My Baby is 2!!!

 Holy Smokes!!! My baby has been two for half a month now! This makes me sad for so so many reasons.  First and foremost, I am so sad to see my baby growing up too fast.  Aaaaaaaand... I am also a touch sad to have the crazy, unpredictable, and unreasonable, 2 year old fits in my life again.

Fits aside, we just adore our sweet little Elsie! She is full of personality. She loves to giggle and give hugs to all her family! She loves to sing and get dressed up all beautiful.  She is such a smarty pants and loves to do everything herself! Her favorite thing is to have her whole family sitting together on the couch :) She is just the perfect addition to our little family!

Pizza is Elsie's absolute favorite food. So, for her birthday dinner, we made individual pizzas! Elsie loved being a chef!

 And she wasn't half bad...

 Dinner was a hit!

 Lately, Elsie is really into Frozen! She loves to sing "Let it Go"! So we had a small "Frozen" party for her. In honor of Elsie, I made a "Frozen" ice cream cake!

It was so yummy!!

 Elsie loved it...however, there really isn't a treat that she doesn't love :)

 We had our good friends and neighbors over to help us celebrate!

 After cake, we went outside to enjoy the beautiful weather  for a bit.

 Then we opened a few presents.

 Elsie loved all her fun presents!

 She looked like such a big girl with her new Frozen backpack on...oh stop growing baby girl :(

 Here is Elsie with a dear little friend!!

 We have made some great memories with these sweet kiddos! We are lucky they live right next to us!

Elsie's birthday was so much fun! We are so blessed to have Elsie, Jane and Beckham in our lives. Happy Happy Birthday Baby Girl!!

Easter and Elsie!!

Easter, as usual, was fabulous!! It is just difficult to be grumpy during Spring time. And having the Easter bunny visit and spread some magic just makes it that much better!!

I like to keep our focus on the savior as much as we can, so the Saturday before Easter we had a special family home evening where we had an easter egg hunt which taught us about the last week of Jesus' life and his ressurection!  It was a very neat and spiritual experience and I am so glad we did it. I am so grateful for our Savior and all he has done for us! So having another holiday where we can learn about him and focus on him is wonderful.

Here are the kiddos on Easter Sunday looking darling before church!!

After church, we were excited to see that the Easter bunny had come and hidden some eggs around the house!!

 Like a tornado, the kids had run around the house and found all the eggs within 3 minutes!!

 Elsie was satisfied only finding one egg after she realized there was candy inside!!! Jane and Beckham shared with her, though!

 Then we gave the kids their Easter baskets with the usual, fun Spring time goodies inside!!

Elsie and I continue to have a super fun play date with some great friends every week! We have started incorporating a letter each week so the kids can learn about a letter each time we meet! This week was "B".  Here are the kiddos wearing Bug hats and eating peanut Butter sandwiches!

 We sang the Bumble Bee Song...

 And pressed bugs in play dough...

 Then the kiddos jumped on the trampoline with Balls!

 The next week was "C" week and it was at my house! We made these darling cuddly caterpillars!

I made corn chowder! And everyone brought some darling "C" treats! I loves these cute fruit Cars!

 These Hungry Hungry Caterpillar jello cups were so darling.

 I had a cup of live caterpillars which the kids were fascinated with! And one of my clever friends brought this cute activity which taught the phases of metmorphosis!  It was too cute :)

 The kids just loved it.

 Of course, we played outside since it was a beautiful day.  Here is Elsie with her darling friend!

 Our one little boy was happily playing and digging in the rocks!!

We have some super nice neighbors who have a family sized paddle boat that they said we could borrow any time! The kids had been dying to go out on it so, we took her for a whirl one day! It was so much fun.  However, we picked a super windy day so Ryan and I got quite the workout trying to paddle that thing against the wind- hehe!

 Last but not least... after four weeks of enduring her cast like a champ, Jane finally got her cast off!! She remained jolly Jane through the whole so "not fun" experience and I am so proud of her!!

Spring Break in Branson!!

We decided we needed a real break over Spring Break! So Ryan, with his most excellent skill of planning a fabulous getaway, planned a fun trip to Branson.  The kiddos were so excited to have a family adventure.  Beckham has been asking for months now when our next one was going to be.  So this was a much needed break for everyone.

I was super excited to find out that such a fun town, like Branson, was only 2 hours away!  On our way we made a few neat stops. We stopped at a cheese factory and tried lots of unique cheeses. And we also stopped at the very first ever built Bass Pro Shop.  It was quite neat!

Here are the Beckham and Elsie right outside...

...then right inside. Hehe, maybe I take too many pictures!!

The ceiling in this room was so neat.  It made it look like we were under water and looking up at the surface like fish in a lake.

Per the norm, in every Bass Pro Shop, there was no shortage of scenery and animals to look at! The kids really ate it all up...

This was a gigantic sculpture of an elk. It was so beautiful!

Elsie just loved the turtles!!

This is a view of the huge elk from further back.

The kids found lots of things to climb on and hide in. Kids are so good at making anywhere you go a playground!

This was just the biggest and scariest looking fish ever. Hanging out near the aquariums really fueled my fear of deep water...

 Ooh there were real alligators!

The first thing we did in Branson was go to Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede dinner show! It was my favorite event of the trip!

Ever since this show Elsie has really been quite obsessed with horses! She loved seeing all the horses before the show!

There was an amazing juggler before the show who was a lot of fun.

Here we are in the magical arena waiting for our delicious feast and for the cool show to start!

 On our way home, I saw a sky coaster! I have been dying to go on one of these for years now! My sweet and very brave Beckham volunteered to ride with me! I was so proud of him. He was very brave and we had a lot of fun. Even though it was pretty darn scary!

Jane opted to ride a neat go kart instead! Here are Ryan and Jane zooming by!

The next day was rainy and chilly, so we spent a good portion of the day inside the Butterfly Palace! This place was super cool! There was a mirror maze which the kids over and over again at least 20 times!!

 This neat maze replicated how the branches and vines of a real live tree found in the rainforest feel.

 This was a cool little simulated pond that we found in the tree maze.

There were tons of really amazing reptiles. This little guy reminded me of the chameleon from Rapuntzel!

When we finally made it into the Butterfly room we were amazed to see how many beautiful butterflies were fluttering about! Naturally, Elsie was only minimally entertained by the stunning butterflies and found complete joy in going up and down these skinny stairs and across the skinny bridge-hehe!

 We were given a nectar flower which attracted the butterflies right to us so we could get a closer look.

We spent hours in that room!

Next, we drove to Lambert's cafe! They are famous for throwing rolls! A guy with a cart of freshly baked rolls comes around and if you want a roll he throws it with amazing precision...I mean, even the kids caught one... and you could have as many as you want! There were also many other servers floating around handing out more food of various varieties.  This was all occurring while we were eating our already huge meals!! My salad was the size of a car tire and was presented to me in the biggest bread bowl I have ever seen! What a fun way to have lunch!

 

On our last day in Branson, we hit up the famous Silver Dollar City, a neat old-timey amusement park. There were little rides which Elsie loved...

 And bigger ones for Jane and Beckham.  This was the kids favorite!

 There were also many cool shops with goods home made in old fashioned ways.  We saw a man blowing glass and ate some delicious home made baked goods...including a chocolate chip cookie bigger than my head!  Elsie found another set of stairs to enjoy...

 I'll admit...there were a few times I wished I could leave them in here- haha!

 I loved the section of the park with real old buildings brought to the park from all around Missouri.  Here are kiddos pumping some water...

 and learning how to make a star in the old school house...

 we saw the neat old church too.

 These jumping frogs were Elsie's favorite ride!

 Despite a few ups and downs, we had such a great Spring Break!  I just love hanging out with my favorite people in the whole world!! If you are ever in Missouri, Branson is a must!!