My baby turned 2!!

On June 10th Madelyn turned 2 while we were on vacation where we celebrated at Disneyland for a day(see pics last post). We celebrated again with Mark's family this last Sunday. I cannot believe how fast that year just flew by and now our sweet Madelyn is no longer a baby. She is such a joy to have in our family and we just love her sweet temperament. Here are a few little things about our sweet baby girl. Madelyn is talking in 3-4 word sentences now whether or not anybody else understands them...I always do. She loves to play with Kali and Zach and she will do pretty much whatever they tell her. She loves to play with baby dolls, and now dress-ups is a new favorite. Madelyn also loves to read books with anyone that will read to her and she loves to sing songs. Her favorite song is "I am a Child of God". She loves music...I think she may be my singer. :) She also loves to chew gum. I go through a pack of gum a week with my kids. Madelyn loves to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and she loves anything that has to do with Mickey and Minnie. She also loves to snuggle. I love that about her. My other two were not really snugglers but I can always count on Madelyn to snuggle with me. She also loves to go swimming and play in the water. Madelyn is also a big helper. She is very good at cleaning up when I ask her to and sings the "clean-up" song while she does it. She is a cheerful little helper like her big sister. Madelyn still takes a three hour nap every afternoon and she has always been a great sleeper...(something Kali was not as far as naps go). And finally, I think her most favorite things are her blankie and fingers...yes she still sucks those same two fingers on her right hand that she discovered at 5 months old. I know we will be paying for it later, but for now I think it is adorable and it makes her happy. :) Madelyn we love you so much and we are so blessed to have your sweet little special spirit in our family!!

Here are some pics from our little celebration at G&G Stacy's home last Sunday. As you can see, Madelyn was taking this whole birthday thing quite seriously. I could not get her to look at the camera and smile for a single pic.










These were taken the next day at home when Madelyn wanted to try on her new dress-up.

Happy 2nd Birthday little princess!! We love you sweet Madelyn!!

Summer fun begins!!

We took our first trip of the summer with the Hinson's this last week and we had a blast! We went to southern California where we stayed on a Navy Base at Point Magu and it was like having our own private beach. It was awesome!! We spent lots of time on the beach, playing in the sand, dodging waves, fishing, digging for clams and finding every sand dollar and seashell that we could possibly find! Despite the cooler windy overcast weather on Tuesday, the kids happily played on the beach for the whole afternoon and we all got a little sunburned.... I'm a bad mommy and forgot to put it on them thinking we were not going to last long in the cooler weather. :) Luckily, Wednesday was much sunnier and less windy. Mark and Neal took the boys out fishing that morning and so Kristin and I took a little drive with the girls down the coast through Malibu and Santa Monica. After having our own little adventure ;) we turned around and drove back ready for some much needed relaxing time on the beach. That evening we found an awesome pizza place where we had dinner and celebrated Madelyn's 2nd birthday! The kids seemed to enjoy the time indoors and Madelyn was loving all the birthday attention. That night we enjoyed a fun campfire where we had s'mores and doughboys (our new favorite!). Thursday was our last day and Mark insisted that we spend the day in Disneyland since we were already so close and we need to take full advantage of our season passes. It was also Madelyn's actual birthday and SO, we packed up the kids, brought Millie with us and spent a perfect day in Disneyland! The weather was perfect and the lines were not too long. It was fun having Millie with us and the kids couldn't have been more thrilled to be at "the happiest place on earth"! (even though we did have a few meltdowns...probably a result from days in the sun and late nights) There are LOTS of pictures...sorry I had trouble narrowing them down :)

These first few pics are at a restaurant called JOCKO's that Neal insisted we have to stop at on our way down the coast. We took a 2 hour detour on our drive just to eat dinner at this place! It has an amazingly HUGE Filet Mingon steak that can feed a whole family and it was AWESOME! The picture of the actual steak doesn't do it justice but it did feed our whole family.

Waiting for our table outside Jocko's

The steak before we ate and the mess we left after :)

Day 1 on the beach:



My exhausted, sunburned kiddos in the zone watching TV before we left for dinner.
Day 2 on the beach










Celebrating our sweet Madelyn's 2nd birthday at Topper's Pizza. I can't believe my baby is 2!!








While we were packing up Thursday morning, I found Madelyn like this with a cupcake that I had put in the trash. She decided to help herself and not let that cupcake go to waste. It was her birthday that day so if she wanted a cupcake for breakfast then fine!!
Disneyland here we come!! We were so lucky to run into Mickey and Minnie at the same time right when we walked in the gates. It was perfect!!

Sorry most of the pics are of just Madelyn... it was HER BIRTHDAY after all! She was our little princess for the day! She was much more brave this trip and wanted to take pics with all the characters that we saw!










We drove home completely exhausted that night and are so glad that we went even if it was just for a day! It was worth every minute and I'm pretty sure Madelyn had the best 2nd birthday any of our kids have ever had!

We had an awesome first summer trip and loved every minute of the beautiful southern California beach and just spending great time with our family and cousins. We are so blessed to be able to enjoy such a beautiful place and take our kids on such fun trips!