One final birthday post!

The day after the birthday party was Ryan's second birthday. It's a marathon not a sprint around here, people!

William had the day off from school, so we went to the boys' favorite local park with some friends. We had great weather and enjoyed our time playing till we dropped.

After naps, we did something that is very unlike us. We went to opening night of Zoo Lights. Rarely would we brave Houston rush hour traffic to go to a busy event at the zoo. But I wanted to do something special for Ryan's birthday! It can be tough for me to keep up the birthday energy through his big day, but I don't want him to know that! We had fun, but I would never go on opening night again. The place was a total zoo (ha ha). And I was a little disappointed that so many exhibits were unavailable. I get that they can't light the entire zoo. I just hadn't really thought about it. Now we would know to go for the experience and to see all the pretty lights, but it isn't a good time to view all the animals or anything.

So proud of my cutie patootie.

Brothers gotta hug! 

Park fun with Carter 

Mason went everywhere with us.

Weird but kinda cool 

This was beautiful, and it changed constantly. All of the trees are lit, and they take turns flashing.  

I love giraffes, even the fake ones.

See, fake giraffes are cool! We had to wait FOREVER to get this picture because so many people wanted to do the same thing, but I wanted it for our scrapbook page about our week with Mason.

Somehow we had never been in the Natural Encounters area. This was one of the few open exhibits, and it was a huge hit. They loved going through the tunnel of fish. We lost William briefly, got a good scare, and found him nearby.