Happy 2nd Birthday Rhys!

Rhys turned 2!!

The girls helped me start the cakes last night.  They were super excited to wear their aprons and mix the cake.  We made mini-rainbow cakes for a rainbow theme party.

 

The birthday girl at her party:

And a cute one of Natalie & Grammy

At 2, Rhys is trying to do Everything that her big sister does!  She loves to play dress-up, she loves her baby dolls, and she loves to play outside.

We are still working on the potty training, bribing her with Dum-Dums.  She will usually sit and eat the lollipop and then she is off and done.  No sitting around for Rhys (we used to have to play videos, read books, and all kinds of tricks with Natalie).  She's doing good.

She is a really good sleeper.  She's usually in bed by 8pm, and sleeps until 7am.  And still takes a good, solid 2 hr nap during the afternoon.

Rhys is still a girl of few words.  She's got: mama, dada (this is a new one!), Na-na (for Natalie), up, down, ball, bath, bubble, no, mine, go, hello, bye-bye..and maybe a few others, but not many.  Talked to the pediatrician about this at her 2 yr appointment and he said to just keep watching.  She should be doubling vocabulary every few months and that if we are still concerned to call him in a few months.

I have to look back at the Dr. sheet to get Rhys' official stats, but here are the rough numbers: 
Her height and weight were both between 10&20% (off the top of my head!)

Height: 31.5 in
Weight: 25lbs
Clothes: size 18mo / 24 mo shirts
Shoes: size 5
Diapers: size 4 - but gone soon, I hope!

Happy Birthday, Rhys-ie Pie!

Camping - Doheney 2013

We went down to Doheney Beach for a long camping weekend with friends.  I only managed to get a few pictures (I thought I had more?? - maybe on my phone).

Since we were going to be outside for 4 days, I figured it was the perfect time to ramp up the potty training for Rhys.  I was bribing her with Dum-Dums.  Worked pretty well too!  She would sit there as long as she had a sucker and was pretty successful most of the time!

The kids had a blast riding scooters and bikes around the complex.  It was hard work to keep up with them!

(kid on the end was a neighbor camper, he came along for the rides)

We rode bikes down to San Clemente for a pancake breakfast and festival on Saturday morning.  Great ride and was fun for the kids.

The kids like riding in Daniel's trike! (Natalie, Tali, Heidi & Anya)

Summer Day

Just a random summer day, hanging outside.  I had Rhys' hair up in a pony tail and just thought it was too cute.  Natalie is eating a snack - so ignore the food, but I left the progression so you can see that Rhys tries to do EVERYTHING Natalie does!

Natalie's Firsts

We've had a big few weeks around here!

On 6/29/13, Papa and Grammy (& Ryan) brought the boat over and Natalie got to go fishing with Papa! She's been asking for him to take her forever.  No fish this time, but they still had fun on the boat.

While they were here we went to the circus for the first time!  No animals, and no pictures, but the magic was pretty cool.  And the kids were trying to balance everything they could find on their noses for a few days!

This past weekend, I took Natalie out for a mommy-date.  We went to her first movie! Monsters University.  The movie was so-so, but it was fun just being out and about the 2 of us.  Natalie did great...(except for the potty break 5 minutes into the movie!).  We had popcorn and she sat in her own chair for the bulk of it, but it was hard for her to keep the seat down, so she moved over to my lap towards the end.

4th of July - 2013

Happy Birthday to David!  And Happy 4th of July!

We started the day off by making a yummy breakfast, and then the girls and I made cupcakes for daddy.  We spent the rest of the morning working in the yard, pretty low-key.

Rhys took a nap, Natalie rested, and then we headed over to David's mom & dad's for a BBQ. 

After dinner, the kids got to do some Poppers (snap-its? throwdowns?  not sure what you call those things, but that is what Google suggests they are called..).  All 5 of them were having fun throwing them into the street.

We convinced them to sit (for 5 seconds) for a picture and then they got to do Sparklers!

They also did some Black Snake fireworks - the kids were calling them "Dirt Worms"... I love this picture:

Pretty sure they loved all of it!

We headed out to finish the night off with some friends.  No pictures, but the kids did awesome with the fireworks!  Last year we watched from inside the house because Rhys was already asleep and Natalie was freaked out.  Not this year.  They were hesitant at first, but no tears were involved!

Happy Father's Day!

We headed over to Matt & Tania's for a Father's Day lunch.  The kids love to play together (although I managed to miss Natalie & Mason playing...not sure where they went!)

Rhys thought Merlin the cat was pretty fun.  She was following him around, determined to pet him!

More random pictures of the kiddos.

It was a nice relaxing day...I'm pretty sure we headed back to the house and all took naps.  Camping was exhausting!

Camping - June 2013

On Friday morning, my cell phone rang as I was walking into work.  Caller ID showed my daycare number.  I'm thinking "great, I just got here and have to go back to get the girls already?!"  Turns out, Kristi was inviting us to a fishing clinic at Lopez on Saturday and to see if we wanted to camp Saturday night.  Sounded fun, so I figured we would coordinate the details later.  Then I started thinking about the last few times we went camping out there and how impacted it gets.  I called her back to see if she thought we should head out after work and stay 2 nights.  Impromptu camping! Woo hoo!  I went to the grocery store at lunch and left a little early from work.  I started packing and head most stuff ready by the time David got home and we headed out.

The girls were up until midnight.  Yeah, no idea who thought Smores at 10 o'clock was a good idea!  And of course, we were up with the first sliver of sunshine - 5:30am to be precise.

We headed down to the fishing clinic at 8:30.  Turned out to be almost 2 hours of instruction before they let the kids have the poles.  The kids did pretty good for having to sit still that long!

By the time we got down to the dock, the kids were basically ready for lunch, so we didn't end up staying too long.

We attempted naps (no go for Rhys, Natalie finally gave in for a bit), played a few rounds of golf toss and then headed to the marina for some snacks and fun.

A deer came up to our camp just as it was getting dark.  The neighbors fed it chips (!?!) and we had some left-over grapes, so the kids tried their hand at feeding it.  Pretty cool!

It was an easy-to-bed night for the kids..they were wiped out!

Natalie and her buddy "cheering" with yogurts while we packed up the cars.  Sunday was Father's Day, so we packed up and headed out in the morning.

Fun, last-minute weekend trip!