Monday, July 26, 2010

The Last of Reagan's Birthday Celebrations (kinda)

We celebrated Reagan's birthday (again) on Sunday. After church we went to eat at Pizza Inn where she promptly shoved down a piece of pizza and a good helping of mac and cheese (of course). After that we all came to our house for an ice cream party and presents. We had a lots of friends and lots of family over for the fun. Here is a quick rundown of what we did.

Last year we got a great family picture at the party and I wanted to try it again. So here is this year's shot. Turned out pretty good again. Or maybe it's just us that makes the picture that much better. :)
For some reason, Reagan decided she didn't want to be the one to blow out her candle. She wanted sister to do it this time.
And Lindsey did a great job at it.
Waiting for the presents to start. So patient.
Mr. Potato Head - so much fun!
Love her smile on this one. She loves her new necklaces.
And you can never go wrong with clothes.
A very cool (and bright) new flashlight. She loves to shine it and see where the light goes.
I'm sure we will all have fun with this new toy - just look at Daddy's face.
And I made the mistake of leaving Lindsey's gift for Reagan in our room so she got it after the very cool gift of Rody. But she does love her new pink table too.
But I'm pretty sure this was the favorite gift this time around.
And this was when she was falling off the front of Rody, right in front of me taking the pictures.
Lindsey's turn on Rody. Anybody can try it out - apparently it holds up to 300 pounds.
She did give Rody up long enough to practice some on the basketball goal.
She tried really hard to do it by herself. But she needs to grow a few more inches before she will be successful at it.
Well, that about does it for Reagan's 2nd birthday. She hasn't gotten her mom and dad gifts yet but maybe we'll do that today or tomorrow. Who knows? Probably won't blog about it though - just clothes, nothing too exciting. Thanks for reading!

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Reagan is 2!

Wow! Another birthday. I can't believe how fast they grow up. My baby is now 2! Here's a quick look back at Reagan on July 21st the last three years.

Our family right after Reagan's birth (Lindsey wasn't too sure about her yet).
Here is a better shot of Reagan. We were still in the hospital when this photo was taken.
Here she is on her first birthday morning (I love to get a picture when they first wake up).
And here is Reagan on her birthday this year. All smiles (well, that and messy hair)!
Closer up and with the hair out of her face. Too cute!
And since her birthday happened to fall on a Wednesday, we took cookies to church to enjoy.
Reagan had a mouthful in this picture. Lovely, huh?
I guess she was making sure it all got in there?!?
I think at this point she wanted another cookie but all that was in the box was the cookie part of Lindsey's cookie. She ate the icing off the thumbprint but not the cookie itself.
We have one more birthday celebration to come. That will be on Sunday with lots of pizza and ice cream. And lots more pictures, too.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Visiting my Parents

My parents moved to Oklahoma last July. And the week that the girls and I went with them up there just happened to be the same week as the Edmond Church of Christ's VBS. Of course I jumped at the chance for Lindsey to go each night. She LOVED it. So our summer plans this year were planned around when Edmond's VBS would be. Well, it turned out the be last week and we were there. It was great.

Blake and Lianne and their kids were on a trip to Tennessee and came back to Texas by way of Oklahoma. It was great to see them some and have all the cousins play together. It was a fun and busy week.

Reagan and I playing in the pool in my parents neighborhood. She loves the noodles.
The girls.
While we were in OK, we celebrated a few birthdays. Reagan was the only kid birthday so the cake and balloons were for her. She is loving cows right now for some reason. So we went with it. I think mom had a lot of fun planning a kid birthday again - so I let her do pretty much all of it. Here is the cake and cupcakes. Reagan loved it.
Mom lighting the candles.
Reagan did a great job blowing the candles out (well, she got the first one and then tried again but Lindsey beat her to it).
Our family
Lindsey stuffing her face.
And the remains of Reagan's cupcake.
Then the presents began. We didn't have time for all the presents for all the birthday people (mom, Lianne, Reagan and Robert) so we settled for just opening Reagan's at that time. Then we did the big people after VBS that night.

Reagan opened a gift of a nightgown and promptly went to hand it to someone else. Not real sure why because she loves it.
She was really excited to see this card - it had Pooh and Tigger on it.
We saved the big gift for last. She had a blast pulling all the paper out.
She finally got a glimpse of the gift inside.
And she was very eager to ride on it. Even with all the tags and stuff on it still.
Then later I was trying to get a picture of Reagan with her new BIG bow on. She would not stand still.
And she kept coming running right up to the camera. She was a bit too close but this one turned out really cute.
Well, that is celebration number 1. There are at least two others that will be on here shortly. Stay tuned in the next couple of days.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Our Trip to St. Louis

Back at Easter we were sent an Easter card from our good friends, Caleb and Ashley Dickison. Inside the card was an invitation to Caleb's surprise birthday party in St. Louis. Apparently Ashley was planning a big party for his 25th birthday. Robert and I decided that we would go and surprise everyone. We were supposed to RSVP to either Ashley or Caleb's mom, Lisa. Well, Robert of course wanted to surprise everyone so we didn't.

Long story short, we went to St. Louis hoping that the party was still happening and it was. We were able to surprise several groups of people that weekend and we had lots of fun doing it. We first went to the mall and surprised Lisa, Jordan and Brianna. Ted was in on it so that he could get the rest of them to the mall. Lindsey ran up to the group (with us watching from a distance). They looked at her and kept saying, "what are you doing here?" and then they finally saw us. We then spent the next couple of hours with them eating and talking. It was a lot of fun.

The next day was the party but we first went to the St. Louis Zoo. (Which, by the way, is a great zoo. And it is FREE!) More on the zoo below with pictures. Fast forward several hours to the party. We walked in and were able to see Caleb and Jordan's grandparents, Charles and Ruth. They weren't expecting us either so that was great too.

Then Caleb and Ashley arrived (Caleb in blindfold) at the church building. He of course was surprised by it all and had no idea that we weren't supposed to be there. Ashley, on the other hand, came and hugged us and said "I didn't know you guys would be here". So we got to surprise her too.

All in all, we had a great trip to St. Louis. Lots of fun with friends (and my parents in OK on the way and on the way home). It was a long drive but the girls did great and we enjoyed (almost) all of it.

Now for the good stuff - the pictures!

Robert always gets the best hotels. Right outside of this hotel was an area with restaurants, comedy clubs and dessert places. It was neat to walk out and find it all. Here are the girls in that area and I just had to get them on camera playing.Bow head!
Who me?
Lindsey's turn for pictures.
She's a cutie!
I can almost do it myself.
At the St. Louis Zoo. Lindsey loved the chart with all the butterflies to help identify which ones you see.
One of my favorites, the Red Postman.
The Blue Morpho, Lindsey's favorite.
And of course, right outside the butterfly place there were very pretty flowers so we stopped for a minute to enjoy them and take pictures.On to the River's Edge. And the hippos. There were four hippos in all but these two were putting on a show for us. It was neat to see them fighting right in front.Reagan was interested in the elephant while he was eating the straw but as soon as he started walking toward us, that was it. She was ready to go as you can see.This little penguin was posing for me. I couldn't resist taking a picture.
Reagan didn't care for much that we did at the zoo. Especially the penguin place - it was really loud during feeding time.
Another ham for the camera. But so pretty.
Lindsey liked the penguins though. I tried to get a picture of one swimming behind her but it didn't work.
Grizzly bear (in case you didn't know).
The girls watching the flamingos. Again, Reagan liked them until they started moving toward us.Because the zoo was free and so was our parking, Robert decided that Lindsey could get something at the Build-A-Bear that is in the zoo. They had some great animals like a stingray, yellow poison dart frog, spectacle bear, and giraffe. These are animals that they don't have in the regular B-A-B's so we thought it would be fun. Lindsey chose a giraffe that we named Spotty. And she did it all her self - stepped on the pedal to fill it up, put the heart inside, everything. She had never done that before - it was great.
Here we are at the entrance. This was us this year and we have a picture of the 3 of us (Robert, me and Lindsey) from the first time we went to this zoo in 2006 but it's not on the computer so we just have the hard copy in a photo album somewhere.
After the zoo, we had to drive into Illinois to say that we had been and on the way back there was some air show going on. We all had a lot of fun watching the airplanes.
Every bridge we would go on, Lindsey would ask if it was the Mississippi River so we were sure to point out the one when it was actually the Mississippi River.
And you can't make a trip to St. Louis without seeing the Arch. So here it is.
Like I said, we had a great time. St. Louis is a neat place with fun things to do. I hope that we can go back again when Reagan might actually enjoy the zoo and everything else that we do.