Happy 2nd Birthday Hazel!

Hazel's birthday is today, but we celebrated it on Saturday since we're leaving for Ohio in the morning--our plane leaves at 6:50am, and I'll be without Josh, and it's almost 4 hours. Hopefully I'll survive to tell about it, or rather hope they survive? Anyway, we had a really fun day Saturday. We had a little party with some of her friends and let her have all sorts of junk food that day. I'm hoping to get most of the packing and stuff done for our trip before too late so we'll have time to go to Chick Fil A for dinner to sort of celebrate.

I'll have to post pics of her party and what we did later since those pics are on our other camera, but just to honor Hazel I have to say a few things about her. The day Hazel Bliss was born was the happiest day of our lives at that point. Our wedding day was wonderful too, but it was more exciting and romantic and fun. The day Hazel came to us was just pure joy (well, after I got over being grumpy about Josh being in a hurry to get to the hospital to be sure I made the time slot to be induced and getting over the fact that I was getting induced in the first place and convinced that the end result was still the same baby). After those little hurdles, it was pure joy as soon as I reached out and touched her hand as soon as they had her out and were cutting the cord and she grabbed my finger. Time stood still for me during that moment because it felt so symbolic of my motherhood starting there to comfort her in this new crazy world.

My joy from her continues to grow and grow, her name was apparently no mistake. It's sort of weird to write about her being so young and to reflect on only two years, but she makes us soo happy and for the silliest things as all of you moms can understand. Hazel has taught me that all that really matters to her is that she feels loved and safe. She's fascinating to watch in different situations, such a young pure child discovering the world brings such giddiness from Josh and me that you'd think we were just handed a chocolate factory. She makes us so happy and she works at it too--you can tell she just loves to please us, isn't that a precious thing about children? She's by nature very obedient and cautious, I think she gets that from her dad. She likes to scream and dance and say her colors, and she probably gets that from me. Although Josh pulls some mean dance moves when nobody's watching. At least I like to think so, but I'll never know:).

For my record, I'll post pics of her party on here when I get back from vaca and will write some of Hazel's favortie things. I LOVE YOU HAZEL BLISS!!!

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About the picture: I just found this cool website through a friend where you can mess with your pictures. It's http://www.picnik.com/ and I was just using this as a sample pic, pretty cool though. I didn't bother with getting a good picture to mess with although I should have. She wasn't really happy here and she had a runny nose from crying (probably because I woke her up from her nap and was taking pictures of her, I can see her dad doing that too). I wanted to put some of her features a little more noticeable--like her lips are nearly gone, but I couldn't figure out how to get them back after messing it up. Anyway, you should check it out.