Birthday Party Fun!

Okay, so back over a month ago was Drake's party! Here are some pictures, although in reverse order.

After the party, all the cousins:

What's going through Tessa's head: "Crap, what have I gotten myself into! These people are crazy with a capital C!".
Opening presents at the party
Loving the ice-cream
Mommy and Daddy helped Drake blow out the candles. Turns out he didn't need us. (Sad face)
Obviously, she wanted more juice.

Oma and Opa were here from Buffalo!

Sweet lil' Baylor!
Tessa went down this slide no less than 20 times.
Our friends observing how times have changed;-)
Cheese pit! Drake was loving having his cousin to play with!
Oh, I heart this little face. My sweet baby.


And we marched!
And ran under the parachute...
And had an all around great time!

Birthday Celebrations

Two days, two birthdays. We started off Thursday morning with Drake's celebration! He was totally pumped and knew it was his special day. Remember, this is the kid who argued with me at Christmas, yelling it was HIS birthday, not Jesus! (Yes, we did some remediation of the Christmas story after that.) In any case, we did it up big!

His door had streamers across the bottom for him to break thru.

He had a balloon, and presents waiting at his seat for breakfast. And, his chair decorated!He was confused by the crepe paper, and wanted me to help bust through it.
The dogs were ready to bust in!
He did it!
His big present was a train set from Ikea, and it was a huge hit.

And later that night, time for cake and ice cream.

Blowing out candles!

And now for Friday...

Birthday Girl!!! She had no clue what all the fuss was about:-) Of course, she'd only been awake about 3 minutes.

Later that night, we had her own little celebration with cake and candles, and a joyous singing (shouting by Drake) of "Happy Birthday to You".

Birthdays! Great Wolf Lodge

Drake and Tessa's birthdays were on a Thursday and Friday. They both turned three! It was exciting for many reasons. One, Drake totally got it this year. And that was totally cool to watch. He loved it! Two, it was Tessa's first birthday celebration. While it meant a lot to us, she was clueless and we tried to keep it low key. Eric's parents flew down from Buffalo, and were able to go to Drake's party. The next day, we headed to Great Wolf Lodge for a night. It was fun, but will be more enjoyable as the kids get older. Here are some pictures from our time at the lodge:

These two loved the spraying water at the edge of the wave pool.

There was a little kids area they all three loved, but I didn't get any pictures there. I wasn't about to take my camera in there to get soaked!

Tessa April 2011

Geez her hair grew a lot!

She still loves this type of ball, especially at swim lessons.

Tessa pictures!

Here are pictures of Tessa from last March. Her hair really grew between March and December. She started her sponsorship with PRO in February. They are checked up on monthly, and pictures taken. They are seen by a doctor and nurse. The sponsoring family gets quarterly updates. Interestingly, one of her updates included her CORRECT diagnosis, something we didn't get until back here in the US, and seen by a pediatric surgeon. At least PRO was on top of things, even if that didn't get back to the CCAA and our agency.

This photo was taken on Eli's birthday!

Maybe these were from an outing to a park with other PRO foster families? I can only guess.

So serious.