Anna's 2nd Birthday Party

On November 20th, we had Annalise's 2nd Birthday Party at the Lighthouse social hall of our church.  In addition to the enjoyment of celebrating Anna's birth, it was also great to see some friends and family that we have not seen in awhile!  This year it was also great fun including her on some of the decisions for the partya and shopping!  Anna specifically requested peanut butter ice cream for the party (how she even knew about peanut butter I have no idea), so on that day that is what she got.  She seemed to like it but interestingly she has not even mentioned it since and she was mentioning it daily before then. In any event, Annalise really enjoyed playing with all the other kids, and of course the cake and presents!

 A view of the adult guests --- all the kids were over playing in the other part of the room at this point!

 Scoping out the cake

 Getting a closer look!

 Enjoying the cake and the peanut butter ice cream

 Mr. "Tato" Head from Rammer, Shira and baby James

 An adorable outfit from Jason, Kristin, Caden and Abby 

(Anna loves clothes as much as she loves toys if not more so!)

 The awesome tent from Emmy and Mike!

 Hanging out with baby James after the party

Annalise just loves him and talks about seeing him all the time!

Happy Birthday, Samantha!

Last Saturday we went to Annalise's cousin, Samantha's birthday party. Anna had a good time playing with her cousins and had REAL birthday cake for the first time! She liked it and ate it but she wasn't that enthusiastic about it really. She was much more into her bananas! Two weeks before that was our niece Jen's birthday party. We unfortunately forgot our camera for that one! Anna also had a good time at that party, too. She had her first ice cream at that party. Again, she ate it but she really was not anymore into eating that than she was anything else.

Cousin Jen helping Annalise with her dinner

Stan visiting with his dad

Samantha opening gifts

Still opening gifts

Anna taking it all in

Stan and his sister, Lisa

Samantha playing a song for us on her new Baritone.
She plays the flute too!

Annalise's Birthday Party

Last weekend we had Anna's birthday party. She had a lot of fun and was exhausted that evening. She loved being able to explore the Lighthouse room and toddle around with the other kids. She really seemed to enjoy ripping the paper off of her presents and much to my surprise she put very little paper in her mouth. She seems to be quickly growing out of that "I am going to put everything in my mouth" stage. Here are some pictures of her party.

The room at the church we used for Anna's party

Exploring in her walker

Exploring from a different angle

She loved these little chairs -- may need to get her some for home!

Some partyers

More partyers

More partyers

and more partyers

Her cake

Mommy and Daddy blowing out her candle

I am lame and would not let Anna have any of the extremely unhealthy, sugar loaded cake. I made her an Angel Food cake cupcake. At first she didn't even know what it was until I broke off a piece and fed it to her.

She still was not sure of it......

..but then decided that she liked it and dived in.

Eating her Angel Food cupcake

Opening gifts....as you can see she had lots of help at first

She was into the gifts...Christmas should be amusing

I guess I wasn't it getting it to her fast enough.

She really looked over each and every gift after we opened them!

As you can see from her expression gift opening is very serious business!

In all we had a great time celebrating Anna's birth with everyone! This past year has been such a joy and a blessing to share with our sweet girl. Happy, Happy Birthday to our little Annalise! We love you!!!!!!