This girl keeps me busy all day long!
We celebrated Rease's 2nd birthday last Friday. Let me take a minute and tell you my favorite things about our 2 year old...
1. She a lover girl and gives us kisses and hugs whenever we ask for them. Josh started the "triple kiss" with her before Rhen was born and it's our favorite way to get kisses from her. We all three put our faces together and kiss, kiss, kiss.
2. She is such a great big sister and always worried about Rhen. She lets me know when Rhen is crying, poopy, sleepy or whatever is going on at the moment. She loves holding her and talking to her. I'll catch her laying on the floor by Rhen just talking to her a few times a day.
3. She loves the outdoors. Anytime the door is open (or now that she can open the doors, pretty much anytime mom isn't watching) she bolts outside. She plays on our back porch all the time and she always wants to swim, play at park, swing, run and roll down hills. We love that she is going to be our little camper with us and love to do it as much as we do!
4. She is so smart. I'm not kidding sometimes I think to myself "how did she learn that?" But I've come to realize that if we tell her to do something one time or say something one time, she remembers it. She has all the places we drive to memorized. If we turn right onto the main road she says "grandmas." Turn left "grandpas" (the office.) Taking 90th south exit "gym." Passing grandmas house "Justins." Down the hill "church." We are constantly being told where we are going.
5. She has the best laugh. She is such a fun girl and laughs and plays all day long. Plus I laugh at her and the things she says all day too. Her new thing to say and thinks it's hilarious is "naked!" Whenever Josh has his shirt off or she is just in her diaper she says "naked!" But the way she says it is the best - with a little attitude. Yesterday she was getting in the hottub with grandpa and he was in his swimming shorts. She saw him and said "grandpa naked!" We are always laughing with this girl!
Highlights of our party day. Grandpas and grandmas, aunts and uncles and some good friends came to party with us. Rease of course was loving all the attention and all the gifts. Notice she's already wearing one of her presents - new rain boots. She's been able to wear them a lot since then too since it's been so rainy here lately. We had such a fun time with our 2 year old - love her to death!
My talented friend Gayle made her birthday cake - isn't it the cutest? 
So last year it was just Greg, his brother Myrick and Josh that ran - this year they recruited a whole group to run with them. 
Myrick brought a waterproof camera with him this time and took some shots along the route.
There are a bunch of obstacles along the way - walls to climb over...
ropes to climb under and these were some tubes we had to crawl through.
There's one point in the race that you have to cross a big lake. The water came past my shoulders so we were basically swimming across. 
Post-race. We are feeling good and dirty. There were a bunch of showers to rinse off with but that's all it really ends up being because the water was freezing! I didn't last too long in the showers so we went back to the hotel pretty dirty still.
The next day we went to a Padres game with Greg and Myrick. The game was really fun and the field was awesome. It was open in the back so you could see right into the city. We ended up staying until the top of the 9th inning and left to avoid traffic. When we left the Padres were down 6-1 so we figured it was over anyway. Later that night we found out that they actually tied the game in the 9th inning and ended up going 9 more innings before the game ended. What the heck! We missed an exciting end to the game I guess.
One night we went to the beach and had a fire. There were tons of people doing the same thing - it was really fun and I had no idea that was something you could even do.
Rease found some ashes on the ground and rubbed them all over her face. She loved playing in the giant "sandbox" at the beach.
Rhen just enjoying whatever is going on at the moment.
We ended our trip with some good pooltime. Rease is crazy in the water - she has no fear. One morning she woke up really early so I took her out by the pool so Josh and Rhen could sleep a little bit more. I took her pajamas off her and let her put her feet in the hottub. Before I knew it she had jumped in face first! I jumped in after her (clothes still on) to grab her. After she caught her breath she looked at me and said "I jumped." Yah. She doesn't get scared of the water which actually scares me. I guess we're doing swimming lessons this summer.
On the plane ride home Rease had her own seat. Since she turned two while we were gone we had to buy here a one way ticket home. We were on a tiny plane so there were just two seats on each side. Josh and Rease sat in one row and Rhen and I sat right behind them. This picture makes it look like they were angels on the plane but in reality they were little devils - both of them. Rease started crying because they made her strap into her own seat and she really wanted to sit on Josh's lap. Then Rhen started crying because she couldn't sleep and really wanted to. It ended up that halfway through Josh and I switched seats so we could switch which kid we were taking care of. We were exhausted by the time we landed.
Onto the drama that seems to follow us these days...
Josh and I were all packed up to leave when Josh and Rease started playing on the beanbag. He was picking her up and swinging her back onto the beanbag. Somehow Rease got hurt and started crying (which is pretty normal for her but she always stops right away after I kiss it better.) Well, she kept crying and I noticed that she wasn't moving her right arm at all. I told her to point to where it hurts and she showed me that her elbow was hurting. We tried to let her just relax for a few minutes but after we realized that she wasn't going to stop crying we decided to take her to the hospital. Josh was feeling pretty bad at this point and was in a hurry to get her checked out. When we got there and explained to the nurse what had happened, she knew right away what it was. She told us that it is called "nursemaids elbow" where the radius comes out of the socket. She said that it is pretty painful and makes it impossible to bend at the elbow but is easy to fix by popping it back in. Just as she was explaining to to us, she was also trying to put this little pulse taking device on Rease's toe and Rease freaked out and tried to get off the table. She put her weight onto the hurt arm and as soon as the nurse left the room Rease looked at me and said "better." She stopped crying and let Josh hold her until the doctor came in. He had Rease bend her elbow and move her fingers and told us that she had popped it back into place herself and that she should be fine. After thinking that her arm was broken for sure, we were glad to have it end this good. It ended up being a much better thing that we were thinking and Rease has been talking about the doctor ever since then. This is the "bracelet" they gave her and she was pretty happy that they didn't have to do much to make her better.
