Birthday Girl!

We had a fabulous time celebrating Ms. Natalie's 2nd Birthday this past weekend. Hard to believe she is already 2 years old. Lots of family and special friends came into town just for the occasion: Grandma & Grandpa Walters, Grandma & Grandpa Yost, Aunt Julie, and Bev & Dan. 

We had a fun party at Farewell Bend Park with lots of Natalie's little friends. It was a cupcake theme and we got all the kids nice and sugared up!  Here are a few photos of the occasion:

After the party, we had a fun family BBQ at our house. Natalie got even more presents, including a few musical instruments to add to her collection. I think she is going to be musical as she loves to sing, dance and play instruments. 

And here is the special birthday waffle she had for breakfast that morning:

Isn't our little cupcake cute?!

And just a quick baby update: I'm currently 31 weeks into it so the light is certainly nearing the end of the tunnel. The little guy is extremely active, giving me very little peace, especially at night. But it's fun to think about what he could be doing in there. I'm growing quite large now, at least that's how I feel. I've been having very frequent contractions for several weeks, which the doc says is normal. Guess my body is practicing for the big day. We're all very excited for his arrival in September!

Chatterbox

Recent things heard around our house lately:

"I'm busy..." (in response to one of my requests for her to pick up her toys)

"I wanna go outside" (she's a summer girl for sure--always wanting to be outside, rain or shine!)

"I hit ____ (fill in the blank)" (yes, I think Natalie is a bully. But she always tattles on herself!)

"Out Toby!" (gee, I wonder how she learned that one! Poor dogs...)

"Elmo on!" or "Lion on!" (her polite requests to watch an Elmo video or "The Lion King")

"All done in bed, Mommy" (first thing she said to me yesterday morning when she woke up)

"Mmmm, yummy" (usually heard while eating dessert, but sometimes Mommy fixes a good breakfast or dinner now and then...)

"No, Na Na read book" (she's recently taken control over book time which means she turns to random pages and points out things to me--I think we have a book worm on our hands!)

"Whasat?" (the most frequently asked question of all time, "What's that?")

Happy Birthday, America!

Spent the July 4th weekend at "Pa" and "Grandpa" Yost's house. (Natalie is a little confused about Grandma and Grandpa's names. Ray is "Pa" and Sandy is "Grandpa" (which is also what she calls Grandma Walters--it's so confusing!). Anywho, we had a lot of fun celebrating our country's independence in the town of Independence! Here are a few photos of our day...

Watching the parade with Daddy. Natalie scored lots of parade candy, thanks to Pa's nifty 

candy collection bag, complete with a bulls eye target!

Keeping cool in the shade with Chloe during the parade...

Mmmm, strawberry "i-ceam" 

(It was so hot that it melted much faster than she could eat it!)

Having a blast in the cars at the carnival. 

Thank goodness the girls are still a few years away from their drivers licenses!