Anna's 3rd Birthday Party

Anna turns 3 in a few days so we celebrated her birthday on the 4th.

We had it at a park with a zero depth entry wading pool.


It's a wading pool, but Anna still wanted to use her floaty ring.


Our friend Erin made the cupcakes. Cookies and cream. Yum.




Here's a shirtless Liam with his aunt Anne (my sister) and cousin Zach. We intended for this to be the first time taking him in the water, but it never quite happened. Probably a good thing, since the water was reeeeeally cold.


That night we lit off a few fireworks.


Anna went to bed shortly after this photo was taken, only to wake up (or she never went to sleep) about an hour later. We were all still hanging out in the back yard, watching the big fireworks being set off from somewhere not too far away. Mrs. Piggy brought Anna into the back yard to watch. She saw one big explosion and said she wanted to go back inside.

Once she fell asleep Jen (Mrs. Piggy), Jessica (her sister) and I played around with sparklers, spelling names with a ten second exposure.








Anna's favorite birthday present so far (and she's only really explored about 20 percent of her presents) is the swing that we gave her. Yes, we hung it from the tree in our back yard. Also, I tested it with a 50 lb. bag of sand (which I bought to fill up the sand box/water activity table her grandpa gave her) with five continuous minutes of swinging before Anna ever got in it. So it's safe. Unless she suddenly gains a ton of weight ... or the branch starts to die. Then I'll have to reassess the situation.




I suggested to Anna that we name the tree the Giving Tree. No, she said, let's just call it tree.