Today we celebrated Mary’s birthday. Nana is in town and I have high hopes of being in labor on Mary’s actual birthday, so we celebrated three weeks early. I feel totally off the hook when September 27th rolls around!

For her birthday, Mary wanted to ride a pony. We went to Thanksgiving Point in the morning for a pony ride and a wagon ride.

Then we had a picnic with Abe in the gardens by Qualtrics.

 I have a ton of pictures of our arrival home. Mary got to see her balloons unveiled for the first time and had a blast. Lydia deserves credit too for delighting in Mary’s delight and not demanding any time at all with Mary’s balloons. After Mary exhausted herself dancing and running with her balloons, Lydia and Mary played hide-and-seek with the balloons and played for the next couple hours.

I have two videos of Mary twirling and dancing with her balloons here and here.

And this evening Tom, Suzanne, the Marshalls and the Vandegriffs joined us for a party.

I just adore Mary to pieces. I can’t believe she’s (almost) three! She lights up our lives every day. I wish I could capture her at this age and keep her almost-three forever. After the presents, Mary was eating cake. At one point, she looked up, smiled, and said, “My presents are lovely.” All I could think of was how lovely she is. Happy early birthday, my darling Mary!