Family Reunion

This past weekend we headed to Port Huron for my family reunion. It was great to see everyone and the weather was absolutely perfect. I think I had the most fun watching Norah and her cousin, Addison, play together! You can tell Addison is a big sister because she always wants to hold Norah's hand and take her everywhere with her. Too cute!

Blowing bubbles

BFF's reunite!  This is my cousin's daughter, Addison.  If you remember, they became instant friends at Meat Pie this year!!

Addison, Norah and Addison's sister, Kennedy, reading under the tree!

And the newest addition to the family, Sulo!

And I had to add these couple pictures.  Norah was just playing and reading all morning this morning.  Nothing makes a better reading nook than a Tupperware container.

She kept holding the book up to show me the pictures!  Future teacher in training?

And of course we have to lick our finger to turn the page!  Hilarious!

Norah Loves....

I had seen this idea on Pinterest and I knew I wanted to start doing this yearly. I do not have one for her first birthday (I am sure I could go back and create one), but I figured there is no better time than to start on her second birthday. Each year you take a picture and then add the things they love at that time. Then, each year you can go back and see how their 'loves' have changed. Here is Norah's for this year.

A couple that need a little explaining:
saying "Stinker":  this is her name for our dog Molly.  She is constantly saying, "Stop it, Stinker" or "No, Stinker".  Obviously, Stinker is always bothering her! :)
making triangles with Momma:  triangles are what she calls her peanut butter and jelly sandwich; for the longest time I couldn't get her to eat pb&j, so one day I had her 'help' me make her sandwich in hopes that the involvement would coax her into actually eating it.  Well, we had to cut all the crust off and then cut it into triangles, which she thought was so cool and ever since a pb&j has been referred to as 'triangles'.

Birthday and Barnyard Animals

We had a little birthday celebration with grandparents and Uncle Mark, Aunt Ashlie and Audrey and Lilly. Thank you all for helping us celebrate Norah's 2nd birthday! I know she enjoyed every second of it! This week is also fair week!! Norah was really excited to see the animals and little did she know she would be getting ice cream twice in one visit. She couldn't stop talking about the roosters, cows and piggies!

We are OBSESSED WITH TEAM UMIZOOMI....We had to get a DVD for her birthday!

Once again, Team UmiZoomi, or as she calls it, "Umi City"!  See that expression?  That describes it all!

Diggin' in for more!

Starting her little birthday celebration off with some coloring with her cousins!

Ready to blow out the candles!  She did it all on her own!

She loved crouching down and looking at the furry bunnies!

Would you expect anything else?  I am beginning to realize Norah loves ice cream just as much as her Momma!  Lucky girl got to have ice cream BEFORE dinner at the fair! 

We weren't able to see the piggies the first time through the barns because they were showing, so after some Gibby's fries and Lions Stand burger and milkshake we headed back for a peek before heading home!

Happy 2nd Birthday!!!!!!

Well, let me start by saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR BEAUTIFUL LITTLE GIRL! We cannot believe she is two years old today! I just don't know where the time has gone! After Drew got home from work, we opened some birthday presents, and then instead of cooking a big fancy meal that Norah probably wouldn't eat anyway, we headed to The Tavern for waffle fries and chicken tenders. Norah just kept eating and eating and eating, so I think she enjoyed her birthday meal. Then, we of course had to end the birthday evening with some Grindstone ice cream, which she also thoroughly enjoyed! Happy 2nd birthday sweetheart! We love you so much!

Now, I started the morning off with a minor, I guess some would say MAJOR, meltdown. I was trying to post all of this this morning and decided to clean up my blog a little bit. BIG MISTAKE! I was prepared to delete all of the old 'drafts' that I had hanging around....just posts that never got published. Well, instead of deleting drafts I deleted THE LAST 25 POSTS ON MY BLOG! I could not believe what had happened. Some may think I was overreacting, but this is like our family journal and it is how I document things going on in Norah's life. It was kind of a big deal! I was in tears basically all morning, which made me feel awful because it was Norah's birthday and I didn't want to spend the day like that. So, by lunch I was calmed down, told myself it is what it is and it isn't the end of the world. They are just blog posts....this was like way minor compared to the ridiculous act of violence that just happened in Colorado. Fortunately, to make a long story short, Drew helped me find the posts that were deleted, but I had to recopy, repaste, republish and manually type the dates at the top of each post. So, I apologize for those of you that came to see all of Norah's birthday pictures today and all you found was the chaos of a blog in progress. We are back in working order though, and I learned my lesson the hard way.

On to more fun..........these are all of the pictures I took of Norah yesterday! Actually not all.....I ended up taking 500 pictures! :) So this is a small portion, and there are still a ridiculous amount of photos. So sorry, I just couldn't decide which ones to share with you, so I decided to share them all!! Enjoy!

Invitational Week Continued

July 13, 2012

Our week has continued with lots more activity. Drew turned the big 3-1 on Tuesday, so we celebrated at home with dinner and an Oreo ball cake! Norah was such a big helper making the dessert! She loves to help out at dinner! Then, today all of us girls headed to the beach to enjoy the beautiful weather and for a change of scenery. We were there for a few hours and the girls just absolutely had a ball! It was so much fun to watch them all playing in the sand and water together. Thanks for another great day everyone!

Smashing the Oreos to make Oreo balls for Daddy's birthday!

Rolling the dough into balls

And we figured out it is edible!

Helping Daddy blow out his candles....sorry for the pathetic cake, but we made an Oreo ball cake! It tasted good!

Posing with his poster that all the nieces made him for his birthday! Didn't they do great!?

Building with Audrey and Lilly

Helping the bigger girls with their sand castle

Soaking up the sun!

All 6 granddaughters and their friend Anna Anna, Audrey, Grace, Norah, Lilly, Olivia and Emma