Birthday with Family

This year for her present from Mom and Dad, Tori got to go to Build A Bear for the very first time. She was so excited and talked about it for months and months before. We actually took her to go the day before her birthday since John found out that day that he was going to be in surgery really late on her birthday. Tori was thrilled to get to go a day early.

Above, Tori is helping to stuff her bear (I thought the bear she picked out was very cute). She also picked out a sound to go in her bear - it plays a happy birthday song when to press the left hand. Tori and James are really cute when they dance together to the song.

Tori and James are watching as she gets sewn shut. Below, Tori is giving her bear a bath and brushing off all the fuzz.

Below, Tori is dressing her bear in the the rainbow fairy outfit she picked out with red sparkly shoes.

Below, Tori is at the computers naming her bear - she named her Daisy. Tori absolutely loved the whole experience. She was really cute and had a lot of fun. All the people there were really sweet to her. It actually all went pretty quick since Tori was very decisive about what she wanted. I thought she would have a hard time with all the choices, but she knew just what she wanted. What a fun evening!

The next day was Tori's actual birthday and as you can see from the pajamas in the pictures and the fact that James was already in bed, John did get home pretty late. We sure were glad we did Build A Bear the day before.

Tori is blowing out the candle on one of the extra cupcakes that we had taken to her kindergarten class earlier that day. I saved one for her and she got to decorate it when she got home from school (she loves frosting cookies and cupcakes). I didn't want to make another whole cake since we were driving the next day to Utah to stay for a week.

Our happy birthday girl with some of her presents.

Merry Christmas

These are a few pictures of Tori and James in their Christmas outfits the Sunday before Christmas. Tori thought her dress was very fancy wanted to wear it all the time.

Here are Tori and James on Christmas morning. John had to work at the hospital on Christmas morning so I kept the kids happy up in our room having breakfast in bed and watching all of the classic Christmas cartoons we recorded off TV until John made it home at around 9:30am. It was the first time I can remember being showered and ready before opening presents on Christmas morning- which I actually thought was pretty nice.

These pictures are of Tori and James with their presents from Santa in front of the tree. As you can tell, the airplane and tiana doll were both a big hit.

Below is James in the new jumper he got for Christmas (probably one of my favorite Christmas presents :)).

Tori's 3rd Birthday Party with friends

For Tori's 3rd Birthday, we had a party with friends about a week before since we would be in Mason City, IA (about a 2hr drive from home) on her actual birthday. We celebrated at one of her favorite parks with cupcakes and a lot of playing.

Above is a picture of the kids with their hats and noise-makers (Tori loves these things). From left to right: Anne, Anna, Lauren, Hannah, Tori and Megan.

Above is Tori blowing out the candle on her cupcake.

Below she is showing us how old she is.

Here are a few pictures of Tori opening presents.

One of the presents Tori got from her friend Megan, was a Little Einstien's puzzle. She loves puzzles and it was one of the first things she wanted to do when we got home. After she finished it she just randomly started singing the Little Einstien's theme song (so I grabbed the camera and made her do it again).

Happy 2nd Birthday

We celebrated Tori's 2nd birthday this past weekend with a small party at a park with friends and then a party with just mom and dad at home on her actual birthday. She had a ball! She has been going to birthday parties all summer and she loves to sing happy birthday, but when the kids actually sang, "happy birthday, dear Tori" on Saturday her eyes just lit up. I think she was very excited it was finally her turn.

We had cupcakes for her cake because she just loves them lately. Well, she actually just loves the frosting, all she does is lick it off and then she's done. :)

Here are some pictures of the friends that came to her party. In the picture below from left to right - Anna, Megan, Andrew, Anne and Tori.

I also had to throw in the picture of Tori and dad right before she opened her presents at home on her birthday.

Opening Christmas Presents

Tori absolutely loved finally getting to rip into all those nicely wrapped packages under the tree that mom kept telling her not to touch for the past month. The only problem was that she loved each present so much that it was hard to get her to stop playing and to move onto the next one. It was just a ton of fun to have such a happy, sweet kid that was so into Christmas this year.

One of the funniest things was that she loved getting the Chicken Run DVD from her Grandpa. She wouldn't let it go and just ran around the room with it saying, "Bock, bock".

Her big gift this year was a kitchen set that she can't get enough of. I think she thinks it's Christmas every morning when she comes down and still sees the kitchen there.