Tutu and Ties.

Due to Natallie's infatuation with tutus, I decided to do a "tutu's & ties" birthday party for Natallie this year. I found pink tutus for the girls and pink ties for the boys on Ebay (love Ebay! what can't you find on there?!)
 The tutu's came in a week before the party and I let Natallie try it on, she was so excited. I had to hide them in the closet until her very pink tutu & ties party.

Simon helped me mow the lawn, clean the house and scrub the BBQ while I worked on preparing all the food, which was all mostly pink, pink pink! I wasted time on things like driving to 4 different grocery stores until I found pink wafer cookies and meticulously icing a million tiny cupcakes and adorning it with a raspberry. I had my heart set on finding hot pink gerber daisies but after going to 3 different markets I gave up and settled on these other pink flowers (anyone know what these are called?)

So I guess while Simon did the hardwork, we worked well as a team getting things all ready and everything looked so pretty!!!

my little helper who made sure the icing tasted alright

Then we had to make sure Natallie knew that it was her birthday and that she was turning 2. This photo is of Natallie answering, "how old are you?"



And then it's party time. My favourite part was seeing all of Natallie's friends in their pink tutu's and ties. Last year a lot of Natallie's little friends couldn't walk yet (or weren't even born yet!).  Too bad we didn't have Natallie's besties, Nala & Alexa sitting in the same order as her birthday last year but look at the difference a year makes!


Love seeing all of Natallie's little friends grow up...



Last year Natallie had no clue what to do when everyone started singing Happy Birthday to her, but this year we had been talking and practicing pretend to blow a pretend candle she was pro at it. AND unlike last years cake smash, her face was covered in much less icing than last year.

1st birthday vs. 2nd birthday cake

And the birthday HUGS from all her friends....so precious.

And even a kiss for Toby

Then there were presents, thank you everyone who were kind enough to not only bring presents for Natallie but were considerate enough to not buy her anything that requires multiple batteries or makes loud obnoxious noises. I think her favourite right now is a pink guitar from Miranda/Darrell & Tyler/Amanda. Someone will have to teach her how to play it because unfortunately neither Simon and I can even keep clap in rhythm.

 Simon also got her a Home Depot toy tool kit. Natallie also loves running around the house with her hammer and saw "fixing" everything. Natallie's love for tools makes Simon very proud.

Thank you to all of you who came to celebrate Natallie's birthday with us and we pray that we continue to have you all in our lives as we all figure out this thing called parenthood together!

Not Pinterest perfect.

Like most people, I have a love-hate relationship with Pinterest. I get so inspired looking at all the things that creative, talented people come up with. Of course some of these people really should get a life and not make intricate cake pops with the faces resembling each character off Sesame Street but one there are some really amazingly gifted people out there. I love photography, OK so maybe not so much taking the photo itself but having beautiful photos of precious memories so I have been spending a lot of time on Pinterest looking at ideas for maternity photos, especially maternity photos ideas that involve Natallie being in them.

 

When we were in Seattle, we went to Golden Gardens Beach and I envision capturing some gorgeous maternity photos like these ones on Pinterest. I realized that (1) I am not a pregnant super model (seriously, how do these women have such flawless looking bellies?) and (2) an iPhone 5 is not a great camera. So perhaps if I did look like these gorgeous women and had an actual photographer other than my more-than-patient-but-no-photography-skills husband to take the photos, I could re-create beach beauties like these ones:

But considering the above things and with the help of a little photo editing, these are my attempt at a beach maternity photo shoot. Not Pinterest  perfect but at least I can say they are of real life:

 

I also really want maternity pictures with Natallie in them. The ones below are my favourites so far and I have been trying to capture moments like these ever since I've had these pictures engrained in my memory. However, the kids in this photo must not really be REAL toddlers because REAL toddlers, at least mine, Won't STAY STILL for a second. And when the camera is poised and ready and I say, "Can you kiss mommy's baby?" she says no and runs away.

 

 

 

Simon's mom was here the last few days and she has a nice Canon camera and agreed to try a do a mother-daughter maternity photo shoot. Maybe these moms bribed their kids with candy or something because my daughter just wanted to run, run, run. Getting her to look happy and awe-struck at my belly was so boring to her. She had slides to go down and dogs to chase! Oh well, that's real life vs. Pinterest perfect for you.  These are the best ones we captured:

 

My sister is going to be back from Cambodia in next week and she agreed to try and do another maternity photo shoot for me at Spanish Banks. I am hopeful that we'll get some good shots but if Natallie just wants to play at the beach instead of kiss my belly, that's OK too.

Working those strawberry fields

One of my best friends invited me and Natallie to come strawberry picking. Natallie just adores her girls, Sienna (3 yrs old) and Nala (just 3 months younger than Natallie).

The first farm we went to was actually closed so we drove to another one close by. We both had a rather large bucket that we were optimistically thinking we could fill but after a few minutes, we realized that Natallie and Nala just wanted to eat strawberries and we could not pick strawberries as fast as the girls were consuming them.


before we started- notice the large ambitious sized buckets?

We lowered our expectations and switched to the small bucket for making sand castles and got it half full. We were slightly disappointed that the strawberries we were picking looked like the imported California steroid strawberries that were big in size but not very tasty. Later, we realized we were picking in the wrong field and those were the ones were the stores and the U-Pick field actually had the local, small but sweet strawberries we were looking for.

heading back with the big buckets empty and the small buckets half-full

Oh well, it was more for the experience and the photos anyways. We bought a flat of local blueberries after and the girls were more than happy to plop themselves down next to the huge box of blueberries and eat until their faces were blue so all in all that's a pretty successful berry picking adventure!