Happy Happy Birthday to a big 2 year old Boy!!!

Is this a "good morning, it's my birthday!" face or what? Ty is definitely not a morning person, he takes after daddy and has been known to sleep in till 9:30 am! We were all so excited for the birthday boy to get up that we were in his room singing happy birthday bright and early. :)

He came out to see his first birthday present, a giant bear! He LOVES his D, a small bear he sleeps with. Now he has Big D. He loves climbing on him and reading books on him, so cute.

Then it was party time! Here's the birthday boy in his special road signs shirt. His birthday was road signs theme since he's in love with cars and driving. One of his favorite past times is sitting in my car, at the wheel, acting like he's driving. He's also very passionate about who's driving which car. I can only drive my car, if I try to drive Daddy's car, he cries and says, "No, you no drive Daddy's truck! Daddy drive!" with Italian hand waving and high emotion. That could be Irish hand waving too since we have a lot of that on my side of the family (Mom) and we're always overly emotional. :)

We celebrated the birthday in our driveway where Daddy and Papa Jerry made a track out of duck tape. We had bought lots of road signs, a gas pump and a stop light to add to the "track". This track is still present on our driveway and gets lots of use every day. :)

Party goers started arriving. Here's Shauna, Jenny and I.

Tatum needed to wear this sign on her back. She wanted to make sure everyone knew what team she was on. :)

Here's Tatum with some of her good friends, Mattie and Anderson.

And the birthday boy. As I was saying, such passion and emotion. As well as loving cars and bears, Ty LOVES guitars. This was his present from Keira and wow, can you tell he was excited about it? He'll be creating a band next year. :)

We tried to keep the road theme going so here's the gift table and the favor bags that look like stop lights.

But the action was out on the track. Here's Grandma, or De De as Ty calls her, pulling the kids around the track in a wagon. We're not quite sure why Ty calls her De De, but we know it must be an important name, because all the things that are important to him are named D or De De. His bear, his blanket, his Grandma, highly important items. :)

Along the track, there was a pit stop...

and a garage...

And everyone enjoyed riding the track.

Tatum, Nadine and I wear the appropriate colors and made sure to get in line according to stop light order. :)

There were lots of friends and neighbors at the party. Here's one of Ty's favorite neighbor, Matt. This is Anderson's dad and we use to get to see him often when we dropped Tatum off at preschool. The kids have different schedules now so we don't get to see him as often but when we spot Matt down the street or on his bike, Ty goes crazy and can't wait to see him!

My little baby is two. He's such a little boy, so rough and tough and boyish. :) But he always has love for his mommy.

The kids enjoyed a lunch of car shaped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, broccoli salad, fruit and veggie sticks with Capri Sun. This was Jack's first time enjoying a meal at the big kid table and he did a great job!

Lots of silliness!

You don't have to walk or ride to enjoy the track! :)

Oh Daddy!

And these are the beautiful and delicious cake pops that Shauna and Jacquie made for Ty's special day. Can you tell he was impressed?!

And he did a great job of blowing out his candles!

Everyone enjoyed the pops, there were vanilla and chocolate.

The Neven's enjoying some birthday pops.

Ty loved opening all his presents.

Oh Grandma!

Later that night, Ty got to open some more presents and got this Ukalalie, another favorite toy.

The next morning, Ty woke up to a new car table! He loves playing with it every day and even shares with his sister. Our little baby is two, I can't believe it. He's growing up so fast, too fast.

Fun with friends from far and near

Colleen and I have been friends since we were born. Our mothers taught together while they were pregnant so we were actually friends before birth I guess. :) Anyway, the friendship has spanned 34 years and even though we don't get to see each other very often, I feel like we always pick up where we left off.

Colleen and her two sons, Cameron and Bryce, came down with her parents to stay in a beach house in IB for a week this summer. They came to visit us and have dinner one night and the kids had a great time together.

Here's Ty chillin' like a villain. :)

Bryce, on the left, if you can believe it, is only 15 months old and huge! Both boys are as sweet as can be and all the kids really got along well. Ty's been having a hard time with sharing but for some reason, this night, he couldn't wait to share his toys with the boys. Maybe he's growing up!

A few days later, Garrett organized a water fight in our backyard with some neighbors and everyone really got into it. The day before, our neighbor Brent sent a text message with his kids all holding huge soaker guns. So Garrett went out and bought these big water guns for the kids and had a trial run of how to pull the trigger. As you can see, Ty had no problem with this activity and couldn't wait to point his water gun and blast someone, anyone. :)

Here's Brent being attacked!

Susan and Matt came over with Colin and joined in the fun. Colin wasn't sure at first but enjoyed all the action and everyone got really wet!

SeaWorld and Nickel City

Tatum's Godmother Shauna struck a deal with Tatum when she started her swimming lessons. Shauna said that if she went to all her lessons and tried her best, she would reward Tatum by taking her, and only her, to SeaWorld for the day! You can bet Tatum went to every swim lesson and every day she'd remind me that she was going to go to SeaWorld with JUST Shauna! Every day! And she did it! And to add a wonderful bonus, Amber, Shauna's sister was in town so Tatum got both Shauna AND Amber to take her to SeaWorld!

They went later in the day which was really special, so they got to eat dinner there, ride the sky buckets...

(can you tell that she's overjoyed to have these two to herself!)

and watch the special night Shamu show which is followed by an amazing fireworks show. The BEST NIGHT EVER said Tatum. :) When you thought it couldn't get better, she got to spend the night at Shuana's house!

While Tatum was having all this wonderful fun, Garrett, Ty and I were having a blast of our own. Our night started with a delicious meal at Olive Garden. It's been so long (if ever) that we've gone out to dinner with just Ty and it was very pleasurable. He was such a good boy and loved talking to the server. He even remembered his name after one introduction so every time he'd walk by, Ty would yell out, "Hi Joey!" So cute. Then we headed to Nickel City where they have lots of games you can play for a nickel and win lots of tickets. I hit the jackpot!

Ty LOVED all the driving games. And he loved turning in the tickets to get a plastic car. Again, the BEST NIGHT EVER! Can you tell we watch Tangled around here a lot? :)

Birthdays and Orchestras

Isaac's birthday party was up in Irvine at a park, so we packed up our bikes and headed up for the fun. In the whirlwind of packing and getting to the party on time, I forgot helmets. Mattie was happy to let Ty borrow his, if he didn't mind the pink and princesses. And he didn't. :)

Here's Mattie and Cam enjoying some swinging. That was a very popular request at this party, I think the kids spent the whole time on the swings.

Besides Ty because he was way too interested in JJ, Leanne's brother, who was kind enough to hang with Ty and enjoy some manly bonding over yummy pizza.

Here are the sweet BFFs. Tatum had spent the night with Shauna and had asked her to flat iron her hair. Everyone had to take a double take at Tatum when we got to the party because they didn't recognize her without the curls. She loved it of course.

Then it was cup cake decorating time and singing happy birthday to the birthday boy!

Ty couldn't wait to dig in to his heavily decorated cup cake.

Such a girl. :)

Later that evening, we headed to the Irvine park behind the senior center for a performance from the Orange County Symphony Orchestra. They had lots of fun things for the kids like this Lego tent where Ty enjoyed building and ripping things apart with the big kids.

Tatum was much more interested in the bounce house obstacle course. She asked Ty and I to go through with her the first time but half way up the steep climb to the top of the slide, Ty decided this wasn't for him. Let me just say, it's difficult to hang on to a child while you're also trying to hang on to the bounce house stairs and not fall back on small, innocent children below. After that, I was very happy that Ty was happy to go sit in the Lego's.

We met up with the Jazayeries and Tatum and Mattie enjoyed going through the obstacle course quite a few times together. There were two lines and a kid from each line was to go when the man said ready, set, go. But each time, the girls would sneak through together, so funny.

After having a bite, we walked around the field and waited for the music to begin. Here's the kids doing somersaults down the hill. Or attempting to at least. I love that Ty's heading the wrong direction.

I love this picture. Tatum was into the camera again and it came time for the National Anthem. As we're all knelt down, trying to explain to the kids where to put their hand and what the National Anthem means, Tatum caught this photo. So sweet and patriotic.

While listening to the music, we headed back to our camp and the girls took over the camera. Here's a close up of a little brother...

the mommys...

a fancy pair of flip flops...

and already starts the self portraits. How many of these do I have! :)

And Judy and Jane, who enjoyed laughing and putting up with all of us and our chaos.