Birthday Party and Pool Fun! (Week 109)

Hello! I want a vacation! I need a vacation! We were supposed to have headed to NY this past week for a vacation, but ended up canceling a couple weeks ago. I've decided that we'll be taking Tyler with us on our vacations from now on - I think I'm getting more needy for him! haha! Anyway, staying in town this weekend allowed us to go to our friend Ruby and Howard's daughter Avery's 1st birthday party! Yay! I was bummed that we were going to miss it, but I guess things totally worked out. :) So we headed up to Chino Hills.

The park was really cute! I'm used to seeing parks (in Irvine) in residential areas but this one was actually more commercial around it. It was a beautiful park - with a huge lake in the middle with ducks/geese and lots of turtles. Tyler was super excited to check out the animals.
Very fun - there was a bubble activity person there that had little tubs set out with bubble solution. Tyler was at first pretty shy but gradually warmed up to the idea. I myself had a blast with the bubble wands - it was a lot of fun! Tyler loved it!

This flower bubble wand was pretty cool - it would make these cool multi-bubble big bubbles. :) You can see it below the wand in this picture.

Near the party gazebo was a sign for the party. How cute is that!

There was lots of yummy food available, but of course Tyler still loved the pizza. At least he still ate broccoli in between pizza bites. I was thinking how much easier it is these days that Tyler can eat regular food now. What a relief of not having to bring food around with us anymore! We usually just have to find one thing he really likes (pizza? noodles?) and use that to leverage him eating other stuff. heehee.

After lunch was more bubbles. :) There was also balloon animals, and Tyler got an elephant balloon (his current favorite animal).

I was actually expecting it to be quite hot that day - being so inland and all - but it wasn't too bad! We still had put Tyler in a tank top though - gotta show off his guns!

Aside from the lake animals, the bubble activities and the balloon animals, Tyler really enjoyed the park's playground as well. He loves slides! (just not the giant inflatable ones). One of the slides actually had quite a drop at the end, and Tyler went PLOP which caused a lot of surrounding parents to gasp, but Tyler just got up and ran back to go on it again. He's tough cookie I tell ya.

Face painting! I was excited to get Tyler's face painted since he's never done it before. We watched the other kids do it, and I'd ask Tyler if he wanted... an elephant? No. ..a tiger? No. ..a penguin? No. ... I went through a whole bunch of random things which he said No to all of them... until I suggested - how about Thomas? DING DING! Tyler agreed to get Thomas the Train painted on his face. Now it was the matter of the lady knowing how to paint Thomas! haha! As we waited in line and it was almost his turn, I asked if he wanted a Star and he said Yes. Haha! Not sure if he really understood or what - but he was GREAT sitting there - didn't move at all!

Afterwards the lady used her mirror to show Tyler his star, and Tyler was excited and smiled at himself! heehee! He loved the star! (and so did I...)

We bumped into some friends at the bday party too. Here we are with Shirley/Jesse.

As we were getting ready to head home, Tyler was checking out the goodies in the favor bags. He was totally into the Mickey Mouse toy and stickers! We ended up watching Mickey Mouse cartoons on YouTube on the drive home. :)

And here we are with the special birthday girl Avery and her mommy Ruby! It was getting later in the afternoon and Tyler was getting quite grumpy, hence the sour look. :) Tyler had a really fun time - so many different things to entertain himself with!

This weekend we busted out some water toys to play with in the backyard. We got these water guns from Target (yay for Summer clearance!) that Tyler was so excited to play with. Unfortunately he wasn't strong enough to pull the trigger and still needed help.

We cleaned out his little swimming pool as well. It had gotten so dirty while we were doing construction in the backyard! We didn't think he'd actually go in to play (he never did before) so we just kept him in his normal clothes and let him play with the dragon sprayer.

But Will had a wonderful idea - to put Tyler's little slide into the pool! Whoohoo! Worked like a charm, and Tyler was sliding into the pool over and over and over and over. Whoops - we probably should have changed him into a swim diaper and a swim suit. heehee.

The pool actually comes with an inflatable little slide, but it wasn't very sturdy. This plastic slide was great and perfect size. :)

Now we know how to get Tyler into his little pool.

Some more random pool pictures. I had a beach chair next to the pool reading a magazine and Will was putting on the green. It was such a nice relaxing afternoon!

Here's a clip of Tyler sliding into his little pool.

After all the waterplay we had a popsicle. Actually 2, because Will accidentally ate the last piece of the popsicle (it was melting and almost falling off) and Tyler got SO MAD! ... so we had to get another one to calm him down... and Will did the same thing AGAIN at the end! AAHHH! Don't worry - we did NOT have a 3rd one.

Tyler has been putting more words together lately - the other day he said "Tyler eat ALL cereal". His counting is much better now, but he's still having trouble with colors. I got him these Tag Jr reading books, but he isn't too interested in them yet. His favorite book to be read to him when he goes to sleep? The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. seriously! He's been so much fun lately, I think we're really going to enjoy this age. :)