Happy Birthday, Sweet Girl!

We had so much fun celebrating Gracie's 2nd birthday today! It started out like most days (except that she slept in until 8:30, since we were up late watching fireworks), and she had a breakfast of a banana and some Frosted Mini-Wheats after Daddy and I sang "Happy Birthday" to her. Then she got to watch Curious George and play outside a little bit. For lunch we let her have an In-N-Out hamburger,

but she really didn't want much of it, so she ended eating some of a p.b. & honey sandwich. Then she went down for a nice, long nap. :)

In the meantime, Daddy, Grandma Nelson, and I were working on birthday cakes, homemade ice cream, and other things for her family dinner/birthday party at 4 P.M. Grandma made the peach Jello, Daddy took care of the Rocky Road ice cream, and I decorated the cakes. I made her a small two-layer strawberry cake with chocolate frosting, decorated a ladybug cake for everyone else to eat, and made some flower cupcakes. (By the way, the theme of her birthday party was ladybugs.) I had lots of fun, and I was pretty proud of the finished products:

After she woke up, we headed over to Dave's parents' house where the party was being held (our apartment is too small for the whole family). Everything was decorated so cute (cutely?) with ladybugs, and Gracie was pretty excited.

First we had a fabulous dinner of hot dogs, chips, veggies, fruit salad, and (since it was Gracie's birthday) assorted flavors of Golfish crackers. :)

Gracie ate a little bit of everything, and then she was ready to open presents! She got sooo many wonderful presents, but I'll just post a few pictures here. It was very entertaining watching her open them because some of them she got really excited about, and then others she kind of dismissed because she was already quite pleased with whatever toy she had just opened. She also really liked looking at the cards, which surprised me. It looked like she was reading them!

Love at first sight for Grace & Winnie the Pooh


She was pretty sure this giant bubble blower
was supposed to go in her mouth


Another favorite toy


When she opened clothes, she immediately wanted them "on"


The Queen found Aunt Kristine's bathrobe :)

Then, even though it's kind of a 1-year-old party thing to do, we let her dig into her cake on her own while everyone watched. She actually stayed pretty clean, but that cake was demolished by the end! :)

And last, but not least, here's a picture of her with all her birthday presents (including that cute bench from Grammy/Gramps):

Happy Birthday, Gracie! We love you!