Happy Birthday, Shelby!

Today was a fun day celebrating Shelby's third birthday. We started it out by singing Shelby awake with the famous "Happy Birthday to you" song. It's always our favorite way to start any birthday. It's so much fun to see someone wake up while you're singing to them merrily.

After school we ate our birthday supper of chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese. Of all the suppers in the world that was tops on the list. Yum Yum

After supper Shelby tried to contain her excitement while eating until she could finally open her presents. She was SOOOOOO excited.

She got a special birthday call from Grandpa Millard. That was cool!



Then it was time to start the party.



Opening a present from Grandma Millard -




Shelby got the one thing she asked for - Polly Pockets!

Shelby got a really cool Explorer's Kit from Grandma Millard. She can obviously hardly wait to use it!

Shelby was so excited to go outside and use her bug collection and explorer's kit that we immediately went outside after opening presents to find bugs! We didn't even get to eat birthday cake until after bug collecting. Finally at bedtime we got to enjoy a little birthday cake!

Happy Birthday, Shelby! You're getting so big!

A'pickin and a'grinnin

Here's a couple pics of our evening of fun in the heat and the sweating picking blueberries from the Prelocks Blueberry Farm.





Yum, Yum - Blueberries all winter for us!

Fun, Fun

Today was our last day of vacation, so we decided the most loving and fun thing to do to prepare for this day would be to help the girls get horrendous sunburns by forgetting to bring the kids sunscreen to Tropicanoe Cove yesterday. Here's a sample of what we're dealing with today.


On top of that we decided to go to Brian's softball game last night (which was a late start game), and it didn't get done until 8 pm at least. By the time we got home and got everyone ready for bed it was after 9:30 pm, which is very late indeed for our two. So in the middle of the night they both decided to bless us with a little late night screaming. When you're no longer accustomed to the middle of the night screaming, it makes it very difficult do deal with. That made for some good vacation sleeping!

So anyways, today's the last day of the vacation, and we decided it would be best to celebrate Shelby's upcoming birthday this weekend instead of next, so we'd have time to enjoy it. We spent a very relaxed afternoon / evening at Chuck E. Cheese (really, it was relaxing) eating pizza, playing games, and spending time with each other. There were hardly any other families there, so it wasn't quite as crazy as it usually is, so that was really nice. And Shelby was exuberant and ecstatic over getting to go to Chuck E Cheese's for her birthday "party."

Here's a picture of the fabulous hair accesories the girls won with 2 hours worth of Chuch E Cheese tickets. We like to call that "a good return on our investment."

So here we are, finishing off our last evening of vacation with another viewing of Milo and Otis, one of the most innocent and funny movies of all time (with some very quotable quotes interspersed throughout).

(From MILO AND OTIS)

Narrator: To keep up his spirits, he began singing a dog marching song.
Otis: Here comes the dog, strong and brave - woof! Here comes the dog, your life he... [falls into a hole]
Narrator: He then decided to skip the whole thing.

Narrator: The farm cat had just given birth to her first litter. She was determined to be a good mother and never yell at her kittens. But that approach would not last very long . . .

Our fun day did turn out to be pretty fun after all. We're all ready to get back to normal! :-)

Fifty Dollars!

Today Shelby got a wonderful surprise in the mail.


Fifty Dollars! She's rich, and she loved the card so much she carried it (and the three dollars) around the rest of the evening playing with her "book."




Fifty dollars ($3) richer because of the big birthday and still unfortunately too little. Life is rough.


Well, since we did find ourselves independantly wealthy this evening due to the unexpected windfall we decided to go out in style. Cheerio!






P.S. Mom, check out how big Oscar is getting. He got his checkup today and he's 26 pounds. He weighs more than Shelby.

Birthday / Anniversary

In our vacation of endless fun this week we forgot two important days - Grandpa Millard's birthday and Josh and Becky's anniverary. Sorry! So here's a little something to make up for that!

hjb

Swimming

During Kings Island the girls kept asking over and over when we'd be done so they could go back to the hotel and swim. Go figure. . . You spent all that money to do something amazing and they want what's free. So we spent the evening after Kings Island at the hotel pool and the next day after returning home at Tropicanoe Cove (that's my kind of vacation). The pictures are a bit fuzzy because my camera's on the fritz.

Kings Island

The only thing Shelby asked for all day was popcorn. Oh, that and to meet SpongeBob.

Brian and Hailey got to ride Plankton's Plunge together. It looked very thrilling. Speaking of thrilling, Hailey and I tried one ride "Avatar" and I was fairly certain she was literally going to fly out of her seat. I held her hand very tightly, while she looked like she needed to puke. We're not going on that one again!

Brian and the girls enjoyed the Blue Train (I can't remember it's name).

Hailey and Shelby enjoyed driving some cars together.

Brian buckling Shelby into a Jeep that looks a lot like mine.

Getting ready for Swiper's Slider. It was the FUNNEST ride. Watching the girls was hilarious!

Meeting Dora. Shelby was enthralled with Dora. We sat through the Sing Along Program with Dora, and Shelby really participated. It was funny to watch. We also got to meet Scooby, Wanda the Fairy, and several others.

FINALLY - We meet the man of the year . . . SpongeBob SquarePants. He's the man!

Hailey got to him first and hugged him like crazy.

Shelby reached him second and was so in awe all she could do was hold his hands and stare into his eyes.

Shelby sat stood there and stared and held his hands and giggled.

We love SpongeBob so much!