Happy Birthday Sarah

Last Monday Sarah celebrated her third birthday. It seemed to be more like a week of celebrations, which I am sure she didn't mind. It all started the Saturday before her birthday when Aunt Julie sent Sarah her first birthday package. It contained a fun ballerina outfit (tutu and shoes) , pom poms and a head band that looked like a flower. Sarah decided she wanted to wear all of them at once, so the did. She was very cute and danced to the new mixed CD that Aunt Julie and her family put together for her.

How do I look?

On Monday Sarah celebrated her birthday with cupcakes at her daycare. Then the next day she joined her friend, Nina, who's birthday is the day after Sarah's, at Chuckie Cheese's. The girls had a great time together, except Sarah was very upset when Chuckie Cheese tried to come by and say 'hi' to her. Sarah still isn't a fan of people in costumes.

Sarah upset after Chuckie Cheese came by for a visit....

Sarah and Nina play with a telephone game.

On Friday, Sarah got to go to another birthday celebration at my friend Violet's house. Her son, Frank has the same birthday, so Sarah has celebrated her last three birthdays with Violet's family. After birthday cupcakes, the kids went out 'hunting' for fireflies. It was Sarah's first time searching for fireflies, which brought back memories of when we used to collect them in jars as a kids. It is very nice to have 'adoptive' family when some of our family is farther away. We are always welcome there and Sarah loves playing with G'ma Violet and G'pa Bob.

Sarah and Frank blow out their birthday candles. (They had face painting at daycare that day, so she went to the party as a cat. I found out that one of the other kids at the party also went to Sarah's daycare---the face painting on the two kids helped us make the connection!)

Sarah enjoys her birthday cupcake

Sarah looking for fireflies

Sarah's birthday celebrations finally came to end over the weekend when Uncle Eric came up to visit. He brought Sarah a hip new plate, bowl, cup, and utensil set with the letter "S" in the middle. Sarah loves them and has all her meals on them now. We had a fun visit and enjoyed some great barbecue from Buz and Neds (for you foodnetwork people, Buz was the one that won the barbecue showdown with Bobby Flay) and then followed-up up with Sarah's traditional birthday cake for the last three years---my mom's famous strawberry roll cake. If you haven't had it before, it always gets rave reviews and I am pleased that I get to hand down the tradition and make if for my family. It is sponge cake rolled up with fresh whipped cream and strawberries--a perfect summer treat!

Enjoying barbecue on the back porch

Outer Banks Beach Trip

We had a wonderful trip to the Outer Banks in NC the last week in June. We rented a house on the beach with Greg's immediate family. We had four kids, Greg's sister and husband, Greg's brother and his parents. The house was great and had everything we needed.

The weather was perfect the whole time. We had one afternoon of rain and one morning that was very windy. The waves were bigger than we are used to when we go to the Cape, so Sarah was a bit nervous the first few days. She was very content just digging in the sand and watching everyone from a distance. Once she started playing in the surf, she was hooked and loved to jump in the waves as they came to shore.

Sarah's cousins, Alex, Noah, and Lauren had a great time as well. Alex and Noah tried to skim board in the surf. Lauren spent most of her time attached to either Mom and Dad (Aunt Susan and Uncle Kelly). Greg and I had a great time enjoying the water and swimming. Uncle Eric took the kids crabbing. Unfortunately, the crabs were too small to eat.

It was a wonderful trip and made returning to work last week very depressing. We've agreed to go again sometime and I look forward to more visits to the Outer Banks.

Sarah waits for the waves. Greg and Alex work on skim boarding in the background.

Alex and Justus

Uncle Kelly and Lauren


Aunt Susan and Lauren (are you starting to notice that Sarah and Lauren seem to always have snacks in their hands?)

Sarah waits for the waves to come ashore with Apa and Uncle Eric

Having fun in the waves

Sarah and Lauren under the canopy enjoying snacks with Harmoni and Haraboji (grandma and grandpa)

All the kids playing in the bed (Noah, Alex, Lauren and Sarah)

The Month of May (and April)

It seems we are out of practice on the posts and need to do a major update. Sometimes it seems we aren't doing things that are news worthy, but even the little things are good to know. Since our last post, we've celebrated Easter, flown to Atlanta for a wedding, gone to the Georgia Aquarium (see photo on above), and enjoyed a wonderful Memorial Day weekend (mostly because it was three days off.)

We'll start with the trip to Atlanta. A few weeks ago, Greg's cousin got married. Most of Greg's family lives in Atlanta (he has two uncles and an aunt who there along with the cousins). Greg's parents came as well. We were amazed at the urban sprawl of Atlanta and wonder how people deal with the traffic. We had dinner at a relatives house each night and I got to try new Korean dishes I had not had before. Greg was happy to get his Korean food fix.

The wedding was beautiful with a mix of Korean and English. Sarah and I had to miss a majority of the ceremony because she wanted to sing, dance and talk most of the time. However, after that she was the hit of the party. She tried to dance the first dance, get the first piece of cake, and just join in all of the festivities. She even took the cake topper with flowers and handed out some cake to people (what a helper!)

Since we were in Atlanta, we decided to check out the Georgia aquarium. We had heard about it on the Today show a few times and it was a really fun place to visit. They had Beluga whales, sharks, tropical fish, and, of course, Sarah's favorite--Nemo (or at least a look alike).

Before our Atlanta adventures, we celebrated a low key Easter with some friends of ours, Aris and Jill. They live close to Monument Avenue, where there is an annual Easter on Parade each year. We went to their house in the morning for brunch and then headed out to the parade. It isn't as much a parade, but a big 6-7 block party with people and dogs walking around. People who own the huge mansions on the Monument Avenue host parties (we don't know anyone who lives on Monument, so we just see the parties). It's a fun time and great to people watch.

There was a group of cross dressers out on the day of the parade that Sarah was fascinated with. Mostly because they had on very colorful dresses and pretty hats. Sarah kept calling them, 'the ladies.'

During the weekend, we also attended a Easter festival at a park nearby. It was colder that day, but Sarah had fun going on the little merry-go-round, getting a sticker 'tattoo' and petting the little baby goats.

Sarah dances with mommy at the wedding


Sarah carries the cake topper and some cake.


Sarah looks at 'the ladies' at the Easter on Parade

Sarah hanging out with mommy at the Easter on Parade

Sarah sits on Apa's shoulders while at the parade

Petting the baby goats at the Easter festival

Singing and Dancing

As I've mentioned before, Sarah really enjoys singing and dancing. On a daily basis, we get some sort of dancing show. I recorded one of her performances tonight to give you a feel of what we get.

Also, this weekend we went to my friend Ellen's wedding in PA. Ellen and I went to grad school together. She lives in DC now but catching up is hard. We were glad to be able to go to her wedding. It was a Jewish wedding and Greg got to wear a pink yamika. It was great fun.

Greg and I dressed up!

Ellen and other friends from grad school

Ellen gets a ride in the chair for the "hava nagila" song

Swimming Lessons

This weekend Sarah started swimming lessons. She was very excited about playing in the water, but soon had second thoughts when we arrived and had to actually go and play in it. After a little while though, she loosened up and started to enjoy the water. We're going to move back down a class to make it a bit easier. While we signed up for the correct age range (2-3 year olds), it appears that almost every child in the class had taken a prior swim class, so they were a bit more advanced than Sarah. We'll join the younger group next week and help her get used to water at a better pace.

The weather over the weekend was very rainy, which dampened our hopes of getting the yard work started. This year we plan to have a vegetable garden with lettuce, snow peas, tomatoes, and eggplant. Unfortunately with the bad weather, we were stuck inside. We improvised though and bought seeds to get started inside. Sarah and I planted some lettuce and flowers that she picked out for the back yard. We look forward to watching them grow in the coming weeks!

Snow-Finally!

We finally received our first heavy snow in about 5-6 years. Since the holidays, I've been secretly hoping for a snow day. We only had one day off, but it was nice. We received about 6 inches in the Richmond area. Unfortunately, we don't have much for Sarah in terms of snow gear--ie. boots and warm pants so we improvised with two pairs of pants and some wet sneakers in the end.

Since I am also a week late posting this, we've already seen record high temperatures of 80+ degrees since! Always interesting following the winter weather in the south.

Brody enjoys the snow

Sarah helps clean off the cars

Greg shovels the back walk

Sarah has fun trying to make a snow man.

There's duck again -he wanted to see the snow as well

Growing Up

About two weeks ago, Sarah decided that she didn't need her diapers and wanted to start wearing underwear. We enjoyed the change but soon realized that it brought on more work like asking "do you need to go" all the time and doing more laundry as a result of accidents.

We think she is on track to being diaper free at night soon and we are very proud of her (although I don't think she realizes it--it's just another part of her growing up) As you can tell from the photo, she's adapting well to practicing on the toilet and we found it amusing when she decided to read her 'magazine' while using it.

It's really fun to hear her talk and how she uses words like 'actually' and 'of course'---as in,

Q: "Sarah, is the flower green?"

A: "Well, actually it's red."

Q: "Sarah can you help me clean up?"

A: "Of course!"

Her current favorite activites are hide and seek, dancing/singing, and building with her blocks.

She's been very good and were still wondering when or if the "terrible two's" will hit.