McKinley's 2nd Birthday!

On August 24th, McKinley turned 2! We officially have a 2 year old on our hands! We had a lot of fun celebrating her 2nd birthday! To start out the day we went into McKinley's room when she woke up, singing Happy Birthday and throwing balloons into her crib!

This last picture is my favorite. I was trying to tell McKinley to hold up 2 fingers and say that she's 2, but she insisted on saying that she's 1. She gets mad at me when I tell her she's 2 and says, "No, 1! 1! 1! 1!" It's quite funny and shows her 2 year old attitude perfectly :)

We had McKinley's favorite breakfast of doughnuts!

McKinley loves playing in the rain, so it was perfect that it rained on her birthday. We've been in a drought all summer, so it was quite the shock that it actually rained! She loved it! It was a great birthday present!

We had her 2 year check-up on her birthday. Luckily, she's all finished with her immunizations until Kindergarten, so she didn't have to get any shots on her birthday! She did get a flu immunization, but since she's 2 they can use the nasal spray, so she didn't have to get poked! Here she is hiding from me at the doctor's office.

We came home from the doctor and played some more in the rain :) She's wearing her cute birthday outfit my Mother-in-law made for her birthday while we were visiting St. Louis in July!

That evening when Travis got off work we headed over to an indoor play place called, Lost In Fun! We enjoyed jumping in the bounce houses, playing basketball, sliding and swinging, playing the kitchen and coloring together! McKinley's favorite activities these days are "cooking" and coloring, so she was in heaven being able to do them!

Afterwards, we headed to one of McKinley's favorite restaurants, McDonald's for dinner. I took these funny pictures of her enjoying herself at McDonald's.

We then headed back home after a fun day and played outside for a little bit, another one of McKinley's favorite things to do! She loves picking flowers and giving them to people!

I can't believe my baby is already 2 years old! We love her so much and enjoy her fun personality! She's so sweet and sassy! We're so glad she became a part of our family 2 years ago!

Hulse Family Reunion

 

The 2nd week in August, we were able to have a Family Reunion to celebrate Travis's parents 40th Anniversary and his Dad's birthday with all 26 family members in attendance! We all met in a central meeting place for almost everyone in his family, a small town in Illinois, called Rock Falls. We rented a house there with 9 rooms, a room for each family! It was so great to spend time with everyone and just enjoying hanging out! The boys got to go golfing and fishing, and the girls got to go shopping of course! We enjoyed having a fire in the evenings and even roasting s'mores! To celebrate Jim and Jan's 40th wedding anniversary, the kids made a wedding cake for them to feed each other. While we were decorating it, Natalie was upset that she had forgot to get a little bride and groom for the top of the cake. Luckily, McKinley's toys saved the day. She has a purse of little people that she carries around with her everywhere, and she just happens to have bride and groom little people. So we used those as cake toppers. When McKinley saw the cake she kept saying, "people" over and over and couldn't understand why she couldn't have them! It was quite funny! Travis and Natalie also made them a picture recreating the town where they dated and grew-up for their anniversary.

 

Natalie made us all matching shirts that said, "The H" on them. We tie-dyed our shirts one day which was a lot of fun! They all turned out great!

A few of the other fun activities we were able to do while we were all together is play a family Minute to Win It game. We had fun sucking up M&M's, shaking ping pong balls out of a kleenex box on our backside, moving a cookie from our forehead to our mouth using only our faces, doing a cereal box puzzle, and picking up various sizes of bags using only our mouths. It was a hoot and made for a fun time!

Another fun thing we were able to do, is ride on a train. The man that lived in the house beside the house we were staying in had a train complete with a track throughout his whole yard to ride on. He was really nice and took the kids on a whole bunch of rides! He even had a few times that were designated for adults only, which was a lot of fun too! He gave the kids all conductor hats and train whistles to keep!

We also spent a lot of time just relaxing and hanging out! McKinley loved spending time with all of her cousins!

After a few days at the house, we headed to spend the last few nights in a hotel, due to a mix up in dates with the house. We stayed in a town just a little ways down the road. It was Jim's birthday that night, so we all headed to a park to play and have birthday cupcakes that evening.

We had fun swimming in the pool at the hotel and spending sometime at a local national park!

We had such a great time! It's not often when all 26 of us are together, so it was so much fun that we all got to be there together for a few days! McKinley overall did really well on the drive out there! She had fun on the iPad and watching her shows! We were pretty impressed with how well she did. On the way home we stopped at a park in Des Moins, IA for her to play with. As you can tell from the picture she quite enjoyed it!

County Fair

 

We had a great time heading to the Lancaster County Fair today. We went for the second year in a row, see my blog post from last year here :) McKinley had a great time! She loved all the animals, since she is quite the animal lover these days! We got to see goats, a camel, a zebra, ducks, rabbits (even a huge on named Titanic), chicks, chickens, cows, horses, and even a monkey! Every time we walked away from an animal, McKinley would says, "more, more!" 

We joked when we saw this horse standing in front of the fan that he was a "Travis Horse", since he shared his loved of fans with Travis :)

After seeing all the animals, we headed over to the carnival part of the fair. McKinley got to ride on the carousel and Travis got to play a basketball carnival game, they were both in heaven :)

McKinley was so cute walking around the fair sporting her "glakesses." She loves to wear them now, and wore them almost the whole time we were there! She's a little sunglasses lover like her parents :)

 

 

We had a great day at the fair! McKinley talked about the fair and all of the animals she saw for the rest of the day!