Happy Birthday Harper

My dearest Harper,

Happy birthday my Harper Marlee!! I can not believe that you turned 2 today.  It seems like just yesterday that we were all headed to the hospital to await your arrival.  You have made everyday for the past two years the best of my life.  It is honestly very tough to remember what life was like before you arrived.  Harper, you are an amazing little girl!  You are so sweet.  Every night when we pray, you make sure to pray for your Nana, Papa, Tita and all your cousins, uncles and aunts.  Last night, you even prayed for Kylar, the little boy who bit your finger!  You have such a big heart!

And you are so funny! You LOVE chocolate milk!  Whenever you ask for milk, you sneak in a whispered "chocolate milk"? Silly girl! You can't have chocolate milk all day.  And you love The Wiggles and Barney right now!  You sing the "I love you" song and hug and kiss me and make me get up and dance.  Boy do you love to dance!  You turn on all the toys in your room that play music and you dance and sing. You are too cute!

You light up my days and fill my nights with sweet dreams.  You are everything I could have asked for in a daughter. God has blessed daddy and I with so much in our lives, but there is no doubt that you are the biggest and best blessing from above.  We love you so much.  Happy birthday my Harper Marlee Poopert!

Love you always,

Momma

Summer is Over :(

Well, tomorrow I officially go back to work.  I can not believe how quickly this summer went.  It doesn't seem that long ago that I was packing our bags for Alaska. For the past few days I have been so sad at the thought of going back to work.  It's not that I don't enjoy working, I am actually really excited to start this new chapter in my career as a diagnostician.  I think the reason I am so sad is that I will be missing my Harper girl soooo much!

This summer has been beyond amazing with her.  She finally began walking in June!  I wasn't sure when she would reach that milestone and I am beyond blessed that we were there every step of the way to watch her go from toddling to dancing around like most two year olds do. And everyday she is picking up new words and stringing together little sentences.  She is a sponge!  I really have to watch what I say around her. She is just at such a fun and inquisitive stage right now, and the thought of missing even one second is excruciatingly hard for me to fathom.  Ah, the life of a working parent!  I know once I start back to work I will feel better and easing back in to the routine (which we all NEED) will be good. Matt and I really have it so good too.  We are so fortunate to be on the same schedule and have SO much time off to be together with our girl. I need to remind myself of that often! But right now I am sad.  I just needed to get that out. Whew! I already feel better.  Here's to a new school year! Cheers!

Visiting 2 donkeys and a rat. Oh my!

Today we went to visit our boys, Bob and Tobias.  They look great and are having fun with their girlfriends.  We also went to Chuck E. Cheese for the first time. OH MY WORD, Did Harper love that place.  She talks about Cheese everyday since, and walks around with a black and white picture that she got there of her and Chuck.  Too cute!

Matt was so happy to see his boys (and wear his new shirt)

She ate quickly.  She wanted to return to the games. 

She absolutely loved the slide!

Going down the slide for the 1,034,305th time

She loved throwing the balls.  

Austin Fun

We want to squeeze as much out of summer as we possibly can before we go back to work. So we decided  to go to one of our favorite places, the Austin Zoo!!  We topped it off with going to South Congress afterwards.  We had a blast!

Riding the train. Cheese!

This was Harper's idea.  I know, she looks thrilled

Large tortoises

Lion in the background

The lion about 15 seconds before he sprayed a poor kid :(

It was so neat to see the tigers playing

Love this candy shop!

Eagerly awaiting her treats

Ice cream

and lollipop

After a long, hot day, Harper wanted to play in her crib with her potato heads.
As you can see, she was pooped after all the fun we had. 

Did I mention She likes to Dance??

She loved dancing with "Cheese" (as she calls him).  As long as he was a safe distance away.  He freaked her out a bit.

The girl loves to count

She has been counting EVERYTHING!  She even counted the number of runners our dog Gumbo was chasing along our fence today. Ha!

Dancing!!

Harper loves to dance.  Here she is dancing with Massimo!