Celebrating the 2nd Birthday

What a fabulous, beautiful day we had in MN on Saturday - E-man's 2nd birthday.  I thought I would share the events of the day for documentation's sake.  What a joy to spend the day as a family and with our Ridder/Manders families, having fun with the E-dude.

When E. woke up, we went in and sang Happy Birthday to him and gave him a balloon.  He was so sleepy and cute but also excited about the 'birfday' and 'ba-oon'.  Ross then made him 'pancakes' - his favorite Saturday morning breakfast.  Shortly following breakfast we went on a long walk which took us over to the Ridder home where his first birthday present was waiting for him.  On the way, we stopped at the new "Lakes" park for a bit to break up the almost 4 mile walk.  My parents gave E. a train table.  It's amazing.  It will eventually come to our house when we turn the basement into a play area.  For now, it will remain at my parents home (until we get back from our trip to AZ at the end of the month).  It makes all sorts of noises and it is just very nice!  My mom said it took my dad over 3 hours to put it together - thanks guys!  He loved it.  He played with it for over a half hour straight - walking in circles around it, pushing the trains around and through tunnels, etc.  It was so cute!  Once we got home from their house, we had some lunch and E-man and I both took a nap while my amazing husband cleaned/picked up the house to get ready for E's family party.  (Side-note: I am SO grateful for Ross - it's been a busy time in our house and he graciously offered to clean, does an amazing job of cleaning and allowed me to get some rest.)

The Manders' cousins/aunts and uncle arrived around 4 p.m. and we all headed to the pool for a swim. The pool wasn't crazy crowded even with it being Memorial Day weekend - so that was nice. The grandparents and Uncle Josh came around 5 p.m. and we had dominoes pizza (the new version/crust/sauce, etc. is better than the old one!) and a yummy mandarin orange salad.  The kids voted for E to open presents next.  Everyone was so gracious and he got many new books, toys and fun things like a Ukulele from me and Ross and a basketball hoop from Diane and Jerry!  We then sang to him and had him blow out his '2' candle (almost caught his hair on fire - it was very cute and Grandpa Ridder stepped in to help blow it out).  For his second birthday I made him a big chocolate chip cookie - yum!  We enjoyed dessert, the cousins played some more inside and outside - all in all it was a really fun birthday celebration.  Thank you to our family who helped us celebrate in various ways - you all mean so much to E-man and to us!