Happy Birthday Amelia

It was so fun to celebrate Amelia's birthday on Friday. Grandpa and Grandma Checketts came down and we had a great weekend together. Amelia looked forward all day to "afer dinner" when she got to eat cake "and i-keam too" and open presents. Her favorite presents were the cake pop from Uncle Joe and her new silver shoes.

Cake pop sent from Uncle Joe all the way from Oregon

I don't have a picture of her silver shoes, but stay tuned because they will probably make an appearance in every picture you see her in until they are too small. She wears them everywhere. But that's okay with me because silver shoes go with practically everything. They go with black, brown, pink, sweats, swim suits, jeans, shorts, church clothes, pjs with stains on them...you know, pretty much everything. That's why I got them for her. I'm smart like that.

As for the birthday cake, I made her a chocolate cake (with beets and applesauce of course) with an orange cream frosting in the middle and a fluffy cocoa frosting on top - it was yummy, if I do say so myself! I saw a cake frosted like this in a magazine and loved the way it looked, so while Amelia is still too young to ask for a Curious George cake, I love making the cake I want for her birthday!

I spared you our singing of Happy Birthday, but here is the sweet birthday girl blowing out her candles. Andrew helped her at the end, but she was pretty pleased with herself as you can tell. Grandma and Grandpa Asay skyped us and it was fun to have them join us! Although the cake was tastier on our end than on theirs.

Here she is telling Uncle Joe thanks for the cake pop


And here is William in the tub. I love how he waves his arms when he gets so excited - it looks like he is trying to make a snow angel.

And here is Amelia snuggling William. She really loves her baby brother and he loves her too! But he is going to have to be a tough boy...

And yes, she yells, "No picture!" at the end. She often yells that when we take pictures these days. Very charming.

I also love that Amelia's not old enough yet to tell me not to post pictures like this on my blog! Ha, I just love this one though :)

Phone photos

So, my phone takes really poor quality pictures, but here are some random photos I just got off my phone from over the past few months.

Right before I took this picture I had taken another one of William smiling but it didn't save. Andrew was lamenting how it was too bad it didn't save because it had caught the perfect smile. I told him not to worry and I looked down at William and took the same picture again - it's so easy because he's always smiling! All you have to do is look at him and this is what you get. He's so awesome.

Do you recognize this grandma?

Neither do we. But apparently that doesn't matter when you are in need of a grandma at the park.

Amelia is really missing having her grandma close. This picture was taken last week when Amelia saw a random kid at the park with his grandma and decided to adopt her for the morning. She kept saying "Dramma tum!" (Grandma come!) and grabbing the lady by her hand, pulling her up the stairs, sitting on her lap and sliding down the slide. Luckily the lady was nice, but I think she wanted to play with her own grandson and not some stranger's kid...so we are so glad that our grandma is here visiting now!

This is when Amelia got dressed by herself for the first time. Her shirt is inside out and backwards, but at least the head and arms are in all the right openings. When I tried to get a picture of it, however, she would not stand up for me to take it and insisted on laying down.

Yes, mom, s'mores are a good snack.
What do you get when you mix all your colors together while painting? Yup, the answer is still brown.

Running on dad's baseball field chasing crows.

Vacation

Really depressing, but Lisa's influence has officially worn off. We just had the best vacation ever, and I took like 10 pictures of the whole thing. Andrew took a few days off and we stay-cationed in Santa Barbara and it was awesome. We spent an afternoon in Solvang which is a Danish-styled town with windmills and traditional Danish food. Amelia enjoyed feeding this bear sculpture the rest of her broccoli.

We went hiking in Santa Barbara and went to the beach at Carpenteria. It was so fun to watch Amelia and Andrew playing in the water at the beach. Wish I had pictures of it...hopefully the images of Amelia clinging to Andrew as she braced for a wave, squealing in delight and the two of them walking hand in hand along the beach will remain in my mind's eye forever.

Then we went hiking in Ojai when we came face to face with a RATTLESNAKE. We didn't even notice him until he rose up and rattled at us about 4 feet away! Andrew grabbed me and we ran (the kids were both in packs thank goodness). When we got a safe distance away we stopped and watched him slither off into the bushes. Andrew thought to take a picture after the snake was almost gone, but he was big, and scary and creepy! Yikes!

The only other pictures we got were of Amelia enjoying Root Beer and wearing a swim diaper on her head. Good times.

If this doesn't make you smile...

So this is pretty much par for the William course these days. If he's awake, there's a good chance he's doing this. In fact, he's doing it right now sitting next to me. And when he's done, he just falls quietly asleep. Like I said, I could do babies all day if they were all like this one...so sweet!



And here is Amelia skipping to her loop before nap time. She has started skipping around the house singing "loop, loop, skip to my loop, skip to my loop my dar'in." Sorry the video's dark, Amelia doesn't like to perform (i.e. do what you ask her to do when you ask her to do it), so I was just lucky to get this on camera.

And one last tidbit, when we were in the car this afternoon with the windows rolled down Amelia said, "Smell food!" I said yes, it does smell like food. What kind of food does it smell like? (It smelled like fast food grease) And she said "Yummy, yummy food!" Clearly a good nutritionist's daughter...