The Emily Parker Experience

Seth and I always pick at our friend Emily about how many pictures she takes and how she makes every experience sooo fun b/c she is like a photo journalist :) Well, anyways, we decided to try out her method of having fun for Stevie's 2nd birthday. My bday is 3 days before hers and we all went out with other family members to celebrate it and her actual bday party is this Sunday so we decided tonight to do something just our family. We started out by going to the in- door playground in the mall. The girls love it there and it looked like it was about to rain so we thought we would check it out. They seemed to have had a lot of fun :) Stevie was running around crazy as usual and hard to get a good pic of. Neela was doing her typical laugh crazy face.
Stevie loved this alligator, she kept singing the "Along came Mr. Alligator" while riding on him


Neela's crazy face, she always makes this face :P She really is so happy and fun! I was more consistent with Babywise with her, but I don't know if that is what makes her so happy or if it is just her personality? b/c I did Babywise with Stevie Joy too, but we started later with her.


This was Stevie's favorite slide, we kept trying to move down to the other end for some better picture opportunities, but she kept running to this one for some reason?? Oh yeah in Stevie's hand is a crocheted piggie that Seth's Aunt Susu (Susan) made for Stevie for her birthday. She loves that thing and has been carrying it around with her since she got it!


Big girl standing next to the mushrooms


Neela can wave now and say "bye bye" I am so proud of her. And impressed, she is talking much much faster than Stevie did. I think b/c she is so sociable and also b/c she has an older sister who she is always around.


At the playground, Stevie had the opportunity to practice her new trick, to pretend that she is asleep, lol! She thinks it is so funny to trick people into thinking she is sleeping and then "boom" wake up.

Another thing I could not believe was that Neela climbed the rocks all the way up to the top! She even climbed the big one, she is so brave. She's cruising now, so we think she may be a walker soon, hopefully, she is getting pretty heavy!

After the playground, we walked to see if the Easter Bunny was at the mall. Seth said that it is rude to take pics with your own camera and that no way were we going to purchase them, but I still just wanted to see how she would do with a character, since one may be coming to her party. With Stevie things have to be her idea! So we let her walk around and wander up to him, she kept saying in her cute little girl voice, "Hey Rbbit"! She actually really liked him and EVEN sat in his lap!! I could not believe it, she freaked last year with him, but I think b/c I placed her in his lap, and she did not make the decision herself to walk up to him. She is her daddy's child, hee hee!!

After we left the Mall we drove to Cici's. Seth and I both love buffets (because we both eat a lot) and Cici's is the restaurant that Stevie will sit still, eat, and be happy at, so Cici's it was!!

Seth trying to find a parking spot.

duh, the best part was the cinnamon rolls!!


I am pretty sure Stevie was on a sugar high from all the brownies, because she was acting so goofy and making silly faces. I meant to bring some candles and a lighter so that she can practice her "blowing out" the candles, but I forgot :(

I even drank a coke, so I was pretty pumped up too!
After Cici's we went to Wal-Mart, because we had to pick up a few things and we wanted Stevie to walk down the toy aisle and pick out whatever toy she wanted (as long as it wasn't $100 or something) haha. We also looked for some crocks for her for summer time, but couldn't find any. Oh well, I guess I will keep looking. She had a lot of fun being "free" in the store! We always get two buggies, one for Neela to ride in and one for Stevie to ride in. But tonight for her special day, we let her roam the toy aisle. It took her a while, but after much consideration, she picked these $1 huge elephant and zebra toys, we liked the price. She must have frugal taste like her mommy and daddy.
Her 2nd bday was so fun (for us and her)!! All day we did all her favorites (painting, playing, stroller rides, playground, reading, etc.)! And for her party on Sunday we intend to do all her favorites as well. We don't know how to please everyone, but we DO know how to please our child, so the party will be very much Stevie centered :) We are looking forward to it :)

All in all I do think that we enjoyed the Emily Parker Experience!! It did make everything way fun that night! I think we will have to do it more often. I mean it makes it where you can never be bored on any experience with a camera. We are still newbies to the EPE, so I know we missed a TON of photo opportunities, but I think we did pretty good for ourselves, considering this was our first EPE, don't you???