Happy Birthday, Sarah Koa!

Our little Sarah turned two a few weeks ago! None of us can believe how quickly those two years have come and gone - nor how much of a "big girl" she has become lately. Of course, she often prefers to call herself a "baby" as she snuggles in our arms; but that's no surprise, as her absolute favorite activity is playing with toy babies - of all shapes, sizes, and species. Some days she's pushing one of her myriad baby dolls in her toy stroller, other days she spends tucking "baby 'lephant" (Dumbo) into the doll crib for his nap. One day last week, she devoted her time to a pair of stuffed monkeys - one was bigger, so of course it was the Mommy, and the small one was the Baby. She took them with us on our shopping trip that morning, and she still had them trailing along by bedtime. She's a very, very good caretaker. If something happens to one of her babies (say she leaves it in the other room... or a certain big brother rips it out of her arms...), then she immediately trills, "My baaaaby! My baaaaaby!" and runs to its rescue. So needless to say, a baby doll was on the list of birthday gifts this year - in spite of her growing collection. How could we possible resist?

We actually had a lot of fun selecting Big Girl presents for her on a family shopping trip to Target; Luke helped by selecting two (very loud) whistles, and Sarah helped herself to a play shopping cart filled with tiny plastic food.... and then Daddy and I picked out a few other things that we thought she'd enjoy.

When the Big Day arrived, we broke out our birthday hats and whistles at breakfast, and Luke and Gram and I got to work baking my Aunt Jan's strawberry cake, a favorite in my family (although Luke spent the whole time asking when we would add the chocolate...).

P took care of arranging our Birthday Adventure: a visit to Dallas's new Perot Museum. Although a lot of the museum was designed for older visitors, the kids were still thrilled to see the fabulous dinosaur exhibit, as well as the children's area. We were all impressed by the museum as a whole; we didn't spend time exploring each of the more detailed exhibits, but we loved riding the escalator along the bank of windows displaying the Dallas skyline, wandering through the hall of sparkly beautiful gemstones, and observing the machinery behind the huge, glass-enclosed elevator system.

This photo reminds me of all my childhood vacation pictures -
you know,  in the time before digital screens showed you immediately
that everyone in the picture looks ridiculous.

Sarah just loved the special attention of being the Birthday Girl. Whenever we said something about it being her birthday, she would grin and say, "Happy Birthday," immediately break out into the birthday song, and then sweetly pat her special birthday ribbon.

After the museum, we headed to the Hard Rock Cafe for an interesting and music-filled lunch before journeying back home, where plenty more Birthday awaited... after rest time, of course...

I'll leave you to your imagination as to why I called this an "interesting" experience.

By dinner, Paps had joined us, and we spent the evening in the backyard - pool and play time, a lasagna dinner, and of course, strawberry cake.

This is some serious noisemaking. 

Yum. 

Oh, and there were also presents. LOTS of presents!

For those of you who sent cards, rest assured that Sarah enjoyed each and every one! :)

Big brother was very helpful with the gifts.
A little too helpful at times... 

"Mah phone!"

(a little more sweetly) "Mah baby..."

It was a very good day.