Two!

Happy 2nd birthday, Hazel!!


How can my wee baby be two already? Where does the time go? I want to push pause and keep her this sweet, happy, snuggly, innocent thing for as long as possible.

She sincerely is a joy. She's like Mary Poppins...practically perfect in every way. She even unloads the dishwasher. Yes, you heard me right. She unloads the dishwasher. And puts her toys away while singing, "Clean up, clean up. Everybody do your share." And she snuggles me. Oh, I wish I could keep her in this stage for just a little while longer.

We started the birthday off right...with a partay in the morning! Crepes for breakfast...

...and a pile of presents!

Look at the excitement and intrigue on her face!

It's a lovely necklace from her GreatPapa Sperry. Thank you, Papa.

More excitement. She really knew how to respond when opening her presents. It was so cute.

All dolled up! She loves this dress.

These two cute little girlies are Hazel's favorite pals. They were born within ten days of each other. We had a really simple birthday party and invited these girls, along with their moms and siblings.

Cupcakes! Hazel anticipated her birthday with balloons, cupcakes, and a party with her friends. A side note, see the tablecloth on the table? It is my mom's. She had it on our table for all of our birthdays growing up. I love that tablecloth. I love that it's a real linen rather than a plastic cloth. And I love the continuity found in having it at all our family's birthdays over the years. I made a banner to match it. I love that little banner. I had fun making it and hope it will have the same effect as the tablecloth, linking family members together through our birthday traditions.

We finished off the night with a dinner party at Red Robin!

She got shy when the servers sang to her. She snuggled in to me and hid her face...peaking out every now and then. She liked the whipped cream!

Just for fun, Daddy's boots. I thought it was so funny when she wanted to put these on. She couldn't step into them herself so I helped her out. Once she got them on, she felt pretty proud to be in Daddy's boots.

2011 family photo shoot

We had a lot of fun doing our photo shoot. This park had peacocks roaming free. They were beautiful. The kids loved following them through the orange orchards.

Sneaking up. He almost caught that one! Not really.

I love this funny face picture. It's especially cute to me because Hazel just figured out how to make a funny face for the camera. Love it.

Angels? Or rascals? Both! I adore these little people.

I love the morning sun shining through the slats and the rustic garbage can. So fun.

I love him!

I really love him!

Aaron is a really good photographer. I'm proud to be his wife. Who would have thought an engineer could capture such beautiful pictures? And he's an incredible dad too. Dang, I'm lucky!

Ring in the new year!

I love New Year. We partied at home. Then partied at our neighbor's house. Then we partied more at home. It was great! Rootbeer floats, as usual, for New Year's Eve.

And funny faces.

More funny faces.

More.

And more still.

This was Lily's first time to stay up until midnight to ring in the New Year. Usually we celebrate midnight at about 7:00 p.m., put the kids to bed, then go to bed ourselves. But this year I decided to stay up until midnight and invite anyone else to join me. Lily joined in immediately. Aaron finally caved at the last minute and decided to stay up with us. We played dominos, drank sparkling apple cider, and watched our neighbors' fireworks from Lily's window. It was fun!

A few days later we got to see my brother, Jordan, and his family! They drove across the country for his internship. We were soooo excited that their drive took them through Flagstaff.

Hazel and Ian were excited to see each other again.

Jordan was excited to see LaMar's donuts again. He discovered these when they were living down here. So we surprised him with some. Yum.