Happy Birthday!

Sunday was Anna's 2nd birthday! This year she got much more excited about it than she did last year. I'm thinking this is not only because she is older but also because she has seen a number of birthdays here are Kristen's house and has a better idea of just how exciting they are.

The festivities started on Saturday morning. We woke up to donuts! Kristen has a tradition in her family that when someone has a birthday, they get breakfast in bed. That morning Nathan had to get up early to take the two oldest boys somewhere and decided to get the donuts for Anna's breakfast. It was greatly appreciated, almost more so because it was unexpected.


That night we had a party combined with my Grandpa whose 89th birthday was on Monday. We had pancakes, eggs, sausage and fruit salad for dinner. As you can tell, breakfast is Anna's favorite meal of the day (she has been known to eat it several times with each person as they wake up). It was a hit. I also got balloons.

Singing Happy Birthday

Blowing out the candles.

She got some great presents (it's so nice when other people get things for Anna so I don't have to) and they all were (still are really) a hit.

I have no idea why it has this random strip at the bottom of the picture.

Jason and I got her a little kitchen. I was thinking of getting her dress-up stuff but then we went to the local children's museum and she spent almost all the time playing in the kitchen and wasn't too interested in the dress-ups. We were able to find it on Craigslist for way cheap and it came with a bunch of dishes and food. It's even nice and small so it fits in our bedroom. I could tell the kitchen was a good call when she would rather play with that than eat her cake.

We also got her a Book of Mormon Illustrated Storybook. We read the first chapter which talks about Joseph Smith and where the Book of Mormon came from. She seemed to pay more attention to our family scripture reading after that. Also, this morning when I was reading my scriptures, she got her book out and started looking at the pictures.

Jacob is such a sweet heart. He wanted to get Anna a present and found these bracelets that he paid for with his own money. She thinks they are great.

Anna loves umbrellas, she can even say 'umbrella' pretty well too. This one is especially fun because it has a duck head on the handle. Between this and the galoshes from Grandpa DeMarco, she is totally set for the rain.

I had wanted to get her a stroller for Christmas but it didn't happen. Now she takes it with her all over the place. Yeah for Aunt Kristen.

She also got two different tutus. Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures of them yet. She likes to wear them and dance and twirl so maybe I can get a video of that.

The next day (her actual birthday) was more low key. It was spent enjoying her toys. In fact, I had to tell her she could play with her kitchen again when she woke up, finished lunch, got home from church, etc. before I could get her to leave it. I had made such a big cake the night before that we were able to have it again the next night, complete with singing and candles. And she got to eat the cake and ice cream this time. It was a very fun birthday.