Happy Birth-o-ween!

I sit here in bed writing this, not quite sure what to do with myself after coming off a jam-packed weekend with my parents in town.  The “not sure what to do with myself” part comes from the fact that our daughter left with my parents on the airplane and it’s eerily quiet in our house.  We are childless until the 15th and will be spending a week in the Riviera Maya starting on Saturday. I thought I’d be elated with all the free time but instead I just feel paralyzed, like someone hijacked our schedule without telling me.  Fear not, I’m sure I’ll get used to this temporary kidless existence by the time we get to Mexico!

**Before we move on to the weekend recap, I want to give a big shout out to my parents for graciously offering to take Nia for a week and a half while we get some adult bonding time in on the beach!**

We pulled a double-header this weekend, knocking out both Halloween and Nia’s 3rd Birthday Party while my parents were in town.

I must say, Nia was a trick or treating champ for her first non-Embassy Halloween.  We had to coach her a bit on candy selection because she was choosing too many suckers, but she eventually got with the program and switched to chocolate.  She was also good with her thank yous, although sometimes she got confused and said “you’re welcome” instead.  We stopped after an hour but I’m pretty sure she could have made it at least an hour more.

Saturday was spent recuperating from Halloween and gearing up for the Birthday festivities on Sunday.  We were still worn out from the Elmo party from last year, so we took it down and notch and went to a local community center with a soft play gym.  We had the soft play gym to ourselves for an hour and then proceeded back to our party room for the second half of the party.  It wasn’t anything fancy, but it did the trick and the kids had a blast.

Ms. Janet was back for another year of Birthday party fun.  This year we focused heavily on crafts (necklace-making and superstar pictures).

We also played some rousing rounds of “Duck Duck Goose” and “Big Bird, Big Bird Where’s Your Bone”.  Both were huge hits with the youngsters.

Nia had a ridiculously good time (despite the fact that she said she wasn’t going that morning because she was sure that balloons would be there and she’s deathly afraid of balloons right now).

Nick and I are thankful that we survived the 2’s and are enjoying watching our little girl grow up (and talk our ear off).  We can’t wait to see what the next year holds!  Happy Birthday sweetie!