The Richards Family: Hadley's 2nd Birthday!

Happy Birthday, Hadley! On June 15th Hadley turned 2 years old. This has been such a fun age! Hadley, here are some of our favorite things about you:

1. Your ridiculously irresistable smile (that gets you out of trouble way too often)

2. Your sense of adventure. You water-skied at 2, you climb cabinets and shelves (and everything else you can find), and you are up for trying anything.

3. Your determination. If you decide you want to do something, it is pretty much impossible to change your mind. Although that can be frustrating to a parent at times, it is also wonderful at others. For example, you want to be able to play baseball, not tee-ball, and insist on swinging the bat to hit the ball. Even if you never hit it once, you will stay outside trying until we make you come inside. I love that about you!

4. You say, "I love you Mommy!" and give me hugs and kisses several times a day.

5. You are hilarious. We can just sit back and watch you and be entertained for hours. Today Daddy and I laid on the couch while you ran around the living room, jumping on and off the coffee table, wearing a construction jacket, fireman's hat, and using a Popsicle stick as your weapon to "fight the bad guys".

6. You have manners that charm us all. You say, "excuse me" when you sneeze and "bless you" when others sneeze, and always say please, thank you, and you're welcome.

7. You are FULL of energy! You go non-stop all day long, and this is often the first thing people say about you. When I lie down with you at night, you climb all over me, try to open my eyelids, kiss me a million times, and do anything else you can think of while I ignore it all hoping you will soon fall asleep. After a few minutes of this, you give up, lie down, and are sound asleep within seconds. I think that is the first and only time you lie down still all day long.

8. When you hear the garage door go up because Daddy is home, you start ecstatically screaming, "Daddy's home! Daddy's home!" and run to the garage to welcome him. He loves it, and so do I!

9. Brendan is so happy to have you as his brother. If you take a nap, he keeps asking when you will wake up because he misses you. If you go to time-out, he defends you and says you should not be in time-out. If you are sad because you want Mommy, he comes to me and says, "Hadley needs you! You need to hold him right now!"

WE LOVE YOU, HADLEY! You light up our lives!

This is the first cake I have ever made for a party, so I had to take a pre-party picture. Granted, it is probably the easiest (yet super tasty) cake imaginable: Dirt Cake (oreos, cool whip, and pudding). It was perfect for Hadley's Construction Party!

My fantastic helper

Taking a ride on the construction site

This was our Design Site (coloring). Aren't those blue eyes mesmerizing?

Big brother Brendan was very intense with his design.

Survey Crew: The idea was to make a model of your construction site with construction cookie-cutters, but Hadley found it more fun just to stack the play-dough.