my 2-year-old

Happy Birthday to my favorite little man, Kye.  Born April 27th 2009.  If Celia surprised me 10 days before my due date then Kye really surprised me coming 5 1/2 weeks early.  His due date was June 3rd.  But Kye has always kept me on my toes from the moment I went into labor early and gave birth to a huge "preemie" at 6lbs 14 ozs..  If you call a girl who is super girly a "girly girl", then what is the term for a boy who is super boyish?  A boy's boy?  If so then Kye is most definitely a boy's boy.  The comment I hear most from people is "he sure is ALL boy".  If that means he's rough, energetic, loud, charming, in constant motion, strong and did I say rough?? Then they're right.  But he can also be super sweet and gives the world's best kisses these days.

Wednesdays are mine and Kye's special day together when I just have him.  So last Wednesday I took him over to Jesse Jones Park for his 2-year-old photo shoot.  He spent most of the time looking for "Ah ahs".  That's what he calls monkeys and he's obsessed with them lately.  He kept yelling "you get out here ah ahs" at the trees.  So cute.  I love my handsome little boy's boy. 

 

a Lot of Circus

2 Birthday Kiddos + 2 Cakes + 1 Clown + Games + Crafts + Cotton Candy + Lemonade + Popcorn + Hot dogs = tons of fun for all the little ones at the big circus birthday party.  I am finally getting caught up on the clean up, pictures, thank yous etc.  So enjoy the pics from last weekends festivities...

Food...

Decorations... I wish I had taken a picture of the whole backyard, but I was rushing around to get everything set up and missed doing it.  You can get the idea though.

Photo booth...

My 4 year old birthday girl...

My 2-year-old birthday boy...

And my wonderful niece Madeline who came down with my parents and helped me stuff popcorn and cotton candy bags along with tons of other party preps then even volunteered to dress like a clown to run my duck pond and can toss games for me.  LOVE her.

 

Fun with the body boppers... even Mark had to try them out (big shock there)



You can see at the end we opened the pool and it turned into a pool party.  If you were at the party and wondered why you weren't invited to the pool party, you were, you just didn't stay long enough to realize it.  Everyone who stayed late ended up in the pool.  Then it was time for presents... lots of presents...

And I apologize for those of you who brought gifts because for most of the gifts I have no idea who got what.  As you can see it was chaos (especially Kye's side).  The kids were ripping and no one was paying attention to cards.  They love their new things though.  Thanks to all our wonderful friends!

a Little More Circus

Still working on the pictures, and the clean-up, and a million other things.  But I thought I would share my posters since, well, since I'm very proud of them and I don't have all the other birthday pictures to post yet.  These lined the side fence of our yard as you entered to give that vintage circus feel.  I had to find some use for all the pictures I took...

just A Little Bit of Circus For You

It was a long weekend.  The big circus birthday party went great.  And most importantly the kids had a ton of fun.  And the entertainment actually showed up this year.  Yay!  Of course we did have some craziness as usual.  The Fifth Disease virus swept through our entire house over the last week and a half.  If you haven't heard of it (I never had) it causes a major rash over pretty much your entire body, especially your face, that looks like a really bad splotchy sunburn.  Great for party pics right?  Luckily Kye's was pretty much gone since he was the first to get it then give it to the rest of us (big shock there).  Celia was still a little red you can see from her pictures.  It also caused a wardrobe change.  The rash is irritated by sun and activity and since the party would have both we switched her outfit from the one I made her for her pre-party pics to her favorite "sparkle" dress.  She was more than happy with that.  I'm just happy the virus is similar to chickenpox in that once you get it you're immune to it.  No more rashes and joint pain (the adult version of it) for us.  Since it's going to take me a while to clean off my hard drive so I can load the party pics here's just a little sneak peek of all the fun that went on...

Step Right Up!

If anyone has been wondering what I've been doing lately.  This is it... planning a big circus.  As everyone knows I go a little overboard with my party planning.  This one will be no exception.  The actual party is still in the works.  But I thought I would share the pictures from their "circus shoot".  I am using these for the invitations and posters at their party.  A big thanks again to my mom for helping me with the pictures and for spending A Lot of time making the perfect hat I designed for Celia.  It wasn't easy and my mom always comes through.  Wasn't it worth it though??  It turned out so cute.  I decorated it and did her shirt.  Kye's shirt is from etsy.  I got his birthday shirt on there last year as well.  Love etsy.  They always have cool shirts for Kye.  They also had hats I could have used for Celia, but they were pretty expensive plus I wanted to try my hand (and my mom's hand) at making one.  Ok, gotta get back to work on the circus.  Enjoy the photos...

my 4 Year Old

Happy April Fool's Day everyone!  Four years ago today I was nine months pregnant with a due date 11 days away.  It was a pretty Sunday and the Shell Houston Open golf tournament was in full swing in our neighborhood.  Mark and I decided to spend the day there watching the pros.  My neighbor Debra was nice enough to drive us to the tournament.  But it was such a nice day that we decided to walk home.  I really think there is something to that theory that walking sets off your labor because that evening while I was getting ready for a nice dinner out with my husband to enjoy our last days of childless dining the labor pains started.  Just past 2am on April 2nd we met our beautiful daughter and became parents.  Our lives were changed forever and it's been wonderful.  Happy 4th birthday to our sweet Celia Rose.  I am doing this blog entry today because tomorrow will likely be crazy for us.  We actually aren't doing her party for another 2 weeks.  That will be the subject of a later LONG blog entry for sure.

For now here is my big 4 year old...

I took these pictures for her "Celebration of Life" board at school.  I would have loved to post the board on here since I spent tons of time doing it and it turned out super cute.  But for some very annoying reason blogger won't upload it.  I tried to crop it down and save it low res with no luck.  I would have taken a picture of it and posted that, but it's at her school.  You can sort of see it in the pictures below.  Her teacher is holding it up as her class performs her celebration of life.  Starting at April she gets to do a walk around the earth and the sun stepping on each month of the year as she goes.  She takes one trip for each year of her life celebrating each year by talking about the important things she learned in each of them.  It was very cute and you could tell she really enjoyed doing it.

Happy Birthday Celia!  I promise we will celebrate it in big time circus style in 2 weeks.