Eden's 2nd Birthday!

When Eden turned one, I was so upset.  When Eden turned two, not at all!  I am SO DANG EXCITED about this coming year.  In my opinion, it doesn't get much cuter than two.  I am so looking forward to watching her vocabulary and personality blossom.  Ahhhhhh, seriously so happy that I have a two year old!

We had the sweetest day on Eden's birthday.  Of course, I had it all planned out in my head for weeks leading up to it, but unlike Christmas Eve and Christmas Day when nothing went the way I had planned, everything was perfect on Eden's second birthday!

When she woke up that morning, her room was filled with balloons.

She ran around kicking them.  I have the cutest video of her doing it on my phone.  But I have no idea how to ever get videos from my phone onto the computer!

Then I brought her downstairs so that she could see her present from me and Dustin - her very own kitchen!

A lot of my pictures seem to have animals in them.

I bought Eden's kitchen MONTHS ago.  It's been out in the shop, in a box, in a thousand million pieces.  All week leading up to her birthday, I was all, "Dustin, can you please put the kitchen together?  Dustin, I want her to see it when she wakes up that morning, will you put it together tonight?  Dustin, Eden's birthday is in two days, when are you going to put her kitchen together?  Dustin, I think it's going to take a lot longer than you think, you may wanna go ahead and start doing it.  Dustin, please just put the kitchen together so we don't have to worry about it."  And he was all, "yeah, yeah, yeah".  I was so tired the night before Eden's birthday and announced to Dustin and my mom (who was here helping me get things ready for Eden's party) that I was going to bed EARLY that night.  But of course, that's when Dustin finally decided to drag out the kitchen to put together.  Then he saw that there were a thousand million pieces and told me that it was a two person job.  You can imagine, I was not pleased.  "ARE YOU KIDDING ME I'VE BEEN ASKING YOU TO PUT THIS STUPID THING TOGETHER FOR DAYS AND YOU WOULDN'T DO IT AND NOW WHEN I'M TIRED AND WANT TO GO TO BED BECAUSE WE HAVE A BIG DAY TOMORROW YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE ME STAY UP AND HELP YOU WHEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS ALREADY!!!!!"  It took HOURS to put together.  There was a lot of cussing.  We had to open a bottle of wine to make it through.  Good times. 

Moving on... while Eden was playing with her new kitchen, I made pancakes.  Then we sang Happy Birthday to our girl.

She took a few bites of pancakes and then wanted peas.

Birthday girls always get what they want.

Shortly after breakfast, the bouncy house for Eden's party arrived, and Eden and I got to play on it for about an hour before guests started arriving for her party.

**** important to notice:  Eden can now have ponytails!  Spoiler Alert:  It did not survive to the end of the party.

We had the sweetest little ladybug party.  The weather was perfect.  Dustin made amazinnngggg hamburgers.  Eden had tons of little friends to run around with.  We are so thankful to all of our friends and family who came to celebrate our precious girl with us.  Here are a few of the many, MANY pictures from the day.

I was in love with her cake!  I am so happy with how it turned out.  I seriously stressed about this cake.  I knew I wouldn't have time that morning to go pick it up, so I sent my dad.  I was so nervous that it wasn't going to survive the twenty-five minute drive and two railroad track crossings.  I even had a dream a few days before the party that her cake didn't make it.  But it did, and it was beautiful.  And delicious.

 loved these little guys

Drake - always wanting to get in on the action.

While she was opening gifts, I kept thinking to myself, "I'm so glad I have a girl!"  I think I was almost as excited as she was about all the Minnie Mouse and Disney Princess and pink stuff!

 trying out her first pair of high heels (she did pretty good; I was impressed!)

 

After all of our party guests went home, Eden spent the afternoon playing with her new toys and jumping a little bit more in the bouncy house.  Eden had one heck of a good day, and she fell asleep that evening at 5:45 and didn't wake up until 7:15 the next morning!

 

A few hours after Eden's party ended, we found out that Dustin's grandmother had passed away.  It was not a shock; we knew it was coming.  She was ninety-six years old and suffering from Alzheimer's.  God knew what He was doing when He brought her home on Eden's birthday.  I find it so incredibly sweet and comforting that it happened on that day.  It seemed to make Eden's new little life all the more precious.  When I found out, I was so happy for Nanny - her suffering had ended and she was reunited with her husband.  She was a remarkable woman, and we will miss her.  I'm pretty sure it was from her that Dustin inherited his amazing cooking skills.

 

Eden ended up getting to wear my Christmas dress from way back when after all.

Blurry iPhone photos are the best I could manage that day.  And she has crazy hair from sleeping in her carseat.

 

And now we head into the year of two.  YAYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!



My Girl is Gonna Be 2!

I keep looking back at pictures of the past year as Eden gets closer and closer to 2.  Out of the over one thousand (wow!) pictures that I took this past year, these are my favorite pictures and moments of Eden as a one year old.  What a sweet year it was!


Jennifer Hargrave's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

Christmas, The New Year, & All That Jazz

How has it already been almost two weeks since Christmas?  Time is FLYIN'!

Okay, so I started planning for Christmas this year in like... the summer.  In my head at least.  Last Christmas everyone was like, "Ohhh, this is going to be your best Christmas ever because Eden is at the perfect age and blah, blah, blah".  And don't get me wrong, it was an incredible Christmas, and Eden was, of course, adorable, but I knew THIS year was going to be even better with Eden at THIS age!  So I started planning early.  By September, I knew all the presents that I wanted to get Eden, and by Thanksgiving I had them.  I took the little black, velvet dress that I wore on my second Christmas to be cleaned, and it hung in Eden's room for months before Christmas waiting for Eden to wear it on HER second Christmas.  The beginning of the Christmas season was FANTASTIC - our trip to San Antonio, Eden being an angel in our church's Christmas program, baking Christmas cookies, and little Christmas crafts for Eden to do.

A few weeks before Christmas, I was examining all of Eden's gifts, and I came to the conclusion that they were pretty girlie.  Her big items were a vanity table and a bassinet and high chair for her baby doll.  So I told Dustin that he needed to get Eden a present from him that wasn't all girlie.  He came home from work a few days later and told me that he had decided to get Eden a puppy.  Now at first, I was all, "You must be crazy, there's no way in hell we're getting another dog!"  We already had four dogs.  We had five, but back in April, I lost my Sammy.  He was so old, and I was so sad when he finally died, but a few days later, I had to admit that life around here was much easier with only four dogs, and I told myself I would never have five dogs again.  But when there's a puppy involved, it doesn't take much to twist my arm.  And then once I imagined Eden getting a puppy on Christmas morning, I was sold.  So I ended up telling Dustin to go for it.  The only problem was that he absolutely positively wanted Eden to have a female yellow lab.  We already have two male yellow labs, one that we consider Dustin's and one that we consider mine, so he said Eden needed her own yellow lab too.  He started searching the Internet looking for breeders around here.  He kept coming home from work telling me about these puppies for this much money and those puppies for that much money.  Now I have never bought a dog in my life.  Every single dog I've ever had from the time I was little has been a rescue dog - the dogs either wandered up to our house or we took them in after they had been dumped somewhere else.  And I've always told myself that that's how I would always do it - I would NEVER buy a dog when there are so many dogs out there that need homes.  So I kept begging Dustin to just let us go to the SPCA and adopt a puppy from there.  He didn't want to because he was seriously dead set on a female yellow lab, and the SPCA didn't have any.  We kept going round and round - him insisting on buying a yellow lab and me insisting on just adopting any puppy that needed a home.  We never could come to a solution.  So I prayed about it.  Two nights after my little prayer, Dustin's mom sent us a text message with a picture of a little yellow lab puppy saying that one of her friends had witnessed somebody throw the poor thing out of their truck into the highway.  The friend ran into the road to save the terrified puppy, and Dustin's mom wanted to know if we wanted it.  Now Dustin's mom had NO clue that we were even thinking about getting Eden a puppy for Christmas.  I quickly wrote back asking if it was male or female, and she said female - just what we wanted!  Dustin asked if she appeared to be full-blooded, and both his mom and dad agreed that she did.  "We'll take her!"  Now how absolutely perfect is that?  I looked at Dustin and said, "Well there's your yellow lab", and he said in return, "And there's your rescue dog."  God is so good.

So everything seemed to be coming together.  Dustin's parents agreed to keep the puppy until Christmas Eve for us, and I had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day alllllll planned out - I had traditions that I wanted to do from my childhood, traditions that Dustin and I have done since we got married, and some new traditions that I planned to start with Eden.  I could barely sleep on the night of December 23rd because I was so FLIPPING EXCITED about the next two days.

And then.... everything went wrong.  Nothing went the way it was supposed to.  I had typed out every little thing that I had planned and how it went wrong, but I decided to delete it.  Because in the end, it doesn't matter.  Because while I was (at first) extremely upset about how nothing seemed to be going my way, Eden was having the time of her life.  And when I thought back over the previous two days on Christmas night, I realized that that's exactly how it should be.  It's not about me anymore and all the things I want at Christmas.  It's about Eden now!  (Okay, I guess it's really about Jesus, but you know what I mean!)  It's my job now to make sure SHE has the best Christmases ever - not that I do!  And she did!  She really, really did!  I didn't get to do all of the traditions that I wanted to, but it's okay!  Because Eden was happy, and that's all I wanted in the first place!

I will write about the funniest thing that went wrong though... I set up all of Eden's presents after she went to bed on Christmas Eve.  Her vanity table came with a mirror that needed to be attached to the table top.  Dustin had left though to go pick up the puppy, and I'm seriously clueless when it comes to tools, so I decided to just lean the mirror against the wall and figured it could be attached later after we had put it into Eden's room.  See:

On Christmas morning, Eden was ecstatic when she walked into the living room and saw everything.  Dustin had the camcorder going, and she decided to go check out the vanity table.  She sat down on the little stool and pulled out the drawer which caused the mirror to fall over and hit her in the head.  She started crying, and I ran over there to comfort her.  I'm holding her and trying to calm her down, and I'm so upset, and I look up and Dustin is still videotaping.  So I start screaming, "TURN IT OFF, TURN IT OFF."  And he wouldn't do it at first, so I kept yelling, "TURN IT OFF, TURN IT OFF!" until he finally did.  Once Eden stopped crying, I started crying!  I was all, "I just can't believe this has happened, everything is messed up and nothing is going the way it's supposed to, and now one of Eden's presents has INJURED her!"  When I finally stopped crying, I demanded that Dustin delete the video RIGHT FREAKING NOW.  He completely refused and assured me that one day I would find it absolutely hilarious.  And by now, I know he's right.  I haven't watched it yet, but I know when I do, I'm going to laugh.  And I can just imagine us all sitting down and watching that video in twenty years together and cracking up when Eden gets hit in the head and then cracking up again when I start screaming, "TURN IT OFF!"

Once Eden had calmed down, she happily finished opening her presents, and then we brought in the grand finale.  We put the puppy in a wrapped box as well so that Eden could take the lid off and be surprised.  It was adorable; she was so happy!

Some more pictures from Eden's Christmas Eve and Christmas:

Seriously, so happy.  If you notice, she hasn't even opened the box yet.  She was THAT excited just about taking the paper off!  She's opening her Christmas Eve box from my mom - a tradition for her each year where my mom will send her Christmas jammies, a Christmas movie and movie snacks.  This year she got Charlie Brown's Christmas.

We spent Christmas Eve evening at my dad and Susie's house:

Playing with all her new stuff on Christmas morning:

We didn't get to go to church on Christmas Day like I had planned, so Eden never did wear my dress, but we stopped by my grandma and aunt's house to visit and then spent the afternoon and evening with Dustin's parents:

And we swung by Granny and Pops' before heading home:

So yeah... it turns out that Christmas was pretty dang great after all.

As for the puppy?

Her name is Daisy for Daisy Duck and Eden's love of all things Mickey Mouse.  And she and Eden are best friends forever.

*****

On New Year's Eve, Dustin and I went to a party while Eden stayed at my dad and Susie's house, but we left early and picked Eden up by 10, and we rang in the New Year just the three of us again.  Actually we did it early because I seriously went to bed at 11:30.  Man, I'm getting old.

And on New Year's Day, we had friends over for our annual prime rib, black eyed peas and greens.  Judging by the amount of black eyed peas and greens that Eden ate, she is going to be very lucky and very wealthy this year.

*****

I'm a summer gal.  My body physically hurts when I go outside in really cold weather, and I could never handle living any more north than where I live right now.  But occasionally, it is nice when we get really, really cold weather.  (As long as it doesn't last too long!)  I love being all cozy inside, and whenever it gets below freezing, Dustin sprays the water hoses on everything during the night so that we wake up to beautiful ice covering everything.

This morning was the first time Eden has gotten to experience this, and when we woke up, we put on jackets, hats and boots right over our pajamas and went outside to stomp on frozen grass and eat icicles.

So simple, but it's something that has always made me so happy.

Happy 2014!