Happy 3rd Birthday!!! (Part 1 of 4)

Dear Abigail,

Yowzers. You are 3 years old. Three. Like as in three years have gone by since this day...

You are some kind of special, too (which I'll expand on in another post), and, therefore, we celebrated your 3rd birthday in lots of special ways!!! You like to say that you had 5 birthday parties, but that's just silly. You only had 4 :) That's right, when it was all said and done, we celebrated your birthday FOUR times!! Told ya you were special! Let's start from the beginning...

Because your actual birthday is really close to sister Kate's due date, Mommy and Daddy decided we'd scoot your actual party up a couple weeks, just to play it safe and so Mommy could actually enjoy it. AND because Mommy was going to need help making this party extra special, we decided we'd have it at Mimi's house in Munford instead of our own (and there were a few other reasons, like, I don't know, our backyard can't hold 2 waterslides, a pool and 50 people - again, more on that later...)

This year, "you" decided that you wanted to invite everyone to join you "Under the Sea", and so we did. You are especially attached to mermaids these days, well, for almost a year now, and you are especially fond of the water, particularly water slides, so under the sea seemed to work out just great. And Mommy went C-R-A-Z-Y with the Under the Sea theme!! Just food alone was quite impressive, if I do say so myself :) Your birthday menu consisted of Octodogs, Tropical Chicken Salad, Sea Shells pasta (made by your BFF), Fruit of the Sea, Sea Salt chips, Fish food (chex mix), Crunchy Coral (veggies), and Saltwater Seaweed (spinach dip!). Delicious, to say the least! Oh, and we had Ocean Potion (blue fruit punch), Mermaidade (pink lemonade), and Under the Sea Tea to drink! Here's a few pics of the food...

Look at this fancy "crab sandwich" - your Uncle Jaybee has a hidden talent...

Mimi (along with a little help of Pic-pic, Ash-ash, Uncle Jay, Daddy, Uncle Jay-bee, Aunt Steph and Mommy) got her backyard super nice looking and all set up for the party. We had 2 water slides, a pool, tents, tons of seating, and even cute little flower decorations...

So here you are, all ready for this fabulous under the sea birthday party...

And guess what happens??? The bottom fell out of the sky. Your party started at 11, and at 11:10 we were all inside with the few exceptions of the crazy men holding the tents down through the monsoon..

This storm came out of no where, and was almost as impressive as your party. It made things a little chaotic, but we all handled it fairly well... Here's you taking control and singing "Rain Rain Go Away"...

And, since it WAS lunch time, we decided everyone should just come inside and eat...

Our weathermen (i.e. Uncle Jay and Mr. Lee) were determined it wasn't going to last too long, so we decided we'd stick it out inside just a little longer and open presents. It actually worked out perfectly because no way were we going to be able to pull you kiddos apart from that water slide to eat lunch and/or open presents!!!!

And open presents you did! You got so many awesome presents from all your friends and family and wanted to play with everyone of them...

But, unfortunately we could not - because guess who decided to show up??? THE SUN!!!! and that old rain finally went away. Let the fun begin would be a wee bit of an understatement based on these pictures....

You and your friends/cousins had so much fun playing and playing and playing and playing! And that's when I knew that the rain was a blessing - like I said earlier, no way were we pulling you guys off those slides to eat lunch! It took all we had to get ya'll to eat cake!!!! Oh, but what a cake it was!!!! How awesome is this...

This was the first year I think you grasped the whole concept of 'singing Happy Birthday' and boy, did you love all that attention!!!!! Well, at first you were a wee bit overwhelmed by all the singing...

But then you got excited!!!!!!
And look at you blowing those candles out!!!!! I was so proud - you are so growing up!!!!

And of course EVERYONE loved the cake, and not just to look at...

After delicious cake, everyone went back into the water and played and played and played some more. It was such a fun party that we just kept going, way past what the invitation said!!! That's how we roll though! We partied all day long and even had to order pizza for everyone for dinner!! Soon enough though, it was time to rest, or relax for some of us, or well, clean up for some of us!! So you and your 2 favorite cousins got a bath while the rest of the crew headed to their home (or cleaned up Mimi's crazy backyard!!)...

What a fun fun fun birthday party day we had! You are so lucky to have such awesome family and friends to come celebrate with you, too!

Here are a few additional highlights from the party...

You as a blonde, or Tangled...

Your favorite toy BY FAR, and given by none other than your BFF... (oh and this is literally 2 minutes after we got in the car to head home the next day! Exhausted much???)

And as soon as we got home your Daddy set up the trampoline you got!! (in the house, no doubt...) You LOVE this as well, but I still think Buzz wins in the end :)

Yeah, again, AWESOME birthday party baby girl - I mean 3 year old girl!!!! Mommy and Daddy love you so much and you are growing into such a smart, beautiful young lady!!!! Happy Birthday!!!!

The Beach 2.0

Dear Abigail,

We went to the beach - AGAIN!!! And this time we left Daddy at home and took your BFF with us!!!! It was just what we needed to wind up the summertime. We headed out on a Sunday morning and I must say, and so will Sarah, you did FANTASTIC on the ride down there. You typically do pretty good on car rides (thank goodness since we go so much!!!) but you were really good and we made it down there in no time at all. When we finally saw water you said "Look, a lake!!!" and then you looked on the other side of the bridge and said "Mommy, another lake!!!" That was one of the 200 funny comments you made all week. We finally convinced you that it wasn't the lake, but was the ocean, but all that did was make you super excited to head to the beach. Thankfully your BFF is super awesome and she let me take you down to the beach while she got dinner together that first night. I don't know what I was thinking, taking you down there in clothes cause you rolled around and played all in that sand!!! Member how at the very end of our last beach trip you finally got in the ocean? Well, that was short lived. You didn't want to go near it, which I didn't really mind this go round because the actual water was pretty grotty with lots of seaweed - blah!!! But that didn't stop us from enjoying the actual beach!

We had a pretty sweet system down where we'd wake up, get our bathing suits on, pack a little cooler of drinks and snacks, and head that way - typically by 8:30! And that's including you being quite the good sleeper, pulling some sleepin' till 7:30s!!! As usual, within about 10 minutes of being on the beach, you were ready for a snack, but there were lots of little kiddos around so you had tons of entertainment. You had no problem introducing yourself! Typically you'd start with "What's your name?" but that would eventually lead to you saying "I'm Abby." You were quite the social butterfly and made lots of sand castles and pizzas, oh and birthday cakes!!! You sang and sang and sang to both me and Sarah "Happy Birthday" and we'd blow our pretend birthday cakes out! It was nice because Mommy and Sarah just sat back and read our books while you played. But, all good things must come to and end and eventually (usually by 11) you were ready to head off the beach. It would get hot, so we don't blame you, and so we'd head back to the beach house. Sometimes we'd stop by the pool, if it was a little too early to head in for lunch, and man alive did you love that pool. And man alive were you the life of the party, or rather, pool! While you were a big hit because of your personality, I think a big part of it was your toys we'd bring with us!!! For some reason, no one else would bring toys to the pool, so when we arrived EVERYONE would swarm us - okay, all the kiddos, but still, EVERYONE! Thankfully everyone was super friendly and we were totally fine with sharing. At one point, we even saw 9ish year old boys playing with your teacups and teapot! But they were having coffee, not tea!! You had several friends who'd have tea parties with you, including Ryan (a girl), and then there was Spencer and his crazy family that me and Sarah could never quite figure out. All the adults were super nice and, again, we were able to enjoy our books while you played and played in the pool. Most of the time...

A few times you'd beg and beg for me and/or Sarah to get in the pool with you, and we would. We had LOTS of tea and I'm pretty sure you and Sarah let all the animals out of the zoo cages and let them swim with you. I was getting dinner ready while you two swam a little bit longer but when you came in (and the next day), all you talked about was how you liked the snakes that you let in the pool. I did NOT like the snakes at all. Oh, and you refused to swim. You didn't want to wear your swimmies, but you also didn't want to swim to us. You loved going under water over and over again, but just wouldn't actually swim. You did a good job with staying on the steps, though. And there was an incident where we (okay, fine, I) got sunscreen in your eyes. It was not pretty, and it was the first time it happened all summer long. That pool day was short lived but I will say, you FINALLY took a nap. I, jokingly, of course, told Sarah I was going to start putting sunscreen in your eyes everyday because you did NOT want to nap. Mommy would, but you'd just sit there and play with your toys or watch a movie. But, again, overall, you did good, nap or no nap. There were a few rain episodes included in that week, but we handled that pretty well. One day we went and saw Smurfs at the movie. You were super excited to eat on the big thing of popcorn but then decided you needed to sit on the front row. Mommy had a neck ache by the end of that movie.

We also went to breakfast one morning and you got to pick a doughnut out and man alive, if you didn't pick the biggest doughnut!!!! And you ate most of it too, which I was pretty shocked at. It was a yummy breakfast and we wrapped it up with a little shopping. You especially liked the shopping (ha!) because you got to ride in the back of the car (i.e. no seatbelt) as we moved from shop to shop!

We also took a little trip to Baytown Wharf, Mommy's fave. It was a little warm when we got there, but that didn't stop you and Sarah from riding the carousel...

And we had a little time to kill, so we took Sarah to see the boats. This is where you said "Hey Mom, I want that boat for my birthday", just like it was a princess barbie or something. Yeah, that boat, right behind you and Sarah - that's the one you said you wanted. Good luck with that little girl!

After showing off Baytown Wharf, we headed into the pizza shop. Right about the time we finished our yummy pizza, the rain began. Let me rephrase that, the monsoon began. Yeah, it rained. And rained and rained and rained. We weren't going anywhere anytime soon, so we tried to make the best of our little pizza shop. Please note the 'tried' in that last sentence because it was not easy keeping you happy. You were so ready to go home, telling me constantly and running to the window saying "it stopped raining" but it hadn't - not even lightened up! Finally it let up a little and we decided to just risk it. Well, there was nothing to risk - there was no question we were going to get wet, but it was all good. By the time we got home, we were wet and tired, so what's do you do, put on your jammies and get in bed!!!

We also took an adventure down to the new Harbor Walk. We decided to eat at Harry T's (b/c nothing says Destin like eating at Harry T's!!) and while we THOUGHT you'd enjoy sitting outside, looking at the boats, boy were we wrong. But it wasn't the boats. It was the fact that they sat us right beside Glitter the clown. Yeah, you hate clowns apparently. You did NOT take your eyes off her even though she was making balloon animal after balloon animal for all the other kiddos. Eventually, the manager saw how stressed you were and asked us if we wanted to move inside, so we took her up on that. You relaxed a little but it wasn't until we left that restaurant that you finally chilled out. And what better way to chill out than with ice cream!!! (yes, Mommy's camera was doing something funky, but you get the idea!)

Over all it was a good good week at the beach. You were ready to get home and see Daddy and Kitty (as you told me multiple times on Friday) but the second we got home you asked when we were going to the beach house!!! I think we may start having to do this every year!!! And I think your BFF wouldn't mind it either!!!

Love you beach bum!!!