Happy Birthday, June!

We interrupt these Frost reunion posts to bring you big news:

June is now two years old!

She was pretty reticent during our photo shoot, and all the close ups I took were slightly blurry, but oh well. The photos capture her little personality.

Because her birthday was on Sunday, we broke up the festivities over two days: swimming and ice cream on Saturday, dinner and presents on Sunday!

Jiichan & Baachan and Rika & Brady joined us at the pool. June didn't really want to swim, but she enjoyed the water. She even got a fun new water table from Jiichan and Baachan that she immediately took to playing with.

I'd like people to note the evidence that Mom was in the water, which almost never happens. She sinks unless she's got a flotation device, as evidenced above.

I tried to think of things June loves to make her day special. I decided bubbles would be a fun activity for the party, so I bought a GALLON of bubble solution and made fancy bubble wands in anticipation of THE BIGGEST BUBBLES IN THE WORLD!

As you can see, the bubbles were lackluster, to say the least. They barely worked with the traditional wand, let alone the big ones Joel and I had made.
But Joel added some dish soap and corn syrup to the mix, swished it around, and giant bubbles were born!

Dane had an absolute blast chasing the giant bubbles around:

June was...pretty much oblivious. She was so engrossed in her new water table and she didn't even notice the amazing bubbles floating around her. Observe:

But we had a lovely time, and she did notice a few of the bubbles after a while.
Everyone was kind enough to hang out with us TWO days in a row for June festivities:

Then, it was time for presents!
She got a very cute plush Noah's Ark toy from Grandma Frost

Jessie and Bullseye from Rika & Brady

Some fun water toys to go along with the water table, and some books that she really loves.

Also, some big girl undies, which she immediate wanted to put on:

Then, the cakes. I must say, I'm usually disappointed at how my layer cakes turn out, but both the regular cake and the smash cake turned out quite well this time:

Have you ever had the Berry Chantilly Cake from Whole Foods? It is delicious. I decided to make a copycat recipe, and it did not disappoint. I used a sponge cake recipe, and the texture was...spongy. I liked it, but it might not be for everyone. (Note, I doubled the recipe to make a three layer cake, plus a baby three layer cake.) For the smash cake, I used the same sponge cake with a chocolate buttercream recipe that we got from the restaurant at Joel's old work. Very buttery. And I tried my hand at chocolate decorations. They weren't super beautiful, but they were passable. I don't know, I've never had good luck (or good skill) drizzling chocolate beautifully. I mostly drizzle chunks and uneven lines. But June didn't care!

Then, candle time! June was wary, but she had a kind big brother willing to help her out:

It was a lovely night, and I'm so happy to have June in our family. What can I say about her presence? She has an amazing ability to drive you crazy and melt your heart, all at the same time. She is picky and demanding, snuggly and sweet, smart and spunky, strong and willful. She love her shoes and purse, which she keeps loaded down with about 20 cars. She loves to wear Dane's Spongebob fedora, and she is adept at drawing tiny swirls (sometimes on paper, usually on her arms and legs). She learns new words every day, loves getting pedicures (and, by extension, smudging pedicures), and is completely unpredictable in what she'll eat. I love that she now loves Toy Story, and I love her sweet smile and cute laugh. I am so happy to be her mom, and I can't believe she's already two. I love Junie. Happy Birthday, sweet baby.

Beachery

Having lived my entire life in completely landlocked states, there are couple of things about visiting the ocean that always surprise me:

1) The water really is salty
2) The waves don't care if you are small
3) Creatures you can't see like to hang around you
4) Sand gets everywhere and stays there almost forever

I don't mean to paint a negative picture; the beach was amazing. It was beautiful, relaxing, fun-filled, romantic, and full of jellyfish.

We probably had 30 jellyfish incidents. I got just a teeny sting on my ankle (right after stepping on something in the water that gashed my foot). But there were lots of other people who got some major stings from sea nettles.

You don't want to mess with one of those.

OK, now seriously onto the positive stuff.

We all arrived on Saturday to get settled, then went to church Sunday morning. A few of the adults took the kids on a walk down to the beach with strict instructions to do no more than wade in the water to keep the Sabbath day holy.

I'm going to give you three guesses as to how that went.

I love seeing the progression of how much wetter and wetter Dane's clothes get. And this wasn't the only time he went down to the beach fully clothed, only to come back completely soaked. Laurie Jayne told me that seeing Dane roll around in the surf was one of the purest expressions of joy she's seen. I wish I'd been there to see it.

This trip was June's first time to ever experience the ocean, and I think she lived it up. Every day, she excitedly asked to go to the "bubbo."

She loved playing with her cousin baby Ben. They are exactly one year and 4 days apart, but you can only tell their age difference by the length of their legs and the number of their teeth. I'm pretty sure Ben outweighs June by more than a couple of pounds. 

They played happily together. 

She did occasionally take advantage the wisdom of her age. 

Sweet Mariah really doted on June.

Dane loved playing with his cousins:

And enjoying the waves:

We were also able to get some lovely portraits:

 Hilton Head is a lovely place, and not just because of the water. Stay tuned for more reasons we loved our vacation!

Profusion of Posts

At least, that's what I hope.

I want to be a better blogger, and I want to find the time to do it. And luckily, I have all sorts of posts to catch up with, so I have plenty of material! I'm months behind in posts, so things won't be in chronological order, but there are things I want to make sure get posted. Firstly,

Frost Family Reunion 2013!

Today I'll share the tale of my sad career as a family photographer in Hilton Head, SC, a story otherwise known as The Universe Doesn't Want Me to be a Photographer.

The first photo shoot was for the whole family, and it was the most important, since we all get together so infrequently. It had been raining, but it stopped for a short time, and we were able to snap some pretty good photos--no small feat with a group of 43. 

Silly shot!

 

Then, after probably only ten minutes, right when we started doing some individual family shots, the rain started up again:

Emmaline, Jennifer, Leslie, Gibber, Alena, Jared, Noelle, Mariah
(A prize to any non-family who can guess the ages of all their kids!)

I thought the Cobia rain photo was lovely, but it's not exactly wall art. 

Makenna, Addie, Monique, Allen, Carter, Emery
Amazingly, the foliage was thick enough that Allen & Monique's family got a decent photo.
A couple of mornings later, Tess asked me to take some picture of my lovely niece Arin in her baptism dress. The combination of our wonderfully air-conditioned condo and the hot, humid morning made my lenses completely fog up. I mean completely. And it's not like I could just wipe them off, because the interior lenses were cloudy, too.
By some sort of miracle, my telephoto lens was clear for about 3.5 minutes, which allowed me to get a couple of good shots.

Later, Meghan asked me to take some family photos of her family. I should have learned from the beach shots to leave my camera in the car to stay warm or something, but leaving your nice camera in a hot car just seems like a bad idea for several reason. Anyway, my lenses were hopelessly cloudy again, but luckily Meghan's camera had been in the car and has a lovely 50mm lens that allowed for some nice photos.



Molly, Ben, Meghan, Claire, Stephen, Lauren.

In the end, I was able to get one or two good photos at each shoot, despite my problems with the weather. I think I like being a pretend photographer (as opposed to a real photographer) because I can take some nice photos without the pressure of people really expecting them to be good.

Which reminds me of the first interaction I ever had with my sister-in-law, Laurie Jayne. She said something about how she was looking forward to eating some Japanese food I was planning on making; I responded how I was nervous that it might not be that good. She said, "Then I will spread word of your mediocrity, so then we'll all be pleasantly surprised."

Clever, no? And exactly the way I'd like my photography to be known.