Who's two? Lily, that's who! Part 1

Last year, it took me until April to get around to blogging Lily's birthday. This year I'm trying to be a lot more prompt! So without further ado, here we go.

Just to start things off right, mama stuck around a bit later than usual before going to work so she could wish her baby happy birthday. Let's see how that went:

Yep, Lily still says "cheese" to the video camera. Ah, well! But moving on: one of her big presents (from Po Po and Gung Gung) was her very own slide. Long time readers of the blog know that Lily is usually quite fond of slides, so mama and dada stealthily put it together the night before and put it in their bedroom (temporarily, Pinky insists!) so Lily could play without consideration for daylight or weather. We were very excited for what we expected to be a very enthusiastic response from our two-year-old girl. Shall we take a look?

Hmf. Not exactly the reception we were hoping for! Well, she WAS still sleepy, and she certainly does love her Wonder Pets...tell you what, Lily, we'll watch some Pets, run you off to daycare and try again later.

When we all got home later that evening, we had a nice surprise: Lily's babysitter Katharine had gotten her some very sweet presents! There were these very cute kiddie dishes , including these cool cups that have water and little floaty decorations between the outer and inner layer. This inspired mama, dada and Lily to a round of birthday toasts:

Did you catch Lily saying "birthday" at the end? They must have worked on that with her at daycare because she was saying it over and over. So cute! That was the only one I caught on video, unfortunately.

Drink up, Lily!

Since Lily's actual birthday fell on Friday, we didn't have her official party until the next day, but we did invite Aunty Chelle, Uncle Charlie, BFF Molly and boyfriend Andy-roo over for dinner and play. Molly and Andy-roo helped Lily get more acclimated to her new slide (more on that later), we had a very nice meal together, and of course, we had to sing Happy Birthday to Lily and give her a "cake" (OK, cupcake for now) and candles to blow out. Hm, I wonder how she'll feel about candles?

Oh, well...maybe we'll have better luck at her party! We'll continue that in the next post.

Cheese!

Just a bit of fun while I work on the birthday party mega-post:

apparently, we have trained her to say "cheese" when she sees any sort of camera...

Festival of Lights (nice nice kitty...)

A few days after Christmas, we stopped by the Wild Animal Park to see the Festival of Lights., where they do up the park with all these christmassy and animal-themed light sculptures. We figured Lily would like that, but what we were REALLY excited about what that they advertised having a real snow sledding hill. Snow!! Lily has never in your young life seen snow, so we figured this would be pretty neat.

Unfortunately, the hill itself was a bit underwhelming. More like Sno(tm) than snow (as in Sno-Cones? Get it? Heh...ok, moving on...). Nonetheless, mama gamely takes Lily on her fist sled ride. Whee!

Since we were already there, we figured we'd walk around a bit and see the lights, maybe see an animal or two. Here you see Pinky and Lily with a OH MY GOSH LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!! GIANT FEROCIOUS CARNIVORE!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES...oh, wait, it's behind glass, false alarm.

This was actually the coolest thing we saw that night in my opinion. All three lions were hanging out right by the glass (they heat the rocks at night there, so it's a favorite spot).

One challenged Lily to a starting contest, but as you can see, was quickly cowed by her steely glare.

Next year, they'll be moving the festival to the Zoo instead of the Wild Animal park, so we're glad we got to see it. Very cool!

The Disney mega-movie post

The day after we got back from Aspen, we decided to take Lily on her very first trip to Disneyland! Accompanied by Tata Rina, Toto Tom, and cousins Madi and Mallory, we spent the day at the Happiest Place on Earth. Or as I like to call it, based on Lily's reaction, the Ambivalentest Place on earth.

As it happens, thanks to the heavy use it got the previous few days in Aspen, our digital camera was nearly out of batteries, so we have relatively few pictures. However, we DID have the video camera, so this is gonna be a video-heavy post. Here goes!

First stop was the famous teacups. As you can see, Lily is somewhat less than enthusiastic.

Next was the train. Lily maintains her poker face quite nicely!

The Dumbo ride. Is it just me, or is Lily actually starting to look a bit pissed off?

Meeting Mickey Mouse. You know, I think Mickey is probably accustomed to a slightly more enthusiastic reaction...

In fairness to Lily, she WAS jet-lagged, and had a short night to boot. But finally, in ToonTown, we found something that she could get excited about:

Hm. Maybe this IS the Happiest Place on Earth after all! Whee!!

Aspen Part 3 - Maroon Bells, and an addendum

It's been so long since the actual Aspen trip it seems silly to still post about it, but there was one more really cool thing we did, so for completeness sake I'm blogging it anyways. We went to this really cool park up in the mountains called Maroon Bells.

C'mon, tell me this isn't gorgeous. This is postcard stuff, right? Look at the reflections in the lake! We Californians get impressed just seeing this much water in one place without a golf course around it, but this is pretty darn spectacular in it's own right.







Here we are, taking the obligatory family shot against the dramatic mountainous background. Not bad for a camera on self-timer balanced on a rock!





Credit where it's due, we almost didn't go here...having gone up the other mountain, there were those who said why bother with another one. But Cathy campaigned successfully, and we're really glad she did. Everybody really enjoyed the wide open spaces, and of course the boys enjoyed following their little cousin Lily as she toddled around, exploring.





Hey, is there someone behind me?







We also had a bit of excitement while we were there...some other hikers told us they had spotted a BEAR on the other side of the lake. Yikes! Now, in this sort of situation, with a large, possibly carnivorous animal prowling in your immediate area, what would the most logical response be?

That's right...stand around and try and take it's picture.



We did eventually spot him and get a shot (albeit quite distant, as you can see) but it was still very cool to see a real live bear out in the wild. Also slightly nervous-making though, as this big lake narrows to a tiny stream, and the bear was headed in the same general direction as our parking lot. So we got out of there, but we're very happy we went! One more family pic for the road:

Oh, and one last thing - remember how I said the little girls were following Lily around the pool like a bunch of ducklings? Well, I had only gotten one little bit of video of it, and it wouldn't copy because the memory card had run out during filming, but I figured out how to recover it (using the in-camera edit function). So here it is!

Defiance

This video was taken a few days after Thanksgiving. The terrible twos starting early?

A Christmas quickie

Yes, yes, I'm VERY behind on blogging. I actually hope to rectify that this upcoming week...HP is still on shutdown, and I'm getting relatively healthy (knock on wood) so hopefully I can catch up. Expect a 3rd Aspen entry, Lily's first Disney visit, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and perhaps some other things as well.

For now though, a Christmas quickie...Pinky's friend Cherry visited us at Nono and Nana's place, and brought Lily some very nice presents, including some books, a cute Dora purse, and these cool fur-lined Crocs. Later that night, Lily decided to wear them, albeit in a somewhat non-traditional fashion.

Thanks, Cherry! I figured, as our only Minnesota subscriber, I owed you one.