Birthday Celebration Part 2

This past weekend we went to Minnesota to celebrate Tyler's birthday with Dan's family. We had a fun time and Tyler LOVES playing with his cousins. Marisa also decided it would be fun to tie dye some t-shirts. Talk about a flashback to my Girl Scout days.

I want to throw this picture in first. We went to a zoo and this was the first time Tyler actually fed an animal. I think he saw his cousins doing it and was inspired. (notice the t-shirt!)

Here I am carrying Tyler's cake as everyone sings. I'm not sure if you can see it but Tyler has the biggest grin on his face.

Blowing out the candles

Opening his presents.

For Tyler's cake I decided to make a rainbow cake that I saw online awhile back. I took pictures of the process because I'm geeky like that.

Here is the batter mixed into 6 different colors.

The colors in the pans ready to go into the oven.

After I frosted it, it looked like this. I loved that no one could tell that the inside was a rainbow of colors. It was a fun surprise!

And then....I cut into it and this is what you saw! very cool! It turned out really well and I was pretty darn impressed with myself. =) It wasn't a hard cake to do, but it was slightly time consuming. Less time consuming than piping hundreds of stars all over a cake though. I did not miss piping stars.

Birthday Celebration Part 1

Last weekend we drove to Indiana for a few days. It was a pretty quick trip but we were able to celebrate Tyler's birthday with my family so that was nice. The weather was pretty awesome too! I have a lot of pictures so let's get to it!

His birthday breakfast at Bappa and Nana's house.

Tyler with Bappa and Nana (holy cow is it impossible to get a toddler to pose for a picture)

Then we went to Grammy's house. We got him a Curious George balloon which he loved (and still plays with)

Isn't the picture above impressive? Tyler is looking at the camera and smiling and George is turned just right so you can see him. Dan took the picture. It took about five tries before he got it though. One of those tries was this one which we thought was funny. The balloon is placed perfectly to make it look like Tyler has a monkey for his head.

Tyler was very into his birthday this year. He blew out the candles right away and looked thrilled when everyone sang to him. Here is a family picture!

Tyler opened his gifts like a pro.

Tyler with Uncle Brad (side note: this was after Tyler opened his presents and we discovered he was in such a great mood that he was willing to sit with someone and smile for the camera. Once we discovered that we had him sit with mom, dad, uncle brad, and grammy. We got some great pictures!)

With Grammy

Practicing his couch yoga

One day we went to Fair Oaks Farm. We had been there before but Tyler was pretty young. This time he was able to really get into it. It is such a fun place to go. It is a Dairy Farm and you can take a bus tour and see the whole operation. If you've ever seen the show Dirty Jobs, they visited here one time for a show. I won't go into details what the dirty job was.

Here is Dan timing himself to see how fast he can milk the "cow".

Here is my favorite part of the bus tour. The cow lazy susan. Okay, they call it a carousel. It's such an interesting process and I find it fascinating that the cows know what to do. I don't want to explain the whole thing but basically the cows get on, they get milked, then they get off. This thing runs all day except for a few breaks when they clean it.

Then we went to the birthing barn where you can watch a cow give birth. Since this is a dairy farm calves are being born all the time. We happen to get there as this woman starting pulling out a calf. Here's the newborn calf!

Awww...mamma cow licking off baby cow

While all that was going on there was another cow who has just given birth so we got to watch her baby try and stand up. He was so cute wobbling all over the place. I felt like cheering when he finally figured it out.

They have some fun kid stuff there, like this jumping thing. Tyler (and Dan) thought it was pretty fun.

Tyler was pretty excited about going on this train. I wasn't sure at first if he understood that we wouldn't be riding with him. He climbed in though and seemed happy until it started up with a big jolt. His face immediately went from happy to concerned. He didn't cry at all and even seemed to enjoy himself, but when asked if he wanted to go again he said, "down."