Marino's 2nd Birthday Party

Nicholas was invited to his first birthday party last weekend. His only concern before accepting the invitation is do they have birthday hats and cake. Since they did, he was happy to go and had a great time! All the kids did (and I think the parents too).

The party was at Romp N Roll. They had tons of mats and slides and jumpy things and fun games for the kids.
Here's Nicholas climbing up a rock wall

Marino & his Daddy

A parachute game

Dancing with bubbles


Catching bubbles

Here's the birthday boy with his Yo Gabba Gabba hat

Balloons, hats, kids, kids, and more kids

Nicholas in the ever important birthday hat

Chowing down on some cake and Rita's Italian Ice. (Sara knows how to make me a BFF really quick)

A shot of Marino and his gorgeous Mommy, Sara. I'm so sorry this photo came out so blurry, it's a really sweet picture.

Kenya's 12th Birthday Weekend

Kenya's 12th birthday was this weekend. She decided to have a slumber party for a few friends. Friday night Rich picked her up with 2 of her girlfriends, he took them to dinner, and then they headed home.

Nicholas sat patiently waiting way past his bedtime. He was way too excited that his sister was coming and that she was having a birthday party to sleep. No, Kenya did not have a Nemo party just like Nicholas. Nicholas feels it is 100% necessary to wear a party hat to all parties especially while singing "Happy Birthday" so he wore this hat all night, sang "Happy Birthday" over and over and pretended to blow out many many birthday candles.

The next morning everybody went to breakfast and the mall, picked up another of Kenya's friends then we all headed to the beach.
The girls mostly hung out near the water.

Nicholas went down the slide about 80 bazillion times.

The girls took some photos

Nicholas wasn't a fan of the photo sessions.

Saturday night was quiet at home.
Sunday morning we got up, did breakfast, then Nicholas got ready to drive us down to the beach again. He put on some Chapstick to protect his lips from the sun (that's the huge glob of red gunk you see on the side of his face).

We walked a bit then all went for ice cream. Nicholas was disappointed they didn't have "yellow" ice cream so he settled for chocolate.

Can you see his wheels spinning, thinking, there has to be a better way.

And here it is, face first to the bowl.

We headed home and the girls played a few games

Finally, everybody said their goodbyes and headed home. It was a nice weekend, I think they all had a good time. After everybody left, Nicholas went to bed early and I sure know I was exhausted.

2nd birthday and vacation

Nicholas turned 2 last week! He's gotten so big and is getting "older" and more of a character by the day.

He didn't have a great time at the party, I think he was overwhelmed by the prior week of vacation spent back and forth between Pennsylvania and home, having people staying in "his" house playing with "his" toys, meeting all kinds of new people, being out of his routine. The party was just too much. I spend the entire day holding him and trying to get him to be happy. The pic above is the result of trying to get a group shot of all 5 cousins. Big FAIL.

My Mom did an awesome job with the Nemo cake! This was her first attempt at using fondant and it turned out great!


(I made the waves)

The finished Nemo!


Nicholas and McKinzy got to spend a lot of time together this past week. It was a good thing and a bad thing. Apparently neither of them really like to share their toys or their space or their Mommies or much of anything else for that matter. There were some really cute moments between the two of them though and there were some torrential meltdowns. I think we're all in agreement, next year our time togeher should be shorter.