Frosting Cupcakes

With the leftovers of Bergen's birthday cake, we let the little chefs make their own magic. There are probably a million things I could say about these pictures, but I will let them speak for themselves.

Nothing like a good sugar high!

Bergen Turns 2

We have a TWO year old! Crazy! Bergen's birthday was a busy but fun day. Helen, Joshua, and Nathan were here and it was fun to share the events with them. The boys got to frost and decorate their own cupcakes (that's a whole post in and of itself!), daddy came home that afternoon (in a Texas sized rainstorm), and there were lots of new toys to play with! Bergen knew just how to open the presents, and still wanted to make sure he got ALL the paper off before enjoying the new item.

(It's nice to be able to stretch our budget, but I do find it quite comical that Bergen was wearing these shorts, along with many others, last May!)

What do you think? Does he like it? :)

It can be tough to watch others open new things, but Helen's boys were so good about letting Bergen open his presents, and it was fun to watch them all play with some of the things in the days that followed.

Bergen got blocks, felt food, cooking dishes, vehicles, lacing cards, playdoh sissors, and a Chuggington movie. I think he was pretty excited about everything. And I'll just admit now, I'm enjoying seeing his new toys organized in boxes and bins that I may or may not have been planning on for months now :) Helen said she was surprised I didn't have the bins already labeled. I'll take that as a compliment on my organization skills. Haha!

Like I said before, Bergen liked his cake. He kept saying "pain!" (which translates to plane) and "cake!"

He did a great job blowing out the candles. I think he blew them out one at a time for a total of two breaths. Not bad for someone who's only had one prior birthday.

We found Bergen reaching into the fridge earlier sneaking off the skittles. Apparently they were just too hard to resist because Nathan just couldn't help sneaking them too.

Happy birthday Bergen! We love you so much!

How old are you?

Singing Happy Birthday

Airplane Cake

An airplane cake seemed appropriate for Bergen's birthday this year. So what do I do? I enlist the help of my sister Helen, since she was here visiting, and spend hours and hours staying up way past my bedtime, painting little wooden airplanes, molding airheads into the desired shape, baking cakes, making buttercream frosting (thankfully Helen took care of all the taste testing to ensure we had the correct flavor), frosting the double layer cake, and then decorating the cake. I kept asking why we were doing this because well, at those late hours it just seemed a little crazy and possibly extreme for a little 2 year old, but Helen kept reminding me because we were having fun. And it's true, it was fun to do something special for Bergen, it was fun to spend that time with Helen, and I couldn't have been happier with the results! I only wish Bergen's birthday wouldn't have been a bad weather day because it made getting good natural light to take a picture-perfect picture pretty much impossible. Almost so much so I didn't want to cut it that day just so I could try taking another picture of it the next day. Silly I know!

Like I said, I think it was a complete success and made for one smiley little boy!

Muddy Shoes

Have I mentioned there's no question my boy is ALL boy? He manages to find the mud in the backyard without fail. This time he managed to silently walk into the house, across the kitchen, and almost across the entire living room before stopping and calling, "mama!" before Travis or I knew he was in the house...with about 3 inches of mud caked to his sandals and half way up his legs. *sigh* Just another day in the life of messes we clean up :) Love my buggy!

I struggled to get a good picture, and this just doesn't do it justice, but you get the idea.

30th Birthday

That's right folks, I'm now part of "club 30" and livin' it up! For my 30th birthday I got myself some bling jeans and a friend gave me Disney channel's Lemonade Mouth soundtrack. Sounds 30-ish in a completely mature, responsible, adult kind of way, right?! :) I'm just glad that even though I've turned 30, I don't feel like an old fuddy-duddy. In fact I'm STILL waiting to feel cool. Hmmm, maybe 35...

Travis got to be home for my birthday this year! A friend watched Bergen and the two of us went to brunch together. It seems so uneventful, but going out to eat for a date has a whole new meaning these days. It means I don't spend close to an hour and a half in the kitchen cooking/helping Bergen "help" me, I'm not juggling (literally) Bergen and his food while we eat, and I get to skip the never ending clean up when it's all over! Needless to say it was a great way to spend a birthday date. Travis got me a cookbook, a watch, and an iTunes gift card (yea new running music...guess that means I better be more consistent about running). It was a great day and I loved spending it with my two favorite people!

The following week some friends got together for a little girls time. It's not every year a girl turns 30, so we went all out for costume bowling on the Wii. It was extra fun to have Helen here for that, and extra nice that Travis willingly stayed home with all 3 boys while we snuck away.

Egg Hunt

After coloring real eggs, we did a plastic egg hunt in the backyard. (I took Bergen to a neighborhood and playgroup egg hunt earlier in the week. I didn't really know what to expect but until Bergen starts asking to go I have no desire to go to mass group egg hunts, or should I say egg gathering/hoardings again. I wasn't a fan of the kids running through a field putting eggs in their basket just as fast as they could while smaller kids are too slow to get anything and it's over in about 3 minutes. It seemed a little greedy to me. And besides, where's the fun in finding an egg that's in plain sight? Sorry if you like this sort of thing, I just didn't.)

Needless to say the small hunt at home was by far my favorite activity. It was so fun to see Bergen look around saying things like, "hmmmmmm" and "eeeeeggs, are you?" Turns out he was a pretty good spotter, and of course was excited about the "chan-nee" inside the eggs! He's had fun playing with the eggs ever since I bought them, putting them in a "bass-et" and dumping them out, and we've even had a few mini hunts in the living room.

Happy Easter!

Coloring Easter Eggs

Lots of holidays and special events kind of slide by at house when Travis isn't home. Easter was looking like one of those holidays this year. Even though I had gotten egg dye and other Easter supplies ahead of time, we just didn't get to it before Travis left for the Easter weekend. I almost skipped it all and was going to save the stuff for next year, but decided the Tuesday after Easter we really should do it anyway. Bergen wouldn't know the difference and I'm so glad we did!

He really got into it and had a good time decorating the eggs. In fact I think it was just as fun for Travis and I. It turned out to be less messy than I expected even. Other than one bumped cup that splattered our towel, there wasn't much to clean up. Bergen liked the markers, glitter gel, and the dye. To my surprise he wasn't interested in using stickers. I will admit that it was hard for me to want to let Bergen put the pretty colored eggs back into a different color cup. I just wanted to keep them nice and pretty, and he just liked dunking the eggs. Unfortunately I don't think this will be the last time I have to fight the urge to let his creativeness overrule my creativeness :)

What a cute happy boy!