A special day

It's been a special day in our home. Anna was queen of the house today with it being her birthday. Daddy brought her flowers, mommy serenaded her with the birthday song this morning, mommy painted her toenails and fingernails, and she got to wear a birthday crown while opening her presents. She also had a chocolate chip cookie, warm out of the oven, before dinner!!

What a lucky girl to have such a sweet daddy...her very own flowers!

Check out those pretty fingernails and toenails!

She's very good at saying "Happy Birthday" now. Thank you to those of you who called to sing to her. I heard her playing this afternoon and she was saying, "Happy Birthday, thank you". :0)

Anna is 2!

Our baby is growing up so fast!! She's 2 today and sadly we don't remember nearly as much about the last 2 years as we'd like. A few hours old 1 year old 2 years old...boy how she's changed!!!

Vacation

A few weeks ago Daddy and Mommy went on vacation for an entire week all by themselves. It was so nice to go out to eat, sleep in, and just be lazy bums laying on the beach. :0)

Daddy preferred doing his devotions on the balcony to the sound of the ocean.

While we were gone, Anna stayed with Grandpa and Grandma Bills. She did great while we were gone although it took her awhile to adjust once we got back. She tried to pretend that she had forgotten all of mommy and daddy's rules. :0) She was able to spend time with her cousins...Kenley, Grace, Eli, Wes, and Drew.

Anna loves to teach Kenley all of her tricks! They've snuck up the stairs together more than once and I'm sure there will be more times in the future. Monkey see, monkey do!

Congrats "Unca Nate"!

Nathan is now headed to bigger and better things... like living close to us! Yea!!

Poor kid with 3 sisters!

Seriously now!!

Happy Birthday Grandma!

June is a month full of birthdays for our family. This Saturday we celebrated my mom's and were thrilled that we got to spend it with her as it's been many years since we've been with her on her birthday. When we finished singing the "Happy Birthday" song to her, Anna asked for us to sing "more". She did her own birthday song version singing "la, la, la". There'll be many more birthday pictures to come over the next few weeks. :0)

23 Months

We had a great time playing at the park this morning celebrating Anna's 23 month b-day. It's hard to believe that in one more month our baby (I know I need to quit calling her that) will be 2. Goodness, it goes too fast! It doesn't seem as hard this time though as it was when she turned 1. Anna loved the slide and was able to do it all by herself by the time we left.

This is a great playground as they have different sections of play equipment for all different ages of children.

We have a swing for her at home but no where to hang it so we're going to have to get serious about buying a swing set or finding a tree to hang it from so that we can hear her giggles of excitment at home. This was obviously her favorite thing to do.

Michael was bummed he didn't bring his fishing pole but at least we got to enjoy watching the ducks, even tiny babies, swim. Next time we'll have to remember to take some bread to feed them.

Happy Birthday Grandpa & Grandma Burch

We spent this past Saturday with Daddy's family celebrating Grandpa and Grandma Burch's 80th and 77th birthdays. Anna had a fun time playing with her cousins and all the new toys. She did a good job playing on the car ride there and slept part of the way home. She even took a good nap away from home...YEA! Playing football with Grandpa and Bayli

Grandma and Anna playing telephone (one of Anna's favorite toys!)

Snuggling with Aunt Jenny

Hunting Easter Eggs with Uncle Matt (a few months late but still tons of fun!)

Anna's got rhythm

Yes, we love music in our house and it's no wonder Anna has rhythm...it's in the genetics from both sides. :-) We listen to music daily and dance daily as well. The Wheels on the Bus is probably her favorite song along with This Little Light of Mine. She loves to do the motions to songs and is a quick learner. She often has us laughing with her latest dance moves.

Washing the house

We've had a great time playing outside lately in the nice, sunny weather. Anna loves water, as do most toddlers, so I've been trying to come up with ways to play in the water without actually getting in it. As you can see, she had a fun time washing her house a few days ago. :0)

Off to church...

Sunday mornings are a favorite for us as we enjoy getting dressed in our nice clothes and attending church as a family. We have been so blessed with a warm, caring church family here that have helped us out a lot with packing, moving, and watching Anna so we could work on the house. Pictures of the house will be coming soon. There are a few things left we'd like to get done (hopefully before the end of this month) and then I'll post some before and after pictures of all our hard work. :0)

I don't realize how big our little girl (she's not a baby anymore for sure) is getting until I see her in pictures. Wow, they grow so fast!!

Dressing up is not limited to just Sundays for Anna. She loves to wear my shoes and is even coordinated enough to brush her teeth and walk around in high heeled shoes. What a goof!

Washing the car

As you can see, she's quite the good helper when it comes to playing in water and getting all wet and soapy. :-)

The past month...

Goodness! Where has the past month gone?! Packing, moving, unpacking, organizing, decorating, a garage sale... it's been quite chaotic around here but things are starting to settle down, Praise the Lord, and life is getting back to normal. Here are some pictures and a few videos from the past few weeks-Enjoy! Anna was a good helper when it came to packing boxes. She eagerly threw anything and everything in boxes. :-)

At our new house, she loves to run in our backyard. It's good sized and the trees provide good shade and a home for many birds and bunnies which we love to watch. We've even seen a raccoon prowling around back there.

We put her kitchen in our kitchen at our new house and she plays with it a lot more now. She's often cooking for her babies and feeding them. It's so fun to watch her play as she imitates us more and more each day. We don't even realize the things she notices us doing.

She LOVES to wear her sunglasses everywhere. It doesn't matter where we are, she wants them on!

Her first major boo-boo occured 2 weekends ago while we were sorting through boxes in the garage. She was playing on her John Deere tractor, riding around in the garage and before I knew it, I heard the wheels start spinning rather quickly and realized she was headed down the driveway. Our driveway is a bit steep so she pipcked up speed and away she went with her feet pulled up enjoying every minute of it until she got to the bottom of the drive and the tractor caught on the lip where the road starts and it through her off the tractor into the street. She loves to give us heart failure!! The Lord was watching over her and protecting her because it wasn't more than a minute after I got down there to get her that a car came flying around the corner and could've run over her had I not gotten her out of the road in time. Her eye was swollen shut for an entire day but it didn't seem to bother her. Thankfully her boo-boo has healed up very well with just a small red spot above her eye right now. It doesn't look like there will be a bad scar so that's a blessing as well.