Josie's Birthday Part One

Sweet Baby Josie turned two last week, and I'm hoping that posting the photos from a full week of celebrating will finally make it sink in that my baby girl is TWO! The celebrating started on Tuesday morning with Josie's (it-was-even-bigger-on-her-head-last-year) birthday crown, breakfast, and presents! Here are a few photos from that morning.
Opening presents in her jammies...
Must try on new outfit immediately...
Being a kids is so much fun...
Must try new puzzle...
Must unwrap with the most utmost care...
Must read new books...
After a long morning of opening and exploring and trying on...we went about our day which included (brace yourself) taking Josie to visit her NEW SCHOOL (much more on this later) and coming home to rest up for more fun in the afternoon and evening with mama & daddy. That evening, we gave Josie her "big present" which is this cool Plan Toys dollhouse (special shout out to Amazon) complete with all the fix-ins. This dollhouse has already been the subject of many funny moments but before I get to that...here is Josie setting it up.
And here is just one of the funny moments. Yep - that's Louie at the desk. And - while that's actually the flatscreen TV that came with the furniture - Josie insisted we put it on the desk because the desk needed a computer.
In other funny dollhouse-inspired moments, Josie put the mom, dad and little girl all in the same bed "to go night-night". Is she trying to tell us something? And, she also cried real tears when the little boy got out of the bathtub and didn't have a little towel to dry off. (Yes, I went to the craft store yesterday to buy felt so the dolls will never have to drip-dry again.) All told, it was a great birthday! And this was just the first day of the celebration. The "real party" was Saturday and there are lots of photos of that coming soon. (In the meantime, if any of you out there took some blogworthy photos at the party, please send them my way! Thanks.)

Josie's Birthday Part Two

We'll skip the part about how we spent the better part of 3 hours trying to convince Josie to take a nap on her birthday and skip right to the part where we finally gave up and decided to drive her up and down 71 so she'd pass out and her birthday would be saved. Here are the photos from that evening - our dinner at our favorite restaurant (Riverside Korean) and Josie's first meal there. This is actually pretty hard to believe and was a total accident, but I had to share - check out Josie using the chopsticks!
And - as a big surprise to all of us - our favorite waitress sent out a piece of really yummy green tea cake and a candle for Josie. I had been a little bummed that she wasn't going to blow out candles on her actual birthday since her party wasn't until the weekend, so this was such a wonderful surprise. And we all enjoyed the cake!
Here are a couple of photos from the aquarium. We didn't take very many since we hang out there so often, but we did actually fork over the ten bucks for the print of the family photo in the jaws of the giant shark to commemorate Josie's birthday. This was a funny moment I had to share. Josie is obsessed with knowing the names of anything and everything - all the characters in her books, every picture on billboards and in magazines, animals at the zoo, trees, cars - you name it. Literally. Chances are, if I've ever met you, I've used your name at some point in the last couple of weeks for a rhino, pig, puppy, jellyfish, etc. It's a bit exhausting actually. And I've had to get creative (characters in movies, TV shows, etc) so imagine our surprise when all the sudden Josie decided to name the penguins herself. She was pointing to them going "that one's Dodo, that one's Haha, that one's DiDi". It was too cute. Here they are all lined up (Lou told her they were singing happy birthday)...
Nothing like a good cuddle in front of the penguin display...
Here's another one of our little cuddle machine earlier in the day...
Lots more birthday photos to come...

Josie's 2nd Birthday was a HUGE success! We had a truly amazing week of celebrating that ended with an all-out BASH for her official birthday party at the pool on Saturday. All told, there are a couple hundred photos and I promise to get them posted this week in segments. In the meantime, I'm not sure that I mentioned that I updated her Shutterfly album with June/July.... www.josiemarie.shutterfly.com Enjoy!

1,2 Buckle My Shoe

This isn't exactly the most exciting video I've ever posted, but I had to share. We got Josie new shoes for her birthday (size 8!!) and she became very interested in threading and buckling them herself. She did the right foot and then began working on the left. I grabbed the camera to capture this 'big girl' moment, which ended up being 4 full minutes showing Josie's sheer determination. This has always been a quality of hers that we admire so I love that I finally captured it on film. My favorite part is her running commentary about how easy it is. I guess she's trying to think positively. :) Enjoy!

It's hard to believe that this is true...

but Josephine Marie has just turned TWO!

The Beach!

Well, as I hit "publish post" I will officially be finished updating the blog with images that tell the tale of our trip to Seagrove Beach, Florida during the last week of July. It was the perfect vacation and I hope these posts capture that - at least in part.

This was the walk to the beach...
And these are many of the wonderful, memorable, magical things that happened there...

And finally - a few moments in the sand...

Ahhh, the pool...

These photos need little explanation. Enjoy these pool moments captured on film...

Josie teaching herself to float ("Look Tio, Look Tio")...

Look carefully at everything going on in this one...

This is Josie doing "Peace"...

And here are several of Grandma & Josie's morning in the pool (I love these!)...

It actually would've been fun to log the number of hours we each spent in the pool. There were days when Josie was in there at least 5 or 6 hours. This photo seems like the perfect way to end the story of the pool - Josie getting a "high-five" from Louie after successfully going underwater and holding her breath. Yay Josie!

"QT" with family

Let's face it - the beach is great and having your own pool is the best - but this vacation really came down to quality time with the family. It's so important to us that Josie grows up surrounded by the people who care the most about her so this week to just all relax and "be" together was perfect. Here are some examples of good times around "The Lemon House" (actually "The Lemondrop House" but Josie abbreviated it for all of us)...

Josie helping Lyla with her breakfast (while we were diving...thanks for babysitting Grandma and Tia)...

The girls all playing together...

Big thanks to Katie who spent the better part of her week being followed around by an almost two-year old...

And look carefully at Josie's face, I know she's thinking "you're touching me again Lyla, back away slowly from my cheddar bunny snack-trap"... Yep, there were a lot of kisses and cuddles (although never enough)...

A little light housework...

Some good ole' clowning around (words can truly not express the wit, charm, and absolute hilarious nature of almost-13 year old Sam - aka Frodo & Harry - thanks for cracking us all up )...

And when all the playing and laughing and kissing was all too much to bear, there was a whole lot of this...

So, three cheers for family vacations! Josie is *still* talking about everyone who was there!