Kennedy's birthday was a blast

We are lucky to have some family in the area. My mom's sister Sandy and her husband Ken plus two of their daughters live over in Puyallup. They have been a great resource for our move. Today, we headed over to my cousin Sarah's house for her daughter Kennedy's third birthday festivities. Ellie was a bit perplexed about the departure plans. We were trying to explain that the party was for Kennedy, not her. We got on the road and she was quite happy to participate in the day's activities. Sarah and Josh (her husband) went all out for this. Their house has an awesome, large backyard with a built in swing set/playground. Also, they had rented an inflatable "bouncy" playscape set up in the backyard for the kiddos to go crazy in. There were fruit and veggie plates to snack on and then the pizza showed up. And you know how kids like pizza. After a few minutes, we adjourned to the living room so Kennedy could open her gifts. She was a gracious and kind birthday girl, thanking everyone for her presents. After the presents, everybody got a piece of Dora the Explorer cake and some ice cream.

Campbell was kind of a tweener today. There were a bunch of kids over 2 and then a bunch of little babies. But, only as Campbell can do, she got her fair share of attention. She's so full of energy and determination. Honestly, sometimes I forget that she's not even one year old yet (just a few more weeks!!) She wants to do everything Ellie is doing. The past few days she finally figured out crawling. For the past 2-3 months, she's done this elbow/knee thing. She's darn fast at it but it's really funny to watch. This week, she's finally getting up on her hands and knees. And she's figured out how to climb stairs. I used to be able to assume that if she was out of my line of site that she had just found something interesting to play with in the living room. The past two days, I have learned that if I can't see her, there's a good chance that she's half way up the stairs. She's great going up with no worries. But she has yet to figure out that coming down head first is not a good idea. She hasn't done that without one of us there to stop it from happening on more than one stair but I think it's time to break out the safety gates again. Ellie's gonna hate that but in the interest of keeping the little sister safe, we're going to have to limit the big sister's freedom.

Jennifer's sister, Lisa, was in town this past week. The girls and I drove up to UW, picked up Jennifer and then drove down to Redmond to meet her for dinner. Unfortunately, I did not bring my camera so we didn't get any pics. Ellie was up to her usual "guest" shenanigans at dinner so that was an adventure. Campbell was content to sit there and eat steak fries. Typical baby, keep her tummy full and every thing is A-OK. :) Hopefully, now that we're back in the real world, we'll see Lisa and Tim a little more.