As soon as I found out I was pregnant with Ellie, I went online at Baby Center to use their due date calculator. And that's when I found out that what we had always tried to avoid happened: we were going to have a Christmas baby. My due date was December 29, so no matter whether I was a little early or a little late, the baby would be born right around the craziest time of year. Then and there Andy and I decided that we would always celebrate the baby's half birthday instead of doing birthday parties in December (other than the first birthday, which I wanted to have on the real date).

Fast forward a couple of years, and this past weekend Ellie turned 18 months so we had her first half birthday party. I admit, it was a little hard getting motivated to do a birthday party when it wasn't her real birthday, but I'm hoping that if we do this every year it will become a tradition as automatic as the other kids' birthdays.

We haven't had a party with my extended family for a while, so in addition to both sides of grandparents being here as usual we also invited my grandma, Uncle Mike, Aunt Sarah, and my cousin Brandon, Uncle Kramer, Aunt Kim, and my cousin Brian, and even one of my cousins from Minnesota, Leah, who is here for the summer doing an internship at UCSD. I wish I had gotten a picture of everyone, but I didn't. Darn.

Leah has a really nice camera, and she sent me these great shots:

 Hannah loved watching Ellie open her presents.

 

 Brian brought his phone that plays video games, so Joey was glued to his side during the party.

 You can kind of see Ellie's one and a half candles here. I made a vanilla sheet cake that I found on Pinterest. Ellie immediately took off all of the strawberries and handed them to me.

Phoebe is checking for any leftovers.

And as I'm sure you can tell, these are from our sad, old camera:

 Time to open presents! I love Ellie's face in this picture!

 Hannah had a hard time not jumping up every time Ellie opened a new present.

 In addition to all the people, we had two dogs as well: Phoebe, my parent's dog and the Lanzone's dog, Octavian.

 

 

In addition to Ellie's half birthday, we had a weekend full of celebrations. On Friday, when Andy's parents got into town, we celebrated his mom's birthday because it was on Wednesday. Ellie's birthday, of course was Saturday afternoon, but Saturday was also our 11th wedding anniversary and the Lanzone's 39th anniversary so we celebrated those Saturday evening. Then Sunday we had "dads and grads" day. Andy and Papa J were both out of town for Father's Day this year, so we had a belated celebration for them and Andy's parents even gave him something for getting his MBA. It was so fun celebrating all those events one after another!

 We are three weeks into summer and having a grand old time. So grand, in fact, that I've been lazy about documenting any of it.

Joey's last day of school was on June 7 and I helped in the classroom like I do every Friday. After school I brought home Joey's friend, Colton, who we had invited over to our house. We got home and immediately walked down to our pool for an end of the year pool party. A couple of the moms in the neighborhood had invited their sons' classrooms so there were over 50 kids and tons of parents. It was crazy, but fun.

After the pool, the girls went down for nap time, and Joey and Colton went outside to ride bikes and play with the neighborhood kids. Then the boys came in and played Legos for an hour or so.

For dinner, Joey picked tacos and creamy cookies for dessert. At dinner I had the boys say their favorite thing about kindergarten. Joey said it was me coming in to help in his class on Fridays, and Colton said it was meeting Joey. Such sweet answers! When I asked them what they were most looking forward to about 1st grade, they said they weren't looking forward to anything. They both want to stay with Mrs. Prescott in kindergarten!

And now for the camera dump. These are actually from my mom's camera.

 My mom signed Hannah up for a princess ballet class. Hannah absolutely loved it. The girls wore crowns, fairy wings, got wands...

 and had their feet sprinkled with pixie dust.

After princess ballet, my mom would often take Hannah to the beach. The first time they fed the birds.

 

The next time they went to the dog beach with my parent's dog, Phoebe.

A few weeks ago, my brother and his girlfriend Christina came to visit. We went on a hike in Torrey Pines right on the ocean.

It was a beautiful hike and we had such a nice visit with Benjamin and Christina.

 Later that day we had Benjamin, Christina and my parents over for dinner and the girls bonded over their love of coloring.

 

Speaking of Benjamin, while he was here he had a concert at the Encinitas Public Library with Dr. Peter Gach. Gach is a pretty well known concert pianist in the area and also happens to be Benjamin's piano teacher starting when he was in elementary school. Benjamin composed some pieces for Gach to play. Benjamin also wrote a series of piano duets that they played together. It was a great concert and even Ellie made it through most of it!

 Joey finished his first season of t-ball a couple of weeks ago. He had a great team and a great coach. I wouldn't say that he loved it, but he did like the games and he ended up doing very well for it being his first year.

 Unfortunately I only got these two pictures of him playing. What can I say? Watching games with a feisty, sometimes cranky baby who likes to play with my camera makes taking pictures a little tough.

I did get some pictures from the team party at the end of the season.

 Like I mentioned before, the coach was really great and very enthusiastic all year. He did a great job encouraging the kids.

 Joey got a trophy and a Rangers necklace. He was pretty pumped!

  The girls had fun at the pizza party too: Our brown eyed beauty.

 

 And our blue eyed beauty.

Cupcakes!

It's definitely time for another "camera dump:"

 The night after we got back from our cruise, Joey's school had Open House. Here's Joey showing us his cubby (and wearing the shirt we bought him in Italy).

 Since the kids were good while we were gone, we promised them we would take them out to dinner. The last time we did "date night" and paired up with opposite genders, so this time we did "girls night" and "boys night." For girls night, Hannah and I dressed up with our sassy boots and scarves.

 

 Hannah loves the scarf we bought her in Italy.

 Hannah planted a sunflower with Nana. If only I would remember to take it out of the pot and replant it, I'm sure it would have some nice sunflowers on it by now.

 The week after Joey's Open House, his kindergarten class had a little end of the year performance that we attended. They sang several cute songs.

 And one very silly song! In front of Joey is a little girl named Taylor from his class. Let's just say he's quite a fan of Taylor and has been all year.

 Mrs. Prescott and...

 Miss Bell, his two WONDERFUL teachers. We were so blessed to have Joey in their class!

 I think Joey took this picture since I just found it on my camera and he has a habit of taking my camera around to take random pictures. Ellie clearly wants the camera.

Reaching for it didn't work, so now she tries signing, "please."