Frozen Party

Today our baby girl turns 2!! It's so hard to believe how fast time is flying! Grant continues to remind me that Emily is now 1/9th of her way done with her time at home. I do not appreciate those reminders!! I plan to do a 2 year update in the next couple of days after we have her 2 year checkup, but for now I just couldn't wait to post pictures from her party!

We started the day off with our tradition of balloons in her room. Since she's 2, she got 2 balloons :) Grant went up after she was asleep last night and tied them to her crib. This morning we could hear her playing with them and got a picture of her playing with them from our monitor:

We went in to get her, singing happy birthday, and she immediately pointed out her balloons to us! She was very excited! She told us what colors they were and then she wouldn't let go of them for a long time afterward. She carried them around with her to whatever she was doing.

Then she got yummy donuts for breakfast:

oh that bed head!

We spent most of the morning scrambling to get ready for the party. We decided on a Frozen party this year. I was all set to do a different theme (as in, I had ideas, I hadn't actually made anything yet), but then Grant brought up the idea of a Frozen party since anything Frozen is pretty much her favorite thing. We decided to go with that and I'm so glad we did! Everything turned out great! We just had family again this year, but it was still plenty crazy and exhausting. Emily had an absolute blast!!

Aunt Fleming got Emily an Anna dress to wear for her party :)

And then there were the presents... Oh the presents! Emily sure is loved by a lot of family near and far! She loved every single present so much. We had to spend time playing with each one before moving on to the next and then when they were all opened she would rotate through all of them over and over again. She's crazy about her new and exciting things! Thanks to everyone who helped make it such a special day for her!

she insisted that daddy wear the crown :)

that's a happy girl!

Grandma Barb, Queen of gift giving, got her this fun tee ball set...

and a vanity... best of both worlds!

thanks to nana and papa for the fun trike! I'm excited that we don't have to bend down to push her on this one!

We got this playhouse for a steal off woodlands online (like craigslist). Emily loves it!

And Aunt Fleming and Uncle Jeff got her this awesome roller coaster... she just wanted to slide down it at first

but it wasn't long before she got the hang of it!

We're really excited for the fall weather to get here because we know she's going to want to be outside more with all of these fun things!

Here are a few more pictures from her fun day:

she wasn't a fan of the candles :(

Happy Birthday sweet girl! We sure do love you!!

Baby #2

What will Baby Zinn #2 be?

thanks for the help Kendra!

Emily didn't want to touch the silly string :(

We are THRILLED to be having another girl!! Emily will be an awesome big sister!

Ohio trip and 4th of July

A couple weeks ago, Grant was able to go to Ohio for a work trip. Grant has 2 sisters that live in Ohio and a lot of other family close by, so we decided to make a vacation out of it! Since Emily's plane rides are still free, we only had to pay for my ticket... pretty sweet deal!
We had a great time! While Grant was working, we took the kiddos to the pool, a farm, and several parks. Then over the weekend we went to the zoo! We had a great time visiting with all of the family that was there. Emily was shy at first, but it didn't take long for her to open up... especially once her Uncle Cameron arrived! He's her new best friend :) While Grant was gone, she always wanted to stay fairly close to me until Uncle Cameron came in. Then she was totally fine! By the end of the trip she started getting very cuddly and was always wanting to hug Ava! It was sweet! And now that's kind of carried over. She wants to hug every kid she sees! We're so grateful to Amanda and Ben for being such great hosts to us while we were there. Thanks for a great trip!

Aunt Amanda makes yummy cookies!

she wanted her own seat on the plane :)

Then when we got back, Grant took the rest of the week off for a break. We got back Monday, and he already had Thursday and Friday off, so he really only had to take 2 extra days. It was so nice having him around all that time. Emily's really been feeling the loss this week. Now she doesn't want to go to bed in the evenings because she hasn't had enough daddy time. When we put her down she always starts crying for daddy. Poor girl :( While Grant was home, we were able to get a lot of projects done around the house. We worked a lot on the garage and took down the swing set in the back. It was sad to see it come down, but it was in such bad shape after the previous owners that we decided it was just too unsalvageable and getting more dangerous for Emily. She's going to miss it!

We also had a lot of fun celebrating the 4th of July. I had some family come in town and we went swimming, had a big feast, and watched The Woodlands fireworks show from my dad's office balcony. It's perfect because they shoot them off from the building right across the street. We played games in the conference room while we were waiting for them to start and then for a little while after while traffic was dying down. I was worried about keeping Emily up so late, but she did awesome! She really didn't get cranky at all! And she LOVED the fireworks! She was a little nervous at first, because she was facing away from them when they started and she just heard the booms. She looked so scared and scrambled over to us :( But then when she saw what it was she got really excited! She giggled and clapped most of the time :) Love that girl!

And in other news, tomorrow I'll be 16 weeks along in this pregnancy! I look like I'm much further, though. I had always heard that you start showing earlier after your first pregnancy, but I wasn't expecting this! I feel like at 12 weeks, I was already showing as much as I did in the 20s last pregnancy. But it is fun because it makes it feel like things are happening faster :) I can't wait until I start feeling the baby move!

Emily's room and 20 month updates

So, Emily's room has been done for awhile now, and I'm finally getting around to posting pictures of it. We're very proud of it! We did a few diy projects that were a lot of work, but pretty fun. The first thing we did was her accent wall. We painted the whole wall pink and then used a stencil over the top. Then we hung some paper lanterns from the ceiling. We love the way it turned out!

Another project we did was repainting the vanity that I had in my room growing up. I loved the way it used to be painted so it hurt me a little bit to get rid of that, but it didn't match the rest of Emily's decor so it was time for a change. We sanded it down, repainted it, and added some paintable wallpaper to the side panels and drawers. Then we changed out the knobs. Here are the before and afters from that project.

Here are some pictures of Emily's room all put together. It's one of my favorite rooms in the house and I think she'll enjoy it for a long time!!

Thanks Sarah for making the cute E for her door :)

In other news, Emily turned 20 months this week! She's getting way too close to 2! She's learning and growing so fast! Here are some updates...

-She's finally starting to talk some. She can say lots of animal sounds, several people's names, and some other random things, as well as pointing out most of her body parts. We're trying to teach her to be more polite when she's asking for something. Now she's learned to say "yes please" or "help please" when she needs something. Her pronunciation of that isn't great so you wouldn't know what she was saying unless you're used to it, but it's much better than the whiny voice she used to use.  The only other problem with it is that she thinks if she says "yes please" then she should get what she wants no matter what.

Emily's cute animal sounds:

saying "yes please"

-Emily loves girly stuff! She always wants to play with my necklaces and makeup brushes and when I put on makeup or lotion she wants me to pretend to put it on her too. She's always trying on mine and Grant's shoes too :) But while she likes the girly things, she's also really adventurous. She'd rather be outside all the time, she loves animals and exploring, and her favorite thing is going for rides on the golf cart at my parents' house.

-Emily's a bit of a picky eater.  She only eats the things she knows she likes and won't even touch something she's never had before or things she hasn't had in awhile. We've tried different things to get her to try more and she's starting to get a little better, but mealtimes are still pretty frustrating for me.

-Nursery is getting a little better. She had a few really bad weeks, but we discovered that if we send her with her pacifier and blanket then she does a lot better. She usually only gets those when she's sleeping, but right now we'll do whatever it takes to get her to transition a little better into nursery. She still hasn't ventured out much to play with the other kids, but at least now she only cries for a few minutes when we first drop her off. Here's hoping it continues to improve!

We're really looking forward to this summer and all the fun it has in store!