There is is little place just as you enter the foothills west of Denver called Tiny Town. Oddly enough, the name alone is a good enough description of what the place is. It was created in 1915 from a collection of dollhouses and made into what it is today in 1930. There are some updates to building to modernize it (and for sponsorship purposes) including a Home Depot that is currently under construction; but there are also building still standing from it’s 1930 start date. Some buildings are for exploring, some just for looking…but the big attraction is the child-size train that loops the property. The train ride costs the same that it did 30+ years ago when it was installed. We rode it twice. Topped off by a picnic lunch that we brought along, it was a really fun outing on a tolerable outside day.

PS – this first photo is going down in my favorites file.

Then the afternoon came. The party started out a little slow….does everyone now think that 20-30 late is the normal arrival time? Hmm, something to consider for the next party. Anyhow, the brothers from CRFD Station 4 stopped by to let Ezra spend  a little time on the engine. It was truly great for those guys to come by on their own (we didn’t ask them) and to give up part of their evening to spend a little time with Ezra and gang. While the trucks were here, the party goers started showing up, and the neighborhood kids hit the jealously button – many times.

It was a fun celebration of Ezra’s second birthday with a few friends and family. We decided not to make a big deal out of it and keep it manageable for all of us. Ezra had a great time hanging out with friends and discovering the new gifts that he received. Interestingly enough, he didn’t even try the cake – despite the fact that a piece of it sat in front of him for a while. Just not that interested.

The weather held out pretty nicely, and the house performed wonderfully in it’s first party-hosting duties. We are so blessed to have such great people surround us, and to have such an amazing child to keep us smiling!

Since the party with some friends and family was scheduled for the late afternoon, we figured that it would be nice to have some quieter time in the morning to open some the gifts from the family.

While riding the grocery store horse may not seem like a significant step in most children’s lives, it happens to be for Ezra. For the longest time, he would want to go and see the horse but refused to sit on it and flat-out freaked out when it would start moving. Apparently our last visit marked a major turning point in Ezra’s life as he overcame his fear of plastic horses. Now, we are no longer dealing with him not wanting to ride the horse, rather, we deal with him not wanting to get off of it. The times they are a changin’.

We do understand that once things have been done two, three, four, ten times, they will loose the fact that they are interesting or unique…so we will take advantage of the newness of this haircut while we can. I can’t promise that I won’t post pictures from every haircut (since this is a blog about Ezra being Ezra), but rest assured that as long as they are good photos, and he makes for a cute handsome subject, the pictures will appear.

For this haircut – he needed one, and we wanted one prior to his second birthday – we went up to Cyrilla’s salon in Lone Tree. We hooked him up with another trim w/out loosing the curls and cut off quite a bit of hair. Since Ahna wasn’t there at the beginning of the cut (still finishing her day at school), I tried convincing Cyrilla that we were going to shave Ezra’s head. Thankfully, she didn’t bite.