Party for Nora

I had visions of making a fancy birthday cake for Nora this year, but given that she recently has decided that she would rather have frosting than cake, I traded the time-intensive cut-out cake idea for the cake with her favorite frosting. The decoration was a last-minute idea and I really like it, even though I didn't have Aaron and his artistic input helping me this time around. 

Nora thanks her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins for fun tissue paper, plenty of gift bags to carry around, and such great presents too!

The cute Minnie Mouse tote bag is from us. Nora picked it out herself, and calls it her 'backpack'. 

Notice the change in shorts from the picture above. The orange ones are her absolute favorite, so I helped my mom pick out some others that are identical except for the  pattern. As soon as Nora saw the new shorts the orange ones were off and she was asking me to help her put the blue ones on. New shorts are Nora-approved!

Reading her new book from grandma and grandpa. 

This picture is a little blurry but it does a good job of capturing how she felt about her birthday candles. She was very hesitant and didn't really want to go near them. With a little urging, she blew at them but not hard enough to blow them out. Finally Aaron blew them out and Nora clapped and cheered along with everyone else. Zeke was a little distraught that Nora didn't get to blow out her own candles, but it didn't bother her a bit!

She's (finally) Two!

Aaron and I have been thinking Nora is two since spring. I'm not sure why.... But now she has had her birthday and she is really officially two years old. I just hope we don't start thinking she's three sooner than next summer!

She is a little ray of sunshine that lights up my life. I adore this sweet little princess. She is full of laughter and smiles, energy, drama, and emotion. She is so cuddly and gives the best hugs and kisses. She is miss independent and wants to do a lot of things herself, but lets us know how much she loves us and wants to be with us.

Nora is now routinely saying 3 or 4 word sentences, which are so cute. I just love to hear her say 'I want chocolate milk, please' or 'Okay, mom, I coming'. After hearing Zeke count everything all the time, she says numbers 1-10 too, although we're still working on actually counting objects with those numbers. Her favorite book is her alphabet book. Nora also loves music: singing songs, dancing to the music on commercials and movie credits, and starting the mp3 player on any mobile device. 

Nora loves shoes, accessories, the colors pink and purple, and has definite preferences when it comes to clothing. Earlier this summer I had her wearing denim shorts that Zeke wore a few years ago, and she has let me know that those long, heavy boy shorts are out and light, cotton, girly print ones are in. At one point this summer she had about 8 pairs of shoes sitting by the front door and she wore all of them in turn. She helps pick out elastics and barrettes for her hair and loves necklaces.

Outside is probably Nora's favorite place. She heads out the door and up and down the sidewalk with Zeke and the other kids in the neighborhood whenever she gets the chance. Bringing her back in is sometimes an ordeal complete with chasing her down and trying to ignore her kicking and screaming! 

It's hard sometimes to believe that this little sweetheart has only been in my life for two years.... I can't imagine life without her! 

Fair Days Parade

I swear every Fair Days we go grocery shopping right before the parade, so we get caught in detoured Main Street traffic trying to get home. This year I made sure we went grocery shopping earlier in the day, and, being free in the late afternoon, we decided to bike over to Heber for the parade. The kids had a blast.  Zeke is always in the Swiss Days parade rather than watching it, so it was a fun new thing for him to sit on the curb and see all of the entries and catch candy (and fliers, popsicles, water bottles...).

We saw horses; lots and lots of horses. Zeke started counting and got up into the twenties before he saw something else fun to look at.

We saw tractors (isn't this purple tractor awesome?).

There were even a few floats, which I love.

And several fire trucks. (Zeke took this picture while I was keeping Nora out of the path of the parade vehicles.)

And Zeke is awesome because he really got out there and collected candy for himself and Nora. He is by nature rather hesitant, and we all know that he who hesitates doesn't get any prizes out of a pinata, or a parade, or anything else where there are lots of grabby little hands. But on this night he did a great job of both being assertive and sharing with the rest of us. 

Up on Top of Memorial Hill

We took a weeknight outing to the Memorial Hill a couple of weeks ago. Zeke wanted to bike up the hill but I wasn't quite ready to commit to that, so we drove. But it was a cool place to be on a hot summer evening. 

We enjoyed great views, even through all the smoke. 

Zeke climbed all around the big rocks.

I couldn't get Nora away from the little rocks to look at the view. 

We also looked at the plaques and traced the letters and numbers at the base of the flags. 

Then I gathered everyone together for a picture (Aaron was at a meeting).

We sure love it here! 

Photos by Zeke

Zeke has lately taken up photography. Some of his pictures leave a lot to be desired, but some of them are really good! 

  

And, when I'm using the real camera, he's practicing with the toy one :)

Loertscher Reunion

We had so much fun at the extended-family Loertscher reunion at the end of July. On the first day, I went through a pile of old extra family reunion shirts someone had brought and found one child-size shirt so now Nora has one too!

We played games, visited with cousins, and I worked on my quilt a while when it was too hot in the afternoon to move much. The kids had a great time playing outside.

Splashing in the puddles during a summer rainstorm,

Swinging on the big swing (Zeke spent most of his time here),

Playing in the water,

And of course, riding the train.