{My 2011 Birthday Celebration}

Everybody knows how much I puffy heart birthdays...esp my birthdays (vain much? ). I absolutely look forward to celebrating with friends and families. I'm not gonna lie though, this year was a lil bit different. I was sort of dreading the day. Maybe because I know the man who made every birthday of mine a big deal since I was born will not be around. This year, I miss our "countdown" conversations leading up to my big day. Dad knew how to get me excited on celebrating!

Luckily my husband encouraged me to celebrate and I am so glad we did! The weekend of my birthday we had an intimate celebration with friends and family.

I was surrounded by a loving husband and the our two sweetest kids helping me blow my birthday candle. Make a wish!

Ed knows how much I love Gigis cupcake. He picked up a variety for our guests to enjoy. Everybody loved it!
Samantha's new BFF-Ms Heather
My sissy and me
My brother and Mohammad
A quick photo op with my family of four
Pretty ladies
Mom and my brother
My brother and William. He adores his Tito Nestor!
The Patels who never misses my party and celebration.
Extremely blessed to be surrounded by family and friends.

On my actual birthday, we went to our favorite all you can eat sushi buffet. Seriously the best restaurant in town. They have the freshest sushi on display.

{Samantha: 15 Months}

Great 15 month check up for Samantha. Doctor is very pleased with her progress. Here are her stats:

Height: 30.75 (60%)

Weight: 22 lbs 13 oz (51%)

Head: 47 (80%)

Developmental Milestones:

• Doing real good with her transition to toddler. This week there were no tears at drop offs to the breakfast club. This is usually the toughest for infants.
• Running. She's very speedy!
• Vocabulary explosion - book, hugs, bye bye, turtle. Even two words -- Thank you. Her teacher even made a comment on how good she is at mimicking words.
• Can follow simple commands. I usually ask her to take her shoes to her room and she does it.
• Very interested in books.
• Also interested in putting stuff in containers and taking them out
• Great sleeper! Still sleeping well at night.
• Extremely sweet. She'll run to me, Ed or William and will just give us big hugs and kisses.
• Still picky with people but once she finds somebody she likes, she'll hang a lot with them.
• Her bestfriends at school are Emma and Becka
• She loves her teachers esp Ms Maddie!
• Eats pretty much everything! Loves raisin, broccoli and fish

{Fun With The Kids}

Seriously, we equally just have as much fun as the kids at our home.

Case in point, Ed and the kids took such great pride building this "fort" for our Ice Cream and camping night at our living room.

And kiddie birthday parties, we rock those too.

Check out our fearless 15 month old, sliding thru this big slide. She loved it and insist on doing it over and over again.

She was everywhere!

My lil boy is blessed to have his best friends. The tres amigos are always together! I enjoy having friends and I'm glad that he does too.

{Campground}

We all drove to Callaway last week to visit my in laws who were camping at one of the campgrounds in the area. It rained on and off but the kids still had so much fun playing with their cousins.
Here's Granddaddy and Samantha. Samantha was running around the campground and having way too much fun playing chase with Brooke.

Paige trying to pick up some sticks to make fire for the smores.

Kids found a "toad" and was fascinated by it.

The boys were too busy playing and I didnt even caught any good pictures of them.

{Random Stuff}

These summer is going by fast. I guess time flies when you are having fun!

Last Friday, we finally got to check out Flip Burger. OMG. Food is soooo delish!

I heart fun dinner with girlfriends and their families.
This Mango Vodka is to die for!

We've been going to a lot of birthday parties....just about every weekends.

Name a bouncy place or gym place in Atlanta, I can almost guarantee you we've been there for a birthday party. My brother jokes that our social calendar is now dominated by the kid's calendar :)

William went to see Cars 2 with Ed and he loved it! So cute to hear him tell everybody the plot :)
He's a big Cars fan. We were at the mall a couple of weeks ago and they were knighting kids...Secret Agent William is now a Knight!

{Cow Appreciation Day 2011}

Moo! Dress up like a cow and get a free Chick-Fil-A meal. We love us some CFA and of course free food :)
And we even ran into the Lim family who are experts on CFA Cow Appreciation day. What a fun day!

{2011 4th of July Happenings}

The hubby and I agreed that 4th of July is creeping out there as one of our favorite holidays. The past few years have been great times and this year didn't disappoint either.

We kicked of the 4th of July weekend with a BBQ with William's classmate family. It was a nice intimate get together and the kids had a blast just playing with their friends. We were asked to bring fruits to the potluck and I decided to give the homemade edible arrangement a try. William and I had fun working on this project. We cut up pineapples in star shapes and dipped strawberries in white chocolate and blue candy sprinkles. Perfect for the red,white and blue celebration. I think it turned out great!
The following day. I got Ed to agree to smoked some pork shoulder and chicken wings for our dinner with my family. We pretty much just stayed at home all day and the kids still had fun just playing inside. It was very hot outside so our plan of staying indoor worked out great.
It was the first dinner at our house with my family since Dad passed away. I gotta be honest, there were plenty of moments where I got a lil teary eyed. I miss him so much. I know how my father enjoyed our get togethers. He's one of the reason why I got into cooking and hosting parties. He appreciated these celebrations and enjoyed it to the fullest!I am so glad that my aunt came in. I love the fact that my kids are so close to her and familiar with her. Ed and I also both ran the Peachtree Road Race 10K this year. Because of the kids, we tried to take turns each year on running it. This year my family baby sat both kids and they did really great! Thanks to my mom and brother. They were very entertained and even took a nap in the afternoon. Woo hoo!

The race was so fun. Ed had a great run and finished it at 1:03. I finished at 1:14. A decent time but I hope to improve it over the next years.We had these big plans of taking the kids to our neighborhood park for fireworks in the afternoon. That was cancelled due to storms. Tried to take pictures of the kids in their 4th of July outfits, sadly my camera was not cooperating and it turned out blury.
Luckily, they rescheduled the fireworks the following weekend so it all worked out. We love our neighborhood. Police officers were at almost every block directing traffic and patrolling the event. William was so cute and kept hollering at them and saying "Good evening officer". They thought he was so adorable and they gave him a teddy bear and a ball.
Pre-fireworks we just hang out and let the kids play in the field.
Told you, these two have special connection. Look how big that smile is to big brother.
Mommy and Samantha just enjoying the outdoors.
The best part of the festivity....we were joined by the awesome K and W family. Feel so blessed to have them in our lives. Moms, Dads and kids all get along.
Ms Ra, got these cool flags for the kids and they had so much fun spinning it.

Samantha and Liam on their goldfish date.
Cool Dads!
Beautiful fireworks. It was so neat to be that close to it. Really enjoyed it. William was oooing and aaing. He was sitting on my lap and kept saying.... "I like the blue ones", "That is pretty"....then suddenly silence....

Yes, my child fell asleep in the middle of the fireworks. It was loud and he slept right though it. We thought it was hilarious! He must have been really exhausted from all the playing earlier.What a fun 4th of July it was for our family!

{How Sweet It Is....}

To be loved by a big brother...who will willingly feed you and share his ice cream with you!

{Braves Game}

We've been so lucky to win something at just about every spring fling raffle at the kid's school. This year we won the fun in the sun package. So cool that it came with 4 tickets to the Braves game, perfect time to take William and Samantha to their first Atlanta Braves game! Our tickets also came with a $10 coupon for tickets and we used it to pick up hats for Ed and the kids. Here's Samantha rocking her Atlanta Braves hat.

William with his hat and tomahawk souvenir.

Our seats were perfect, it was almost right behind the homeplate.

Lil Braves fans!

Then we all headed up to the top of the left field bleachers to hang out at Sky Field where William had the chance to run on an artificial base path at the top of the stadium. Luckily, there were cooling misting machine everywhere to cool you off on this hot summer day.

Samantha "tried" to run the bases too .

Ed and the kids and the great view of the city!

Then we all went inside Toon town to cool off some more. Hooray for airconditioning :) Dippin' Dots are a must for every Braves game.

Yum!

Samantha had enough and took a beauty nap after the 7th inning.

What a fun day! Our Braves hats all lined up.