Lydia turned 2!!!!

So it has been a little while since I've posted. We celebrated Lydia's second birthday on the seventh, were struck with the stomach flu for about a week, and just had some of our family visiting this last weekend.

I can't believe that my big girl is already 2 years old! Time has really gone by fast! I feel like we JUST celebrated her first birthday! What's happening?! This year we decided to keep the birthday celebration a bit more low key. My friend, Haley, and I took our girls to paint pottery together. Of course we had to paint something ourselves too! I'll add a photo of our creations.... after I pick them up :\. (hopefully today!)

It was a bit of a mess, but we learned that the paint washes out....and thankfully for little Ava, it's non toxic too if you happen to try and eat it! It's not necessarily the best activity to do in replace of a nap time, but we made it through Lydia's fits and still had a good time. I would've posted photos, but simply forgot my camera on the charger at home!

The evening of Lydia's birthday I came up with the stomach flu. (Thank goodness Haley and Ava didn't catch it!) All birthday celebrations went on hold for that evening, but as soon as we were all well we celebrated a little bit in each day the following week followed by the big bash!

Lydia and I were getting SO tired of being stuck in the house so the moment we were well and the sun came out, we went out. She met loads of little friends her age, I chatted with other parents, we ate a great picnic, and took lots of pictures!

mmm... banana!

I was so proud of her accomplishing the 'Big' slide without a second thought! She just climbed up and went right down over and over again! It's still so sweet how she chooses to go down on her belly welly!

      

Here she is going through the tunnel! It's something else she was nervous about doing this last summer and now it doesn't seem to phase her one bit.  I loved seeing her sweet little face peeking out at me!

Happy girl on the swing :)

I love her little rosy cheeks! It was SO cold outside, but so worth it!

'Mr. Squirrel'

This weekend we had my parent's up and finally threw a little birthday party for Lydia. She was so excited when she woke up and saw 'Nana and Popsky' and a fully decorated house. She got 'big girl undies', dresses, some clothes, and a tricycle complete with a bell! (She's always so spoiled by them!!). Once again... camera on the charger. I really failed at photos for her birthday this year! Thankfully Nana took a few to save the memory. We had a great time. Lydia had her favorite foods for dinner and played on her trike. That evening I let her decorate her own mini-cake with various colors of frosting and fun toppings. I was very surprised by how much she didn't eat! The rest of us had some marionberry pie...yum :) The next day my dad and I fixed some things around the house. We put up pictures, a mirror, and attempted to put up my little ikea thingamajigger. On a trip to Bimart to find screws, we happened across a little sock monkey for Gray like Lydia's.

He'll smile, coo, and squeal at him in excitement when he sees his face. If you run his yarn hair over Gray's hands or face he squeaks and kicks his little legs everywhere. Nana put the monkey on top of him in his bouncer and he chewed his ear for the longest time last night. It's so much fun watching this little munchkin grow and get excited about the littlest things :)

I'm going to miss my family now that they're gone, but we'll be going to visit them in only a few days time while daddy is gone to Alaska. Hopefully we'll visit the ocean, sample some cranberry sweets, and meet up with friends if the weather is good.

We really have been having fun here in the Balint house. So many fun activities, seeing our family, play dates with friends... awesome. Hopefully we can stay away from sickness/flus for awhile and keep this up! I'll leave you with two of my favorite new recipes of the week!

Baked Chicken Taquitos

Preheat oven to 375

Mix up some shredded chicken (I had some leftover from a whole chicken the night before), a can of *mild green chillies, a couple spoon fulls of salsa, a tablespoon full of minced garlic, some chopped green pepper and onion, and roll then inside of warmed corn tortillas. You can also add some shredded cheese, but I do things dairy free around here...Place on a greased cookie sheet and brush with a very light coating of olive oil. Cook for about 15min and then turn the oven on to broil. Brown one side (about 2min) and then turn and brown the other.

These taquitos rival the best I've had! We topped ours with some homemade guacamole :)

Blueberry Buttermilk Muffins

Mmmm... definitely the tastiest, moistest, most delicious blueberry muffins that I have ever made! Don't they look yummy?! I'm making another batch today for the freezer!

I got my recipe here.

Okay okay... enough with the numerous photos, I know! Sheeeesh!

Well I can't leave a post without my sweet little boy's cute face :)

Specially with my handsome hunk of a man in it too!