Claire's Baptism!

 

The day after Claire's birthday was another wonderful day...we had Claire baptized!  I tried to get a photo of her outside our beautiful church but it was so bright, this was the best we could get. :)  She is wearing the baptism dress that we bought her in China.

 Waiting for church to start.  Look at that little smile.

 Some of our family waiting for church to begin!

 My parents took a few photos of the actual ceremony.

 I love this, my sister Laura wanted to hold Claire and she agreed!  She loves her auntie!

 Our family with the Pastor.

 After the ceremony we of course had to take a bunch of photos!

Claire with her Godparents.

 All of the cousins.

 Our beautiful Claire Bear.

 Claire and her Grandparents.

 Our family.   It was so special to have her baptized-we love her so much!

Claire's 2nd Birthday!!

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Just 5 days after Jackson turned 4, Claire turned 2!  It was hard to switch birthday gears so fast, August is now going to be such a busy month for us!  But I sure had fun celebrating Claire's first birthday with us!!!

We had an ice cream theme since Claire LOVES ice cream. 

It was a low-key party, just family.  I didn't want to overwhelm her on her big day! 

Here is the birthday girl in the adorable shirt my friend Leanne made her.  I need to take better photos of her so you can see the entire shirt-it has her name on it and on the 2 scoop ice cream cone it has a "2."  (Her hairbow has a sparkly crown in the middle of the two flowers by the way-just perfect for our princess!! :))

Claire with Grandma and Grandpa B.

Grandma and Grandpa S were able to drive down for her party too, we were so thankful!

Laura made this BEAUTIFUL cake for her birthday, it was SO tasty and adorable!

Claire received lots of fun presents-one that she loved was this baby stroller.

 

Opening more presents!  I wasn't sure how she would do with all the attention on her, but she did great!

Ryan and I got her this mini trampoline-she LOVED it.  She is our most active child by far and so we wanted to get her something physical for her to do.

We did two small activities- pin the cherry on the ice cream cone (the kids helped me color the cone! :)...

and an ice cream cone piñata.

Then it was time for cake!

She LOVED it.  But loved the ice cream even more!

We love you so much Claire Bear!  We complete our family and we are so blessed to have you in our family!

Bye everybody, see you next year!!!

Jackson's 4th Birthday!

 

This Ninja Turtle turned 4 in the middle of August.  He is slightly obsessed with Ninja Turtles so we had a lot of fun having a ninja party!

 Our party favor was a "pizza" cookie because Ninja Turtles love pizza!

 Our three kiddos! :) 

 We got Jackson a stuffed ninja turtle for his birthday and he LOVED it!

 We did a "ninja training" party with the kids.  They had these little ninja masks and then we did a few little training activities.  The first one was the kids had to look for bad guys through-out the house. 

 Then they had to show that they were "masters in disguise" and wrap each other up like mummies.

 All ninjas have to have good aim-so they did target practice with bean bags and earned candy for landing on the target.

 Then they of course had to eat pizza!

 

 We then did a piñata.

 The cute birthday boy!

 My mom got Jackson this cute sparkler "4" candle.  He was a little scared of it!

 We then sang the birthday song!

 We opened presents last and he received tons of fun stuff.  This one was one of his favorites-Jackson loves snuggly blankets. 

We love this little guy so much!