- Cheers to the birthday girl!!! -

**********

Tear tear tearrrrr and more tears; this momma just plowed through an entire box of Kleenex like it ain't no thang! It absolutely goes without saying [but I'll say it anyway] that the past two years have been the BEST two years of our lives! Time has never ever ever flown by so quickly! ...I remember snuggling our 8lb, 4oz bundle of joy and cleaning up liquid/projectile infant poop like it was juuuust a few months ago... Watching this sweet baby grow into a beautiful, well-mannered little lady has been the biggest privilege, and I'm so so sooo happy and honored and humbled that God chose Harper for us!!! 

So...[without further rambling]...

Birthday party pics! Cheers to the birthday girl! It's fun to be two!

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to youuuu, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR HARPER, happy birthday to you!" :-* :-*

Presents, presents, and presents galore! [Just when I thought a tornado hit our house at Christmas time...]

Harper LOVES her newest cousin, Van!

When the birthday girl squeals for a nightcap, the good mom easily obliges.... :) ...and yes, that bumps the cookie count for the day up to three!

A good night of sleep and we were up for another jam-packed day of birthday fun! Off to the Science Center to celebrate our biggest accomplishment! ;)

Little Bear made it less than two minutes in the car before she was zonked out for the entire ride home!

But anyway...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, sweet baby girl!!! Mommy and Daddy love you more than you'll ever know! We hope you had the best birthday ever ever ever and are excited for everything that the year ahead will bring! 

xoxoxox

- Chinese meets V-Day -

I never pen posts at nighttime after Harper goes to bed [usually because I fall halfway asleep whilst rocking her and then am just in a zombied-out daze until I eventually coax my groom to bed a couple hours later]...........but tonight for dinner we had the WORST WORST WORST Chinese carryout ever and I'm scared that I'll die in my sleep after ingesting it soooo I'mma just prolong the inevitable and throw down a few final thoughts before I croak.  ...I've been sitting on the Valentine's Day photos for almosttt a month now, and I will never forgive myself if I die before sharing the heart holiday love. <3 <3

...I'll get back to V-Day in a second...but first can we just talk about that carryout food again real quick?

We realized on the way out of Mass that we didn't have any food to cook at home, so I twisted Brian's arm [not too hard] for just ONE small order of sesame chicken and rice + a side order of crab rangoon. We haven't ordered Chinese since before Harper could eat solid foods [soooo it's been a hot minute - AKA like over a year and a half], but tonight seemed like the perfect night to break Paleo and dive back in to sodium/carb/gluten heaven. [We've only been doing Paleo since breakfast time this morning ...but I did have a small cheat at lunch.]  So anyway, I won the rock/paper/scissors contest and Brian traipsed off into the hole-in-the-wall "restaurant" to get the food.  Five minutes later he came out and set the bag on my lap.  Three seconds later we both noticed a very potent burnt rubber-type smell ...and one millisecond later we had all the windows down in the car and were hanging our heads out and gasping for air.

The next mistake was not dropping the grease-soaked bag in the trash dumpster on the way into the house.

But no.

We brought it in because we were starving.  The taste was only slightly better than the smell; Harper took one look at it and pushed her plate across the table while her [not so smart] parents continued to nibble on grizzly chicken soaked in burnt grease.  As soon as "dinner" was finished, we scraped off the leftovers into their original containers, wrapped the containers in three layers of plastic grocery bag, and escorted the grocery bags to the garage dumpster.

...And to top it off, I've been diffusing the strongest "bad-smell-eliminating" essential oils for THREE HOURS now and the house still smells like a car screeching its tires on the Autobahn.

SH*T BE SO NASTYYYY.

Brian called dibs on the master bathroom several hours ago, which usually is a pretty frightening declaration that lets me know it's only safe to breathe in the guest bathroom for the next three days; but I can't say in this circumstance that I'm expecting it to come out smelling that much worse than it went in.

Moral of the story: never ever ever everrrrrr go to Orient Wok Chop Suey!!! 

Now! On to my last plethora of photo-posting before that sesame chicken does me in...

On to Valentine's Day!

We may or may not've gone a little/lot overboard this year with Valentin-ing...

But in the end it was all worth it, because everyone loved their hand-crafted love from sweet Harper!!

We took a pile of Valentines + Minnie Mouse pretzel packs to Harper's daycare classroom; she got to pass them out to all her friends and take part in the Valentine's Day party, too! I loved watching her interact with all her friends and have so much fun in her classroom!  And thennnnn [dun dun dun...] I felt like the worst momma in the history of bad mommas when it was time to leave and she cried....... :/

...Apparently going for long walks in the park and taking selfies witch-o mama is not even a CLOSE second runner-up to being at daycare...

^^When your Valentine just isn't feelin' the love... 

She got over it rull fast when we pulled up to the house and there was a bag of heart cookies and toys waiting on the doorstep! [Thanks, Jill!] Then she marched right down the street to give her friend [future boyfriend?] his homemade gift:

And lastly but very not leastly, Daddy took us on an Orange Leaf date after dinner!  #eatthelove #allthefeels #icecreamisthewaytoawomansheart

[[^^Harper hates selfies. She is not her mother's daughter.]]

It's 10:36 in the pee to the emm ... plus add in that deadly "spring ahead" daylight savings time and THAT makes it 11:36 [which is soooo ridiculously far past my bedtime] so! That's all, folks! I'm signing off for now and probably for forever... #revengeofthesesamechicken

...But for real...Brian just said he's so happy Harper's party is tomorrow afternoon so that if we both die overnight at least someone will be at the house tomorrow afternoon to rescue her from her crib.

Ciao now!

- Tea for TWO!! -

I saw this [not-flattering] throwback pop-up on my Facebook yesterday morning and wowzers!  [Trying for three hot seconds to look past the giiinormous whale/human and focus on the craziness that the fetus inside the bump was still called "it" because we didn't know yet that Baby F. was actually a "she!"]

A couple days later brought this...

...[and this]...

...and now a couple YEARS later, there's this! 

I know it just sounds super sappy and stupid, but I legitimately canNOT remember my life AT ALL before this sweet soul joined our family!  And now I/we canNOT imagine life without her...like...........at all.  

Happy happy happyyyy [almost] 2nd birthday, Harper Bear!!!  Daddy and Mommy love your playful spirit and joyful heart! 

Oh, TWOOOO-dles!!! Turning two and having tea with Minnie is so much fun! :)

[Party pics to come!!!]

- Harper rides a bikeee! -

Brian has been salivating over this pretty pink Strider since Harper was a wee little one...

...and finally [1.5 years later!] she LOVES IT!!!  Watch out, everybodyyyy: Daddy's [bi]cycle-lovin' BIG GIRL is on the loose!!! :D

- VAY-CAY FOR EVERYONE! -

...That is, vay-cay for everyone ........besides Baby Bear and Momma Bear. #boo #boo #doubleboo :/

It went a little something like this:

Daddy packed his bags and bolted for Colorado to tear up the mountains on his snowboard for the week.

So we guilted Grammy Resa into coming down for an evening visit ........the night right before she jumped a plane to Colorado to stay with Uncle Blake and Sarge for the week.  [Hi, Sarge!]

It's no secret that single motherhood is not the life for me, soooo in Daddy and Grammy's absence, we begged Papa Mark to come spend a night! He took Harper to daycare the next morning ........and then he flew out to Colorado to ski with his man friends.

 

Grammy Ann and Papa Ron were on vacation too, so we couldn't go visit them...

...so after an abnormally long string of days of only being able to gaze upon her troll mom, Harper be like:  Yo, yo, where's err'body atttt?

When the work week was finished and the weekend was upon us, we cranked up the music and bolted a sign to the front door that read, "GIRL HOUSE!" and partied it up to the nth degree!

#whenyourbestfriendisaoneyearold:

We played outside and looked for airplanes...

...then perused the Valentine's Day aisles at Wal-Mart and picked out the perfect gifts for everyone!

"Hey Mom, did you say I could pick just one .....or just one of each color?"

Next, we visited all the fish, birds, and rabid rodents at the pet store in town...

...and also had a some very special visitors in the form of GREAT grandparents! :) 

 We bathed all the babies...

 ...finished washing all the dirty laundry...

 ...made lots of cakes...

...played with ALL the toys we could find...

...and diapered every single animal in the house!

And before we knew it, we woke up one morning and...

...the coffee was brewin', pancakes were cookin' and DADDY WAS HOME [with souvenirs in hand, too; Baby Bear's first pair of ski socks from Aunt Laura!]!!!

Hope y'all had great vay-cays; Harper and I are glad you're home! :-* :-*