Two

Can you believe Collin is two already? I feel like every birthday our kids have had I am saying something similar...

Like we did for Drew's second birthday, we decided to take Coll-brother to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for a day of fun for his birthday as well. He loves all things "feeeesh" right now, so it seemed fitting. His birthday fell on a Saturday this year, so we just made a day trip of it. We left early early enough to arrive when the aquarium opened, which turned out to be a pretty good call as I had forgotten how crowded that aquarium can get on a Saturday afternoon mid-summer! Fortunately, the boys were pretty oblivious to the crowds....they were just there to have fun, and fun they had!

Right before we left for the day, Nathan had gone out to the truck to load a few last minutes things. When he came back in, he told the boys there was a surprise outside. A giant "birthday" balloon floating right outside our front door....fitting. :)

Our drive out to the aquarium was uneventful. Like I said, it got a bit crowded by the afternoon, but when we initially got there, we could get right up close to most of the exhibits...in this case the otters! This little otter stayed right near the glass where the boys were, which they of course, loved!

Jellies! (...Just for Auntie Kimmie)

I realized while going through pictures, that I managed to catch an awful lot of the backs of the boys this time, but not a lot of the fronts. Guess that's a good indication of the fun they were having...no time for photos, Momma, there are things to explore!

Yes, I took a picture of the light fixtures...I can't get over how cool they were!

And my favorite (Poppi's too!), the Leafy Sea Dragon.

These guys were cleaning the glass of the big floor to ceiling tank. A real live scuba diver?? Highlight!

We tried really hard to see as much of the aquarium as we could before we took the boys over to the kids' area because as expected, once we were there, that was where we spent the rest of our time.

When we finished at the aquarium we walked down Cannery Row to the beach and park to eat lunch. The boys spent plenty of time running off energy (yes please, considering we were still facing a car ride home!) and playing on the beach.

This little grouping of rocks also provided quite a bit of entertainment in the form of climbing, jumping, sitting, playing follow the leader, etc.

How old are you Coll??

And finally, when we were all done we went on the hunt to find our birthday boy a cupcake. Unfortunately we had no luck with the cupcakes, but we did find ice cream!

On Sunday, we had a small birthday dinner at home. We had saved cake and presents for the day after Collin's birthday this year since the aquarium was a pretty big day in and of itself. We also had gotten home late and with two very tired boys, it just seemed logical to save some fun for the next day when they would actually enjoy it.

Silly brothers...

I thought that maybe this year he'd choose to eat his cake with a fork....nope!

"Heeeeese!"

I usually try not to post specific gift pictures, but some of these turned out pretty cute and since my parents weren't here to share in the fun their gift brought Collin, I thought I'd post them here. Collin is so proud of his new bike! He's just barely tall enough to make the full rotation with the pedals....

...but that didn't stop him from finding someone who could fully pedal him around! Drew spent the evening very slowly and cautiously pedaling Collin around the house. It was cute, he was very protective over Collin's safety on his "big kid bike". Pretty fun new toy Lala and Poppi, thank you!

Doug and Kathleen ended up being out of town this year for Collin's birthday, so we celebrated with them over this past weekend. I will try to get those pictures up and posted soon because we had a fun afternoon spent swimming and enjoying time over at Grandma and Grandpa's house too! 

Happy Birthday again Coll-fry! We love you!!