sunshine party

You are my sunshine.

My only sunshine.

You make me happy when skies are grey.

You never know dear, how much I love you.

Please don't take my sunshine away.

For Reese's 2nd birthday party we really wanted her to feel loved and special - even if she didn't really know what was going on (but she totally did!) So we filled the party with all of her favorite things! The "theme" was a SUNSHINE party (copied from my dear friend Katie- but not nearly as cute as hers) Reese truly lights up our lives and is such a ray of smiling sunshine and excitement no matter what we're doing, so this theme just fit her perfectly. It would have been a little more fun if it would have actually been sunshiny outside - but of course we had the most random 50 degree freezing and cloudy day. oh well. (God taught me a great lesson through that actually! story for another time...) We had the party at the park {which was awesome bc then I didn't have to clean my house before or after!!} Reeser absolutely loves to play outside at the park and we talked up her party a lot the days before and she was so so so excited to get there to play with her friends and eat cupcakes. Here's her sweet face when she walked up to the pavilion all decorated and ready for her :) so sweet.

Then gigi and papajoe gave her a new tricycle before the party even started and it was a huge hit!  

now every time she rides it {which is a billion times a day} she'll say 'gigi pajo give bike. birthday! cupcakes! remember mommy?'}

For the party we had a cookout with burgers and hotdogs and this delicious cowboy caviar that my mom made :) yum! my sweet friend Kara made the most delicious banana pudding and I made yellow cupcakes. We had a few more snacks like popcorn, animal crackers, lemonade, grapes....

made the garland by cutting out tons of circles and then just sewing them together on my machine. i also made these streamers i found on pinterest from here that were so fun! I forgot to get a picture of them but you can kind of see them in the background. 

found these cute letter balloons at the party store and reese just loved them :) i might have to get more letters because they were fun to play with at home to teach letters and talk about what sounds they make!! great teaching tool!

Like I said, it was freezing! so everyone was gathered around the grill trying to stay warm haha so hilarious. the kids still had fun playing on the slides and the swings and feeding the duckies and eating cupcakes and playing in the bubbles. Wish I had more pictures of the kiddos playing but I was too busy enjoying the fun too :) We sure felt blessed to watch so many sweet people love on our little Reese. We will miss all of our dear friends in Columbia so much! I never ever thought I'd be so sad to leave here...

happy birthday to you little Reeser...

she got a little shy when everyone was singing and staring at her

Couldn't be more blessed to have such a sweet, tenderhearted, spunky, energetic, passionate, goofy two year old daughter. We love you more than words Reesieboo!

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The next day we celebrated Gigi's birthday and drank french press coffee together, played outside, ate a yummy birthday lunch... another fun day!

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And here's Mark and R several weeks earlier celebrating Mark's birthday... 

so many fun people to celebrate during the month of April!

2nd birthday

april 19th, 2012

I really wanted to make Reesers actual birthday an fun day from start to finish since we weren't having her party until the next day. As I'm sure everyone knows our little Reese LOVES balloons :) so I got her the biggest one I could find for when she woke up in the morning. I also copied our friends and hung balloons from her door! She was a little scared of these at first (and even crawled as low as she could to get out of her room at first haha) but quickly she realized how fun it was to run through them and hit them as hard as she could! I had little powdered donuts with candles ready for her too when she woke up. We did sing happy birthday at least 300 times that day and blew out the candles over and over. She's a pro at it now. :) 

Her best friends here  - Sam and Addy - came over to play that morning. We ate fruit snacks, read all the new mickey books from Sam about 20 times, colored a lot, played outside, blew bubbles, watched Cars in mommy's bed after she refused to take a nap {she was crying for the balloons from her crib haha}, ate a sucker when daddy got home, and then went to Chuck E Cheese for dinner! I think maybe I was more excited about a Chuck E Cheese birthday than she was haha I just thought it was so cute! The Snyders joined us for pizza and silly games. Reese was definitely more interested in carrying her "pennies" (aka tokens) around in the little cup and would just put them in random games and not even watch or play the game ha. She did like the pizza and the little stage that the 7 year olds were singing on :) and then they played a three minute clip of veggie tales and that was just about all it took to get her excited! ha. It was too cute to watch her and Sam chase each other around. too hard to get a picture of them in action. they're just the sweetest little friends.

 oh she did LOVE LOVE this game with the frog and you have to get all the balls in his mouth for him to eat them. She thought it was sooo hilarious. played it probably six times :)

what a fun day celebrating our little punkin!

proof it was an awesome day:

asleep in the car 2 seconds after pulling out of the parking lot from chuck e cheese :) 

amarillo

We live 12-long-hours-of-driving away from Mark's parents and family in Amarillo. Therefore, this entire year, Mark has never had enough time off over a long weekend nor have I had enough courage to make it that far by myself with a little one.... and in conclusion we have never had the chance to go back just to visit together. until a few weekends ago... 

and what a special time it was!! It just so happened to be Mark's bday (april 13th) and we had an absolute blast! It also just so happened to be the weekend of Joel (mark's brother) and Julia's (our precious soon-to-be sister in law) wedding shower in Amarillo. so mark's entire family was in Amarillo. what a treat. mostly we just did whatever reese told us to do. what a firstborn child.

We drove half of the way on Thursday night after Mark got off work and stayed with Mark's aunt in Kansas. Then we drove the rest of the way early in the morning the next Friday. Reese was supposed to sleep most of that time.... but was too excited about watching the bee movie on the iPad. oh well. she is actually a pretty good traveler. 

R was so excited! On the way there she kept saying (for 12 hours) "see honey? see pops? see beanie?(their dog) see evabody???? this be weeeally fun!" :) and she would shake with excitement. too cute.

and it was weeeally fun!

celebrating marks bday! we miss you mexican food!

birthday boy: 

{don't be fooled... reese looks terrified in the moment but you better believe she still asks to watch the video of them singing happy birthday to daddy multiple times a day even weeks later haha}

meeting joel&julia's new puppy - Milly. 

"yook at her!" reese would say :) they were perfect for each other.

and auntie G taught R to play the drums. she LOVED it. 

"weeese working hard!" she would say. 

joint birthday party for mark and reese. what a fun lunch! and then they both got spoiled with waaaaay too many presents! both spoiled(but sweet) first borns, i'm afraid haha

one of the favorite presents: bubble lawnmower. 

ready to celebrate j&j at their dinner shower.

we love auntie anne!!!

the whole gang :)

then mark had to leave to make the LONG drive back by himself and be back to work monday morning. but reeser and I got to stay for a few more days and flew home later.

we fed the ducks.


played at gammaw&pawpaws

played at the park.

R had her first visit to the dentist.

played with friends. played outside. did some shopping. played with the dogs. ate more mexican food :). ate at donut stop. yum! drove by our old house. and got to play with family. what a special trip! we love you honey and pops!!