.A Second Birthday for Alice

You can tell I love this girl by how many photos of her I'm sharing in this post. But seriously though, isn't she sooooo CUTE!!?? I can't believe my baby is already two… she's so big and tall and smart now. I love her long, straight hair. It's so fun to finally be able to braid it and do fun hairstyles when she lets me. Alice is the sassiest little thing you've ever met, she will scream and whine about something for hours before ever simply telling me what the problem is… every time. There are just so many injustices in her life to whine about, you know? It's hard to be a two year old these days.

   

Alice was so excited for her birthday cake, she was even willing to sit by it for some photos. So many photos. (I'll write more about the cake at the bottom of this post)

Time for presents! She loved this of course.

We can safely say she was sufficiently spoiled.

Blowing out the candles with her weird, hovering, Mom:

Official cutting of the cake ceremony (being dorks):

And the eating of the cake:

And just for memory sake, here are some photos from the day before her party (which was her actual birthday, but Air was working). I took the kids to the indoor playground:

 

We met up with the family to watch Tiana's volleyball tournament in Sherwood Park and then we all ate at McDonalds afterwards (Alice's favorite).

It was a good day!

*****

And now…the cake.

So I actually spent too much time mixing all the frosting colors (I wanted them perfect) and didn't have enough time left for decorating, which is probably the most important part of this Mexican fiesta style cake. So I had to rush and it turned out pretty lame…but good enough for us.

So… I wasn't going to share this, because the comparison is pathetic, but this photo (found online) was my inspiration:

.Most of it, October

This post can't be all of October because Alice's big 2nd Birthday and Halloween need their own posts. Gosh I sure love October and General Conference is always the best way to start it off each year… This year I had the kids fully entertained throughout most of the 8 hours worth of talks. Whew!

↓↓↓ Alice doing puzzles (mostly just destroying)//Ames got this awesome worksheet from his primary and loved finding everything ↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓ Another Conference activity was painting our nails//Our furnace was having troubles with the changing of the seasons this year. We replaced a couple things ourselves and it still kept shutting off at night. So we had to get a repair guy. He didn't solve the problem, but eventually Air figured out that we just needed a new thermostat! Problem solved! ↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓ I took the kids for a little fall excursion while we waited for Aaron to get his police check for work//Alice smiles with one eye closed. Every time. We love it ↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓ I took the kids for a very chilly and short walk down by the river while we waited for Air to see his doctor//We love going to the "sign sing laugh & learn" classes at our library ↓↓↓

 

The kids and I took a little trip to Cold Lake for Canadian Thanksgiving weekend with the family! Air has to work holidays…so he didn't get to come. Poor guy.

The kids loved the drive… haha

So much fun to be at Grandma and Grandpa's!

 

Plus a magnificent feast for Thanksgiving Day

It snowed so much that weekend for the first time this winter

 

Frosting cookies with Grandma

   

We came home to more snow… and lots of shoveling to do!

 

↓↓↓ A nice warm bath is such a great way to recover from shoveling//Here is another pic from after church ↓↓↓

 

↓↓↓ Baking cookies under the orange glow of our beautiful pumpkin//running free after church. Literally ↓↓↓

 

Aaaaand for the GRAND FINALE I give you the absolute best snap chat video of all time:



...more to come from October!