It's a PAW-TY!

We celebrated Avery's second birthday on the 9th this year. Shayne was able to come visit and we went to the children's museum and then had a Happy Meal, a NAP, cake and presents. It was fun this year. He got into it and enjoyed opening gifts, eating cake and playing with his new toys. He was like any other kid about clothes though. Just threw down the box and moved on to the next one. I, however, am very thankful for the clothes. He was limping along on hand-me-downs from his cousins (who are girls) and some strategically purchased Wal-Mart bargains. It was really fun to see him have such a good time and enjoy everything so much. It made all the horrible toy assembly and destroying of two cakes worth it. Below are some pics of our day.  

 1.) I sent invitations to the grandparents for a Skype party. They taped their dog ears to a headband and called us for the present opening. 2.) The set-up. 3.) Dog cake pops. They looked like they had the mange and there are about a thousand of them because I destroyed two cakes and was too stupid to throw away my $5.00 worth of ingredients and 30 minutes of time. I had to make way more work for myself than was necessary. 4.) Happy Birthday Avery banner. He has a serious balloon phobia, so I didn't want anything even remotely circular hanging around. 5.) Dogga cake. I am not a professional baker. I just love a boy who LOVES doggas. It tastes better than it looks. The bottom is vanilla cake with butter cream frosting. The dog face is chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and the ears are chocolate on chocolate. 6.) Dogga decoration/toy and Scooby snacks.

The first thing Avery saw when he came downstairs was the tricycle. Uncle Shayne came to town and got him this. He LOVED it! He calls it his 'doe-buh-doe-buh-doe'. He rode it ALL. DAY. LONG. We actually had to put it away so he would open his other presents.

1.) Grandparents Skyping in for the party! 2.) Cake!! 3.) Enjoying his very own can of Fresca! 4.) Another big hit! He LOVES to "drive drive." and cried when he had to get out to eat dinner. Maybe we should've had Sonic. 5.) New shoes and playing with the dogga. 6.)  Put his own ears on after cake. He was so proud of himself. 7.) Blowing out his candles. 8.) Driving us to the Children's Museum. 9.) Crashed before the paw-ty. Took a three hour nap and woke up reeeeaaaaaady tooo paaaaarrrrrrrrrrrtaaaaaaaaay!

Children's Museum

We took Avery to the Children's Museum of Denver for his birthday. We'd never been there before, and there were lots of things for us to do. It was a little crazy, but overall, we had fun. Avery told me he had a good day and that his favorite thing to do was 'drive drive.' It was fun to see him have such a good time, and it made me proud to see what a good sharer he was and watch him wait patiently for his turn. He is such a kind little boy. I know that there will probably be times that he makes mistakes or bad choices. That he may be the one throwing toys or pushing people down. No one's perfect, after all. But he was pretty close to perfect today. Here's some of the things that we did.

One room was set up like a fire house. It was complete with a fire truck
(which I didn't get a pic of) that had working lights and sirens. They
had fireman clothes, hoses, a dalmatian and a pole to slide down.
Avery loved driving the truck and waited so politely for his turn.

Bubble room. He was dressed like a mad scientist.
Billy made huge bubbles and Avery made small ones with vapor.

The art room had all kinds of different materials to use.
Avery wanted to paint (with his hands of course).

The Kinetics Room was pretty cool. It had lots of motion activities
all over the room with these orange balls. Avery found a
'steering wheel' and even shared with a little lady. 

This was the nature play-scape. He wanted to dress like a squirrel
and we climbed through tunnels and over large tree roots.

We liked the train room. It was quiet. 

This is the veterinarian's office. Avery loved finding all the pretend
doggas and even shared with several other kids.

Trick or Treat!

 Avery is kind of getting big enough to enjoy holidays. Kind of. This year we decided to try Trick or Treating. It's kind of a big deal here in our neighborhood. LOTS of kiddos come to our door and we love to see their costumes and give them kindness and candy. We had this awesome skunk suit from my nieces. He's super cute in it and it was free. He thinks its a dogga suit though. Everything is a dogga. He got pretty excited to go and get candy. When I told him that he needed to hang onto his (Easter basket) bag because people were gonna give him candy, he held onto it like a drowning man to a life line. We only went to about seven houses, all around ours. That was enough candy and about as much excitement as he could handle at 7:00 pm. Billy was able to come home for about 12 hours and go with us, so it was a nice time.

I'm not sure about these paws...

Come on! Let's go!

Finally!

I'm ready!

To PARTY!

Trick or Treat!

Nom nom nom!!

Nom!

Candy daze... 

What have we here?

No need to unwrap it. 

Let it snow!

It snowed in the middle of October, and this is the first time that I took Avery out to play in it. At first, he didn't know what to think. He cautiously looked over the edge of the patio and very hesitantly took a few steps into the snowy yard. Then, when he realized that it was soft...and edible, he LOVED it. We played out until neither one of us could feel our feet in our cloth shoes and then we came in for "hot hot" (hot chocolate).   It was fun to get out and enjoy something 'new' together.