Celebrating Nora's 3rd Birthday

I still can't believe Nora is going to turn 3 on Thursday! We had a really wonderful weekend celebrating her birthday. She really loves swimming so we had a small gathering of friends and family for an indoor pool party at the new aquatic centre at Hillcrest Park (Riley Park). It was a lot of fun!

Nora got pretty excited about the whole 'birthday party' idea... she loved carrying her birthday balloon 'because it's my birthday', and loved wearing her party hat 'because it's my birthday'. It's the sweetest thing for us when she keeps thanking us for a fun birthday and a fun party and then at bedtime, she told Trav that she couldn't wait till the morning so that she could take a look at the pictures.


For her birthday cake, I opted to make dark chocolate cupcakes, frosted with cream cheese icing... Mmmmm. It was fun baking and involving Nora for some of it. Instead of trying to make a fancy, creative design with the icing (which some books just make it 'look' easy but is no where near easy), I realized that my forte is definitely not in icing a cake / cupcake, but I do enjoy creating stuff digitally. So the fun part was coming up with the cupcake toppers that I could easily print and then put together. It is unbelievable how many ideas there are on the web and just how creative people can get when it comes to birthdays... definitely inspiring. So, it was fun few nights of 'etsy' shopping and looking :)


After, we had a fun visit with Grammy & Grampy. Nora got 'toobeez' which is this awesome building set that lets you build all sorts of cool forts, puppet theatres, play houses or just about anything. So we spent much of the rest of the afternoon playing with it. Then it was off to dinner with the Kai side to celebrate both my and Nora's birthdays (since we'll be on the beach in Mexico for our actual birthdays.. yea!). Birthdays are always just so much fun, especially now that I have my own two little ones to celebrate, and the really really wonderful day they came into our world!

We made it.. we're off tomorrow for our family vacation and am so looking forward to it. It's been a crazy last couple of weeks for Trav at work, and we are super excited to have him back and for all the family fun time in the sunshine! So, signing off for some much needed rest and relaxation!!

Adios Amigos!