)

Actually, it's a lot of fun. They make these just the perfect height for kids that are Grace's size to play in with water toys and such.

We were going to use this at her birthday party this year because it is usually very hot this time of year. It was around 103 last year and we had a bounce house but no one could use it because of the hot temperature. Well, this year it was a bomby 67 degrees...so no water table. So much for planning the weather :)

Updated May photos!

We decided to be spontaneous and go to to Oxnard one weekend. It took us 2 hours to be spontaneous. With a 23 month old....2 hours is spontaneous. It was colder that day then expected, but we had a good time anyway.

Here are some photos of Grace looking at the "tide pool" at the Channel Islands visitor center.









We had some friends come back to LA to visit after being gone for 5 years. They now have 2 kids. We went to Marina Del Rey and played on the beach for awhile, then had a nice early dinner near the pier.



OK...I always made Grace laugh by putting things on my head, including these colored baby rings. Grace is trying to imitate everything we do now, so of course I need to encourage this :)





Weekends are "daddy time" so I like to take Grace to the park near our house so that she can run around. It's also a good place to get some sweet photos!