Happy Birthday Matthew!!!

Well, today was Matthew's 2nd birthday. Of course, it was his first birthday here with us so we made sure it was a good one. Our day:

5:50: Matthew wakes up and refuses to go back to sleep; but does end up watching about 1.5 hours of his Leapfrog DVD's in bed (thank god).

8:30: Breakfast is finished and presents are opened; Matthew's favorite present is probably the mini BBQ grill set we got for him which allows him to emulate the delicious BBQ I make (and to a lesser extent, the BBQ Jodi makes).

11:30: after 2 hours of pretend grilling we head to the park with Belle. Besides being Matthew's birthday, today was some of the nicest weather we've had all year (and we've had some good weather lately). So we took advantage of it to walk to the park and play in the sandbox.

3:00: Arrive at Salem Willows Amusement Park which is this weird little corner of Salem which contains a barn with little rides for kids and a bunch of ice cream places. It's right on the ocean and a pretty nice place to go with little kids. We totally found out about it this afternoon.

4:45: show up in downtown Salem, MA. Salem is basically another one of those nice towns by the ocean that is unusually difficult to get to but generally worthwhile once you get there. We got dinner in the last remaining Victoria's Station in America. Victoria's Stations used to be a chain of restaurants that looked like train cars. Of course this one in Salem just looked like a normal restaurant and what they lacked in train memorabilia they more than made up for in prime rib which Matthew enjoyed for dinner. He also got dessert with a candle and we got to sing happy birthday.

All in all a good day. Happy birthday to Matthew the best little guy in the world!