Lilly's 2nd Birthday Festivities: Part 1

With the possibility of a baby next week sneaking up on me, I figured it was now or never for the birthday posts!  I am starting them a little less than a week late, which I think is a huge accomplishment considering I still haven't blogged about Christmas Day…whoops.  Fair warning: photo overload to come.  Another fair warning: I am writing this from the Mac and I can never get picmonkey to work properly from here so although collages would make things cleaner, I shan't do them.  SBI (not really)!

Lilly's birthday is so close to Christmas that it's hard to find ways to keep it special.  I already blogged about some of the surprises that awaited her when she woke up, but another thing we did was to continue last year's tradition of sprinkle pancakes (I just realized when looking for that post that I never actually posted a photo of it, but I found the idea on Pinterest and loved it, and Lilly loves pancakes, so clearly it was the best idea ever!  We skipped the frosting part, but luckily she didn't seem to notice.). 

Daddy went all out this year.  Guess we'll have to keep this in mind when choosing a name for Baby Boy - must be easy to write in pancake batter!  :-)

Blowing out her pancake candles.

L's birthday was on Friday, January 24th, which was a school day.  We woke her up early that morning so that we could all have breakfast together and gave her the doll accessories that we got for she and Baby Grace before school - we decided to save the rest of the presents for later so that she could sleep as late as possible.

You can't really see the high chair here, but both the high chair and cradle are made by Kidkraft.  We love them!  Easy to put together (in fact I did both by myself while Dan was out running errands for me), sturdy, and the reason I chose these in particular is that they look realistic/sort of like her high chair and crib.  She LOVES them!  And I think Baby Grace must, too, as much time as she spends in each. :-)

Birthday girl in her birthday shirt, not smiling properly per the usual.  "Cheeeeeeeese!"

I was so excited that L's birthday fell on a school day so that we'd be able to celebrate with her school friends.  It just so happened that one of her teacher's (Ms. B) birthdays is the same day!  We took a few of her current favorite books to school for the class to read, which the teachers said was a big hit (Aliens in Underpants Save the World, Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons, and Peekaboo Surprise Pops - Where's that Hippo? - HIGHLY recommend all of these, btw, they are so cute!).  I also made cupcakes (rainbow chip, of course, since it's the best, but unfortunately I couldn't find any rainbow chip icing so I had to improvise with even more sprinkles!) and Dan and I went to school about a half an hour before pick up so that we could have cupcakes and play.

Again with the cheeeeeeese!

Daddy was a big hit

Dancing to "We Are the Dinosaurs," Lilly's fav!

That evening, Dan's brother and his family came as well as my best friend from high school, Diana and her husband Brennan and their two boys, Logan and Emmett.  We let Lilly open the rest of her presents from us (a new Pete the Cat Book and a Lego Duplo set) and in typical Eaker fashion, I made a lasagna feast for dinner (which I was shocked that she would still eat, since she mostly "doesn't like" anything I put in front of her these days!).  She also got to open her presents from her cousins, Diana and family and Aunt Meredith and family.  Rotten girl!

I got to this point in the post and realized that I'm exhausted and can't face the bajillion birthday party pics that were taken at her party, which was the day after her actual birthday, so I made the executive decision to name this "Part 1" and call it a night.  :-)  Stay tuned and I'll try to post the birthday party pics at some point over the weekend.  We have L's 2-year-old well check tomorrow afternoon as well (we had to reschedule due to all of the crazy weather here!), so there will be a post with her 2-year stats at some point, too.  Lots to do, as always.

Almost Friday!

Sarah