You Are My... Happily Ever After: Lucy's Birthday

On June 13 we headed, as a family, to Dallas for a few days of rest and rejuvenation. It just so happened that our daughter's birthday was going to happen during our stay so we had a good reason to do some things that she would enjoy.

In the car, on the way down to Dallas - it's about a 5 hour drive.

Michael was playing with his bottle, not coordinated enough to feed himself from it, but he was having fun nonetheless. :)

Our fearless driver (aka: Daddy)

Our sweet sweet girl.

We got to the hotel, ran into Brad's cousin randomly (he lives in Houston but was in Dallas for work) and were able to go to lunch with him! When we got back to the hotel, it was a bit late for naps - so we decided to go swimming as a family instead! :)

All ready to go up and do some splashing!

They both really enjoyed the pool - Michael kicks like a little fish and Lucy is getting good at blowing bubbles in the water.

Both the kids were pretty tuckered out after a long day of driving, visiting and swimming so we decided to stay in, feed the kids leftovers from lunch and order pizza for our dinner after the kids went down (we are big fans of date-night-in!). The hotel didn't have any Queen sized, regular rooms available so we were upgraded (for a very reasonable amount) to a suite! What a blessing when you have two kiddos to have two rooms! It was fabulous - a great help to our rest.

Her last night as a 1 year old! We had taught Lucy, when asked "How old are you?" to say, "Almost Two!" We may or may not have asked her that question over 10 times on the 13th - it was just too cute to not soak in as many times as we could. :)

Being a goof ball while eating her dinner :)

Giving daddy kisses good night

Right before Brad and I went to bed, I set out Lucy's gifts on the coffee table (well, most of them - she had a big gift waiting for her at home) so they would be there to greet her in the morning.

Lucy's Birthday, June 14th 2012

She had been asking for the week prior, every morning, "Birthday now?" This was her face after I told her, "Yes Lucy! It is your birthday!"

Daddy went down to the coffee shop in the lobby to get a birthday breakfast (and lattes for he and momma!).

She was so sweet, we had been practicing "blowing" and she did great making the flame waver - daddy secretly helped from above to extinguish the flames though. :)

She really got into opening the presents - and loved. every. one. :)

Playing with her new toys while momma and daddy got ready for the day.

Next up: The SeaLife Aquarium

All ready to go in - we ended up putting Michael in the stroller and letting Lucy walk.

She l.o.v.e.d it!

"Another one! Another one fishy!"

They had cool insets into the tanks that you could crawl into and feel like you were in with the fish.

This was a far as Lucy wanted to venture. :)

An Octopus! It had the coolest texture!

This tank was raised off of the ground so kids could crawl under and stand up in a dome and see the fish - it was really neat.

She kept pointing out colors of different fish - "red one! green one! yellow one fishy!"

The jelly-fish was Brad and my favorite - it was so. cool!

Lunch: Rainforest Cafe

I think the previous day's no-nap had really caught up to Lucy at this point - she was pretty apathetic about lunch as a whole (we kinda felt like she would have enjoyed Chick-Fil-A better...) but it was a fun experience and she wasn't scared of the gorilla above our table! :)

Every 20ish minutes the gorilla would dance and "whoo whoo hu hu" :) haha

(Phone picture) She was pointing out the "bugs" hanging from a neighboring tree.

We headed back to the hotel for much needed naps and enjoyed some laid back family time in the afternoon.

Lucy loves her brother - a little too much sometimes. :)

Our hotel was right by the DFW and in the late afternoon we watched the planes fly over our building and head toward the airport for landing.

This picture doesn't do it justice, they were so close when they were just appearing! We would hear the sound of the plane and see their shadow pass over our building then would see them! Lucy really liked it.

Hanging out with Daddy.

A rare moment of sharing Ellie - she is really good about sharing everything else, but has a difficult time letting others touch her special elephant.

Just me and my girl.

June, 14 2011 and June 14, 2012

As you can see, Lucy's affection for Ellie has not changed (although Ellie has aged a bit!).

We went out for dinner at the Cheese Cake Factory, much better than lunch! :) But I forgot the camera... :-/ Thank goodness for modern phones with picture-taking abilites!

Practicing blowing out the candle:

We had asked her a lot how old she was during the day (because it is really cute to hear your daughter say, "I'm TWO!") so she wasn't enthusiastic about showing off for the video. :} Also - I ask her to do "bunny ears" in the video, I just wanted her to hold up two fingers - my trick didn't work. :)

A few observations from the above video:

Sorry you have to hear me sing.... um, it's not so great.
I love how she calls her cake a brownie.
I think it's funny that the last thing you hear in the video is me saying, "What?!" because Lucy has decided she doesn't want cake....thankfully, she changed her mind and enjoyed it a lot!