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On March 12th we celebrated Olivia's second birthday! I know I've said this a million times before, but I cannot believe its been two years. That day we had a playdate with Livi's little pals and then that night we celebrated with family over cake and ice cream.

This age definitely has it challenges, but we are having a blast discovering new things with Livi and spending time together as a family.I love this little girl and am so proud to be her mom.

Testing out her new bike from mom & dad. We waited until the next morning to give it to her because I think she was a little overwhelmed with all the gifts on her birthday. She is one spoiled chica.

My attempt at the barbie cake. It looked ok from the front, but was a little pathetic from the back.

Testing out her new scooter

Happy to get a new doll. This one goes potty so hopefully it will help with our potty training efforts.

New purse & dress up shoes

Say cheese - pretend camera

Update

Ok so I'm pretty tired of staying indoors all the time. I'm ready for spring, I'm ready for our cruise, and I'm ready to get the ball rolling on another adoption. Thank goodness for neighbors and friends that are willing to get together for playdates and lunches to help keep us busy until its time to hit the pool and the zoo again and put some miles on our new bike. I really don't have much to blog about, but just want to post these cute pics.

So Sweet

The Princess Tent! Be careful, those who enter are rarely allowed to leave. Dallas and I don't exactly fit, but Livi doesn't mind. You can see Dallas' legs sticking out in this photo.

And of course it wouldn't be a party unless Livi forced both dogs in the tent too

Hanging out in the princess tent with Grandma and Grandpa Hamblin

Also, I don't think I ever posted about the little remodel project we did. Our house only has two bedrooms and we've felt a little squished since we added Livi to our family. And now that we're hoping to adopt again we decided to turn our "home teacher" room into a bedroom. Construction went really smoothly and the contractors finished up just in time for Christmas. Right now I am using the room to stash all the toys (its ridiculous how many toys she has) and when we get a baby then we'll turn it into the baby's room. Anyway, here are some before and after pics.

View from the front door before

View from the front door after

Before

Before

After

After

Our new toy room/future nursery

Do I have the best hubby or what? Clearly he should be in charge of our blog. He is so much better at putting himself out there than I am. He is such a sweety and Livi and I are lucky to have him.

I've kind of been in the post Christmas slump so I thought I'd fill some time and finally update our blog with some Christmas pics. I didn't take nearly as many as I wanted to - with everything going on I neglected the camera that day. We had a great Christmas and I think I was spoiled more than Livi this year. Livi didn't really get the concept of Christmas and Santa yet, but she did know how to tear into those gifts and she loved all the new toys. She was also able to say HO HO HO when asked what Santa says.

This was the best Christmas ever! My hubby gave me a 7 night Mediterranean cruise for Christmas - we leave in June. My awesome mom and dad gave me a cricut machine (can anyone show me how to use it?) and my inlaws gave me a bike with the kiddie trailer for Livi - can't wait for some warm weather. How spoiled am I! Dallas gets so excited for Christmas and I love that about him even though I have to remind myself of that when he wakes us up at 5:30 to open presents.

At the beginning of December we took Olivia to the mall to sit on Santa's lap and get her picture taken. She was a little leery of Santa, but sat on his lap for a minute and did great. Then, a few days before Christmas we took her to a Christmas party at Dallas' aunt's house. Santa made a stop at the party and when we tried to put Olivia on Santa's lap at that time she flipped out and would not go near him. Tears, drama, the works. The ironic thing was that Santa was Dallas' dad. I know Dallas' dad felt bad and wanted to show Livi it was him, but he couldn't ruin the secret for the 20 other kiddos at the party.

All in all we had a great Christmas and hope all of you did too. I still can't believe its over let alone a month later. Here's hoping the rest of these winter months pass quickly so we can update the blog with some fun summer pics from the pool.

My Two Ladies

I am not the official blogger of the group, but I felt that I should contribute on some level to this record of our little family. As is the case with most things in our lives, Sarah does the work on this blog and I sit back and enjoy it.

Every day, I take a moment to open our blog and smile as I realize how wonderful my life is and how lucky I am to be part of such a great little family.

These two ladies that live with me make it a total joy and privilege to come home from work every night. I often feel overwhelmed by the idea that a beautiful child like Olivia is in our care. I feel totally unworthy of her seeming unconditional faith and love for me. It's humbling to think that Heavenly Father has left this child's potential in our hands.

Then there's Sarah. What can I say? I don't know why she loves me the way she does. I don't know why she puts up with everything that she does. She is truly the best mother, wife, and friend that I could ever imagine and she does it all without saying a word. I don't know why. (Maybe I never will.)

I love these two ladies more than life itself and am grateful that they have confidence in me as a dad and husband. Growing up, I had always hoped to get married and have kids. I never thought that I could trick such an amazing person into marrying me, first of all. I never thought that such a tiny little child would ever carry my heart around with her everywhere she goes.

Thanks to my two ladies, I feel like I'm living the life I was meant to lead and becoming the person I was meant to become.

Makeup Tips

Tip #1: Make sure the make up you put on your skin matches your skin color and tone.

Livi's First Movie

Saturday night Dallas and I decided to be brave and attempt a movie with Olivia. We decided to take her to see "The Princess and the Frog." I am still in shock at how good she was. I think Dallas and I both thought we'd be in and out and that it would be hard to get Livi to sit through a two hour movie. But she surprised us both and behaved wonderfully. She sat in her chair with her popcorn and actually watched the movie. About ten minutes before it was over she said "all done please," but she waited patiently until the end. It was a really cute movie and had some great music, I highly recommend it. Here are a couple pics from our night out:

The Greatest Sound in the Whole Entire World

Livi has never really been a fan on me trying to work on the computer, but lately she likes to climb in my lap when I'm on the computer and I'll pull up youtube and show her animal videos. She likes the videos of the kittens and puppies the best. The video she is watching in this clip is of two cats jumping around trying to catch a fly. The cat video is not even really that funny, but her belly laugh is so funny. I'm so glad Dallas grabbed the camera and caught this.

BOO!

Caution: These are pretty spooky Halloween pictures so proceed at your own risk! : )

Our scary ladybug had a great Halloween. We really only took her trick or treating to a few houses, but she really loved answering the door and putting a piece of candy in the kid's buckets at our house. She also loved carving pumpkins and watching as we lit them up at night. I've sort of created a monster because lately when she sees a bug she lets up a high pitched "Ewwww." So when Halloween came and I talked to her about putting on her ladybug costume she was a little bit hesitant and we had to coax her into it. Can't wait until next year...

Gardner Village

Last October Olivia was only seven months old and not really old enough to start discovering all the Halloween fun. I love that she is so into this year. My Halloween decorations move on an hourly basis and she loves to have her costume on. We are also working on saying trick or treat. Last year I took her to day farms and did get quite a few cute pumpkin pics. Well I had really high hopes of doing another cutesy fall photo shoot so my friend and I headed to Gardner Village. Well, turns out the nice thing about having a seven month old is that they are pretty much immobile. This years photos didn't turn out so good because now my 19 month old was running away or distracted by something else while I tried to take the pics. Oh well, better luck next year.

One of last year's photos. Much easier to take photos then, but not nearly as fun!

I definitely need to go back without kiddos to shop, but we did manage to hit the petting zoo & the pony rides while we were there. The petting zoo was a huge hit even though we smelled like a farm afterwards. Olivia loves animals and usually the animals need to be protected from Olivia and not the other way around. She loved being able to walk around and check out all the animals.

I'm sad I kinda chopped the top of her head off in this photo, I thought it was pretty cute.


The chicken in the car was cracking me up