Tenting it!

This weekend was our first "real" camping experience as a family.  We decided to start small, car camping close to home.  So we picked a beautiful park about 20 minutes from our house and invited Nana and Poppy.  It was so much fun. 

We went for a "hike" with the family.  It was about 3 miles total

 This was Eliza by the end of the hike.  It did help that she hadn't slept the night before!

 Our campsite was right by a beautiful mountain river.

 This is our dinner cooking!

 Smores!

 Morning hot chocolate

 Bacon and biscuits!

 Holding Daddy's Rainbow Trout!

What a fun weekend we had!  We still aren't caught up on sleep, but it was totally worth it!

The past few days.....

 We showed support of our Tarheels (look carefully for the emblem on the first picture), while attempting to fit into the deep south by sporting seersucker. 

  

Had our first sleep over.... the boys woke up at 5:45!  This is us playing on the porch in order to let Eliza and Daddy sleep a bit more.  I had time to make cinnamon rolls from scratch and eat them by 8am.  Enough said.

Took the boys "fishing."  These pictures make us look a lot more like fishermen than we really were that day!

 Most of our time was spent throwing rocks in the water and attempting to float logs through rapids...and we wonder why we didn't catch any fish...

We launched Daddy's hair styling business.  

Boy have we been busy!

My little girl is 2!

Man!  I can't believe my baby girl is two!  She is so much fun and so much drama all wrapped up together.  She is such a tantrum thrower and so coquettish, all spun into a bundle of two-year old!  

 A little girl in her birthday dress!

 Painting masks for our "activity" at our "party"

 A pink cake for a little girl!  She loved it.  She would just sit and stare at it, saying, "liza birfday cake.  I like it."

 Who says storm troopers are white?

She was so thrilled and completely aware that the day was about her.  We've been practicing her saying that she's two, but she definitely holds up 5 fingers.  All of her new toys have bought me enough time to even do this post while she is awake!

She is a joy to have.  She is such a princess.  She loves shoes and is capable of putting on multiple pairs in a day.  She just walks into her room and comes out with a different pair, often on the wrong feet, but done by her nonetheless!  She is incredibly opinionated about what she wears, be it a bow or the type of shoes, and she refuses to put it on if it was not what she wanted!  She will throw amazing tantrums when told no or when not given what she wants.  And even though she has at least 5-word sentences already, I'm not always sure what she wants!  Not to mention that I refuse to give her what she wants all the time.  So tantrums are a sure thing in our house.  It just depends on the minute whether we're charming or "appear to need a nap."  

But overall, we cannot imagine life without this little girl.  She adds such joy to our lives.  She loves her brothers and spends much of her time following them around and imitating their actions, as well as mimicking their words.  In fact she is in her room now making coffee and bread with Sam.  I'm sure in about 10 minutes they will move to playing with her playmobils (she thinks she is SO big because she has some of her own).  Her fine motor skills are ridiculous.  She can put the smallest playmo pieces or legos together while declaring "I'm building casle."  Girls are truly different animals.  The verdict is still out on whether I can raise a daughter who is not high maintenance.  Right now it's looking like quite a challenge.  But love her we do, all of us!  Happy Birthday little girl (two days late).