Blakeley's first trip to the zoo!

A few days ago, Justin found a groupon for the Atlanta Zoo, and like a good Daddy does quickly bought two tickets for only $20!! What a deal!  We decided to use our tickets today since it is Labor Day weekend and we knew we would have more time to rest later.  Justin's parents had the groupon too, and decided to join us. 

Blakeley loves animals and loves to make all the animal noises.  And based on our experience at the Aquarium this summer, we knew she was going to LOVE the zoo.

Don't let the face fool you (the sun was in her eyes), she did not want to move from that spot, and that is right at the entrance!

 Checking out the elephant with Mommy...

 

Looking at all the pretty birds with Daddy...

 

 Mimzy bought some bird food for Blakeley to feed the birds!

 

Looking at the lion with Daddy!

 

 "Look I'm a lion....ROAR!"

 

 Looking at the monkeys  - with a mouth full of chips

 

 Unlike Buddy, this is one of the few pics we actually took of just the animals...

 

hanging out with Buddy watching the gorilla eat...and all she can see and talk about it the butterfly in front of her. ;)

 

 Finally, we found some "misters" to run through and cool off! It was HOT out there!

 

 You can't go to the Zoo without visitng the petting zoo section.  Blake did such a great job petting gently, and she wasn't scared!

 

They even had brushes that you could brush the animals with...

We also saw the pandas, but it was so crowded we couldn't get any pictures.  Even though the weather was hot and humid, and I had to do a lot more walking than I was expecting to do at 32 weeks pregnant, we had a great time!! Happy Labor Day!

Phone purge

I thought I would've blogged more than the few times I did during the summer.  I guess I thought I didn't have any thing great to blog about!  Well I was very wrong when I started looking through my pictures on my phone! There were two events that I was able to capture with my hand iphone camera. 

The first was Blakeley's first hair cut.  I had been avoiding cutting her hair for months.  One reason is that Blakeley had been bald for the first 10 months of her life, and once it started growing she had this beautiful, to DIE for curly hair! However, I realize that I couldn't keep avoiding this moment.  After all, she is over two years old now (can you believe it)?!?!?!?  I am thankful that Blakeley was able to have her first hair cut with her older cousin Libbi around.  Sometimes I am not so sure how Blakeley will react to new situations, so its good to have a pro like Libbi around. ;)

This is the day before...

And here we are a Whata Cutie Hair cuts in Buford.  She is a little bit unsure of what is about to happen as you can see...

 The water is tickling her, and she is not so sure about this brush...

She is watching "Monsters, Inc" as she gets her hair cut....

 Trimming her bangs...

A little product for the hair....and ta-da!!

Another fun event was at Downtown Suwanee for a production for the Little Mermaid!  We met Blakeley's Buddy and Mimzy, Aunt Amy, Libbi and Laney for the fun!  All the girls started with playing in the fountains (Blakeley's first time)!

Blake was very brave and kept running into the BIG fountain. :)

 But she made sure to come back every time to show us she was ok and having fun! ( I can't even believe how good these fountain pics turned out on my phone!)

 

Waiting paitently for "The Little Mermaid" production to begin...

Now, she is ready with her "magic" wand that Mimzy bought her to participate during "The Little Mermaid"....(although we left before that part - ha!)

Since we weren't able to take a vacation, I'm glad we still had precious moments to share together over the summer! Love my sweet family!

First family trip to the Aquarium!

On Friday, we decided to take Blakeley to the GA Aquarium.  Summer will be ending soon and we wanted to make sure we took advantage of our time together, before things got too busy (ya know, school, football...a new BABY!)

We got up early to make sure that we got there right when it opened (luckily there was NO traffic! Can you believe it?)  Getting there early was totally worth it.  Obviously, its not as crowded yet, which allowed us to let Blakeley actually walk and explore all the fish!

The trip was immediately worth it when Blakeley saw one of the large aquariums for the first time and began squealing, laughing, and jumping all around.  She could not contain her excitement! 

Since I'm now 6 months pregnant, Justin was in charge of "chasing" Blakeley while I took care of the stroller and all our stuff.  This is also the reason that I'm not in many of the pictures - but with the way I look, I don't mind! :)

She did not like the jelly fish very much.  She had a death grip on Justin.

This is Blakeley seeing all the fish for the first time.  When she gets excited and laughs, she puts her hands over her mouth like she is trying to contain herself. ;)

One of the few pics of Blake and me looking at all the fish!

Isn't that one GINORMOUS fish in the background! whoa!

Justin was a great daddy and crawled through the tunnel with Blake so she could see the penguins! (She finally figured out half way that she didn't have to crawl!)

This is Justin holding Blakeley up through the tube to see the penguins.

At one point we were walking down a ramp, and Blakeley thought it was a slide.  She sat right on her "bobo" and started saying "weeeeee, weeee".  We finally got her up when she realized it was fun to run down too. :)  Silly girl!

And once again, Justin was a great daddy and crawled into another tunnel with Blakeley to see some fresh water fish!

We did have one scary moment where we "lost" Blakeley.  We were walking with her into the play area where you can touch the sting rays.  Well, she turns one corner and literally she is NO WHERE in sight!  The play area has all these plastic tunnels and stairs (like at any fast food playground) but they were blocked off.  We thought she had managed to climb up in one (in like 1 second) and we didn't see her anywhere!  I don't know how I managed to not totally LOSE it from the beginning - I kept my cool knowing the area was small and we would find her.  After about 3 minutes though, I started thinking that she is only 2! She knows her name - but she wouldn't know to tell you if you asked her!  Luckily, right as I was thinking that, we realized there were stairs to up to get to a slide - as soon as Justin checked the stairs he saw her immediately.  She had no idea that anything was wrong (which is great- I would never forgive myself if he found her crying and scared!)  But he said she knew something was wrong when she looked at his face and immediately looked "sorry". And now we've started trying to teach her "What's your name? Blakeley Johnson".  It's still a work in progress, but lesson learned!

Any way, we did not let that ruin our trip, however after that episode, she seemed over the whole experience.  Granted, we had been there for over an hour and she had done a great job looking at everything there was to see!  Overall, this was a wonderful family experience, and it has made me realize the clock is ticking to when we will no longer be a family of three!! I want to cherish these precious moments with my little girl!

Blakeley's birthday party

As many of you know, today is Blakeley's actual birthday and we were able to have her party today. Last year on Blakeley's first birthday I had already decided that her 2nd birthday theme was going to be "Ice Cream". Now, what I would do if pinterest wasn't around, I do not know. I'm not extremely creative or crafty - I try my best and usually things come out just ok.

This is Blakeley's birthday invitation I ordered from etsy:

I then simply thought that we could decorate everything in pinks and purple since I knew that would be very easy to find at Hobby Lobby or Party City. 

Now, on to my simple pinterest ideas.  I love looking at pinterest, but I've only ever actually used recipes I've found.  I just haven't had time to exercise my crafty side.   Any way, my two pinterest ideas were "Ice cream cupcakes" and "tissue paper pom poms".

 Clearly mine do not looks as good as on pinterest, but you get the point.

 And again, the pom poms not quite like Martha Stewart, but it was my first attempt!

 

As we were running errands preparing for her party, we couldn't resist this "Tangled" birthday banner (it even colored coordinated with everything).  Rapunzel is Blakeley's favorite princess.  We even got her a Tangled birthday crown, which she loves!

On top of the ice cream/Tangled theme, we also wanted to take advantage of having a decent fenced in back yard, so we bought Blakeley a pool for all the kids to enjoy during the party!

Aunt Amy had a wonderful idea to put the slide by the pool - this may have been a reason why Libbi later said "This was the best fun day ever!"

Now, on to the moment you have all been waiting for....blowing out the big two year old candle!  Here is Blakeley waiting for her cupcake (this promise of cupcake was the only way we got her out of the pool!)

 Her daddy picked out a cute sparkly number two candle!

 She blew the candle out but got a little scared when she did.

The birthday girl couldn't be troubled to really care that we were taking a family pic ;)

 

Because we took close to 150 pictures during the party, I decided to create a slideshow to show everyone that some of Blakeley's cousins were there and had fun!  Cousins make the best friends!

This photo slideshow created with Smilebox Thank you to all of Blakeley's family that was able to make it.  She loves each of you very much - Buddy, Mimzy, Nana, Grandaddy, Aunnie Mags, Uncle Dave, Aunt Lucie, Uncle Jeff, Ethan, Hadley, Aunt Amy, Uncle Jeffrey, Libbi, Laney, and Mawmaw!