egn: second birthday

It has been a big weekend at our house, due entirely to the fact that little miss turned two on Friday. Two!

We kicked off her birthday morning by decorating her bedroom door with streamers and it was pretty cute to see her try to figure out what that was all about. 

She opened her gift from us, a water table, after that and was outside playing with it by 8:00 AM. 

After water play, some errands, and music class, we had a special birthday lunch with Todd. When we walked into the restaurant she yelled "Happy Birthday!", just to make sure everyone knew it was her day.

She was excited about her yogurt parfait until she realized that it was vanilla yogurt, not plain. Thank goodness her sausage and mom's pancakes saved the day.

It happened to be the nicest day ever on Friday and after nap we were back to the water table only this time, she donned a bathing suit, which she insisted on wearing for the rest of the night.

My parents and grandparents came over for birthday dinner and we grilled out, pretending summer had arrived. It was a great backdrop for a birthday party. 

Elia even tried her birthday treat, strawberry frozen yogurt, and Grandpa Bob was happy to finish it off for her.

On Saturday, we had Elia's birthday party with friends at a local gymnastics facility. We had the gym to ourselves for most of the party and the kids had a great time running around and trying out all of the gym equipment.

What fun! It so great to see all of our friends' kids growing up and playing together.

We enjoyed a quintessential birthday meal after all of the fun in the gym: pizza and cupcakes. Then, Elia opened presents from her friends, what a lucky girl! We have the most thoughtful, generous friends and she loved everything that she got. 

We were so happy to celebrate our babe's second birthday and so grateful to everyone who helped make it special for her. Happy birthday, Bug, we love you!

To look back on Elia's first birthday see this post and this one.  And for more fun from this year's party, check out my friend, Jess's blog - she's so great at documenting this stuff and took tons of pictures!

egg hunts and easter morning

Happy Easter from the Neckers family!

We continued our Easter celebrations yesterday by attending a community Easter egg hunt with friends.

Elia had a great time and was a surprisingly good egg hunter.

She even got to explore a fire truck while she was there.

Her enthusiasm for Easter activities and eggs reassured me that a full Easter morning would be worth investing in. Since our church offers two services on Easter Sunday so we were able to pack in lots of Easter fun before the main event began.

Elia woke up to bunny prints outside of her bedroom.

She followed the trail and found that the Easter bunny had filled her Easter basket with some goodies, which she opened while I made a special Easter breakfast.

 I have to admit, I was pretty proud of my first attempt at a bunny pancake.

 After breakfast we stayed in our jammies and reprised the Easter egg hunt.

Elia found all of the eggs and made sure to eat the bunny graham found in each before depositing the eggs into her basket.

We got ready for church after that and Elia proudly sported her new shoes from "Hop Hop" aka the Easter Bunny. He did a really nice job of picking something to complement her new dress.

Our church service was really lovely and we headed over to Todd's parents for a wonderful brunch with both sets of grandparents. Elia was spoiled by an Easter basket from each set of grandparents as well as an early birthday gift from Todd's parents who will be out of town on her big day. This little girl is beyond blessed and we are so thankful that she has such loving grandparents on both sides.

I hope you all are enjoying a wonderful Easter. He is risen, indeed!

egg dyeing

I recently declared that I wanted to start making a big deal out of holidays and Easter seemed like a good one to start with. Dyeing Easter eggs seemed like a must so Elia and I got to work on that today.

She loved watching the color tablets fizz while we waited for our eggs to boil.

By the way, did anyone else know how complicated it is to boil a perfect egg? It's not rocket science but there is more of a method to it than I realized.

Because egg boiling is not only more complicated than I thought but also takes longer than I thought it did, we took a break from our egg prep to enjoy some bunny mac and cheese while the eggs boiled. (Don't worry, she scarfed down her veggies and fruit while I was making her bunny mac.)

Side note: Annie's must make a killing on their bunny-shaped macaroni and cheese and grahams around Easter. I know I bought the grahams to fill Elia's Easter eggs with and couldn't have been the only mom at Target doing so.

After our thematic lunch break, the eggs were ready to dye. We only did half a dozen eggs since I'm not totally sure what you do with the eggs once they're dyed but six eggs still left plenty of room for dyeing fun.

Elia picked which color each egg would be and couldn't wait to see them come out of their dye cups.

Didn't she pick beautiful colors?

Since before Elia was born I've been looking forward to doing all of the things that shape my childhood memories with her. Now that she's almost two, she's at the perfect age to start trying fun activities like this. I love watching her as she absorbs what we're doing and listening to her talk about it later on in the day.

Tomorrow we continue the Easter fun with a community Easter egg hunt and I just can't wait to see her scurry around looking for eggs.

How are you celebrating this Easter weekend?