Birthday Presents

So I know this isn't the typical attire most girls wear for opening presents but it was so hot that day!! She didn't care anyway!! All she wanted to do was opening her presents.
Throwing up the tissue paper in anticipation of what's inside.
Puzzles!! She got a crocodile and seal wooden puzzle. She loves doing puzzles.
What's in the next one?!?!
Oooo!!! A turtle book!!! Lillian loves books and especially ones about turtles!! She must have spent almost 5 minutes looking at it. We had to remind her she still had presents left. LOL

Looking at her book, "Where Should Turtle Be"
Opening another presents.
Another book!!! Cool!! A book about penguins.
Here is a picture of the books and the crocodile puzzle that she got.
Flying tissue paper for yet another present.
It's a big floor puzzle of the ocean!! She's excited, can you tell?!?!?
The last "big" present, wonder what it is????
It's CINDERELLA!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!
"Mommy open it, open it, please, please!!!
Waiting for mommy to open the present, she was so excited!!
We went to Hillcrest Park for a little family birthday celebration. I didn't have my camera with us so I will upload the other pictures from there later. But this is the birthday cake I made for her, Ariel Birthday Cake!!
I went to the Sweet's Factory to get the decorations!! Thanks to my cake decorating class from Jody Cook. All the tips were so handy!!

Yes, I used Cinderella to make Ariel and she turned out wonderfully!!
Lillian loved her cake, she thought it was so pretty, (and it tasted really good too)

Lillian's 3rd Birthday @ Disneyland

It has been 3 years since I gave birth to my first child, Lillian. I can hardly believe it has been that long. But none the less, here we are 3 yrs later. Lillian is such a delight and she warms my heart. I am truly blessed to have her. She is such a fun loving active little girl. She loves to so many things it is hard to remember them all. She can be such a typical little girl sometimes and other times she is in to all the things boys love to do. She reminds me so much of myself sometimes!! Lillian loves to watch movies and has quite a collection of favorites. All the princesses, of course, Nemo, Alice, Pinocchio, and Tinker Bell, to name a few. I must say that Tinker Bell, Ariel, Cinderella and Belle are her favorites. Lillian also loves books!! She can sit down and literally spend 30 minutes just looking and "reading" at her books. She has so many now, but loves them all!! We have also got her started on puzzles and she is loving putting them together. For her birthday she has gotten a few dolls (Tinker Bell and Rosetta, Belle, Cinderella and a Barbie and Ken doll). We needed the Ken doll so she could have a daddy doll. I was so keen on the idea of her using Barbie as the "daddy!!" LOL I know she has no idea and she is just pretending but now she actually has a daddy doll!! :) Anyway, she has lots of fun pretending with her dolls and she enjoys playing with them!!
Lillian also loves being outside. She loves playing in Grandpa Case's park (as it is sometimes referred to) and running around the backyard barefoot. She loves collecting rocks and getting dirty!! She enjoys swinging and going down the slide, playing ball and running around!! I swear at times she can be such a tom boy!!
We are still working on the potty training, I know we will get it eventually. I wish she would get it sooner than later. There are days that she does so well and others not so good. I had so hoped to have her trained by the time she was 3 but at least we are closer than we were.
Lastly, my little girl can be such a helper. She loves to help me bake and cook. She will push one of the chairs up to the kitchen counter and inform me that she wants to help. I usually will have her pour the ingredients in or stir. She loves it!! She also is getting to be a good helper with Preston. Not always, but sometimes. I love that she wants to help and love being able to teach her!
This year I wanted to take her to Disneyland to celebrate her birthday. I have a co-worker whose mom works there, so she was able to get myself, Lillian and my mom in for free. So nice!! I just can't rationalize buying tickets, season or otherwise. We don't go there very often so right now free is good!!!
The day turned out to be so hot and humid. We ended up staying till around 2pm them went home for a few hours and came back at 630pm. The weather was so much better then. Lillian had a wonderful time. She really enjoyed going on all the rides. We were able to go on Pinocchio, Snow White, the Carousel, It's a Small World and we went to Pixie Hollow to see Tinker Bell and Silvermist in the morning. We didn't really have a wait for the first rides, but for Pixie Hollow we had to wait about 30 minutes. Lillian actually did pretty well waiting, which surprised me. She loved seeing the fairies. Silvermist was the best because she stooped down to Lillian's level to talk to her. It really made Lillian more comfortable with her. I wish she would have smiled but I think she was still unsure. Tinker Bell she was a little less comfortable with because she wasn't as good with young kids as Silvermist was. But she was still so excited to see her and take pictures with her. She wanted to back and see them again, but I convinced her to go and see other stuff. On our way out we ran into some Characters. So of course we had to go take pictures with them. We saw Pluto, Donald (there was a professional camera man there so he used his camera to get a picture of the 2 of us), Goofy and Minnie.
In the evening, my mom and I came back with Lillian only. Daddy was home and we decided it would be easier plus we didn't need the stroller and we would only be gone a couple of hours. When we got there we decided to take the train around to Toontown and hoped to go on some of the rides we had missed in Fantasy Land but they were closing it down for the fireworks show. So we headed off to Tomorrowland and went on the Rockets and then on Autopia. She loved the Rockets and while we were standing in line waiting to get on them we met a little boy about her age that she had fun playing with. It made the time we had to wait in line go by faster.
We even got to watch some of the fireworks while were on the rockets.
Autopia was so much fun. It has been years since I have been in those cars. Lillian was tall enough to go on and drive herself. She loved it!! She didn't know what the heck she was doing but she could care less. She sat there just turning the wheel regardless of where the road was going. I had to keep helping her and everytime she would get mad at me and try and push my hand away. We got to drive a sparkly purple/blue car. Lillian was so excited because she loves purple. The line was relatively short, and she was pretty well entertained watching all these cars drive off. Lillian had a fantastic time at Disneyland and was so worn out that she fell asleep in the car on the way home. I wish I could say she will remember it always, but we will just have to wait till she is older. :)Riding on the tram. It has been over a year since she had been on one and wasn't sure what to make of it.
Riding the Carousel for the first time and loving it.

Waiting inline to go into Pixie Hollow and see the fairies.
On the boat ride in "It's a small world after all" We were really hot and sweaty at this point.
Mr. P squirming around so you can't get a good face shot. Everything looked like an adventure to him.
I tried so many times to get a picture of him and these 2 were the best ones. He would not sit still!!
On "It's a small world after all"
Lillian and Pluto
Lillian and Goofy (my favorite)
Minnie and Lillian. We almost didn't get to see her. We were the next ones to get a picture with her and the guy came and told us she was going to go down the line and greet everyone and then head off. Thankfully we were next otherwise Lillian might have been a little upset. She was so excited to see her.
Autopia!! Driving her car.
She's a mean driving machine. LOL

San Diego Zoo

For our anniversary and Lillian's birthday we decided to go down the San Diego Zoo. We haven't been able to do hardly anything for our anniversary for the past few years, so it was great we were able to do something. Lillian was really excited to go see all the animals, too. We got up early on Tuesday, so as to avoid any traffic and get to the zoo when it opened. We were able to use a couple of coupon's to get in. It was really nice to be able to save some money!!
The weather was pretty good. It was warm, and a little muggy but there was a great ocean breeze so it wasn't too bad. Lillian and Preston had a great time, even though they had the sniffles and we had to get wiping/blowing noses. The took a couple hour nap during the afternoon, so mommy and daddy had a reprieve for awhile. It was so nice to be able to enjoy, not only the peace and quiet but the animals too. We took a ton of pictures, so I will only post the ones that were our favorites. I also forgot to take any pictures of us, oh well. We spent the whole day there and we all had a great time. I will of course make sure we take the same route next time because we were able to bypass all but 2 or 3 major hills and by that I mean we only had to walk down them as oppose to walking up them. So nice!! I am already looking forward to the next time that we can go, we all had a really wonderful time and enjoyed our little get-away immensely. Plus Lillian did miss some of the animals so she wants to go back to see them.
(Thanks Daddy for making our trip possible!! We love you and appreciate all your hard work!)


Our first stop, after the bathrooms :)!! I thought it was a beautiful garden and pond. The ducks Lillian loved, of course!
A closer view of the ducks and the pond.
Meerkats. Lillian has been so fascinated with them since her first encounter with them at the LA Zoo. I just think they have a cool name and well they are kind of cute!!
We arrived at the giraffes and discovered this! Hmmm interesting way to drink water, but I guess it works! LOL
We must have spent 15 minutes looking at the giraffes. Lillian thought they were so cool, she loved watching them walk around. One of them was really big, she asked me if that was the daddy and I said probably. Of course the smaller ones were the babies!!!
Baby flamingo's being introduced to their new habitat. They were born here at the zoo and the women with them, the birds consider their moms. Here the lady is letting the bird "pacify" on her finger. Pretty cool!!
After traveling down one of the little trails we rounded a corner to find our selves face to face with a snow leopard. The photo doesn't it do him justice. He is such a gorgeous animal. I have never been able to be so close to one before and it was simply amazing. I was able to capture him in between bites of breakfast. ;)
Another beautiful big cat!!! I think Leopards are one of my favorites. I zoomed in on this picture so you can see how big and ferocious he is. He is a North Chinese Leopard.
The leopards quarters were on a hill so he could have lots of places to climb!
Domestic Bactrian Camel from SW Asia!! I thought they were pretty cool looking!!
A Sloth Bear. One of the only bears we were able to capture their face!
African Elephants. We actually had lunch at a little place right next to the elephants because I knew Lillian would love it. She had so much fun being able to sit and watch the elephants walk around their gigantic exhibit.
I was hoping we would be able to see all the big cats up and awake, but alas, the African Lions were taking a "cat nap." Here is the mommy as Lillian called her.
and here is the "daddy" lion. They were both right next to the glass so we got to see how big they are. So amazing!!!
Just before we got to the lions we came across my absolute favorite cat, the Jaguar. The reason he is looking like this because his dinner just went walking by on a leash. LOL Some kind of medium size dog, called a "something singing dog. Not sure if he was a part of the zoo or not because we never ran across anything like that at any of the exhibits. Anyway, he went crazy when he saw that dog. He was all over this corner of his pen. I can imagine what he would have been like had he been able to get his lunch!!
"Hey!!! Come back with my lunch!!!"
Guanaco's!! Which we lovingly refer to as Llama's!!
We went around the corner and all of these guys ran around and just stood there watching us. I thought it was so hilarious!!
One of my favorite animals are Polar Bears. I think they are so beautiful. There were two of them and "mommy and a daddy" Their exhibit was so beautiful!!




Panda Bears!! So stinkin cute!

Lillian loves crocodile's. If you look closely you can see him peeking out of the water. We must have stayed here checking him out for 15 minutes before Lillian would finally let us leave.
Tigers resting in the shade trying to stay cool. So beautiful!!
The funniest looking turtles I have ever seen. Some of them had snake like necks!!

Our only monkey pictures. (Lillian was having a "I just woke up from my nap and am still tired" moment)
Of course we had to see the flamingos!! Lillian insisted we stay here from like 15 minutes so she could watch them. She was so fascinated them.
Lillian insisted that we go check out the snakes, frogs and lizards. So here are a few of the ones that turned out the best. We really wanted to see some of the poisonous frogs, but they were all hiding, or really hard to take a picture. This snake is a Rare Pit-Viper.
Not sure what this one was. But he looked really cool to Lillian!
A Java Angleheaded lizard.
Golden Mantella frog.
Argentine Leaf Folding frog. There are actually 2 of them. See if you can find the other one.
Indian Gharial Crocodiles!! They were actually a little ways off, so I had to zoom in on this one too. Lillian loved seeing all the reptiles and we had a really hard time getting her to leave. She kept going back and forth inside the snake, frog and lizard house to look at them over and over.