Jeff and Lindsey: Shad's 2nd Birthday

Friday, March 22, 2013

Shad's 2nd Birthday

I know every mom says this... but I can't believe my baby is TWO YEARS OLD! In some ways it has definitely felt like two years, and in other ways they flew. Funny how time works...

His birthday was on a Saturday this year so we got to celebrate on his actual birthday. (Love that for some reason...) We celebrated by taking him to the Zoo, followed by a little cake and ice cream party.

Cody, Jessica, and Adalee went with us to the Zoo. We got there a little later than we'd hoped, but we still had enough to time to see pretty much everything we wanted to. (Hogle Zoo isn't all that big...)

After the Zoo we headed home to finish getting things ready for people to come over, and so Shad could take a nap. In fact, he was still asleep when people started showing up at 7pm! He must've really enjoyed the Zoo.

I went with a train theme for Shad's birthday this year. He LOVES to watch them go by and wave and whistle when we have the opportunity to catch them near our house. His other favorites right now include all things that move- cars, trucks, tractors, etc, but I decided trains would be fun.

I spent most of Friday making his cake. I got extra endeavorous this year. I remember having the coolest cakes growing up; my dad made them awesome every year. They ranged from various 2D shapes to 3D caterpillars and castles. They've been a favorite memory from my childhood and I'm excited to have a little someone now who is old enough to appreciate and the love them too!

3 boxes of funfetti cake:

Train tracks with kit kat and chocolate licorice:

I didn't figure out the shapes I needed when I baked it, so I cut out square pieces that would work, and then smashed all the rest of the cake together and mixed it with frosting (cake ball style) to make the rest of the pieces. (Thoese parts ended up tasting the best anway!)

4 batches of cream cheese frosting:

And done! Yes that caboose is falling over and it was almost 4am when I finished but it was done in time! And yes, that is Eddie Redmayne (Marius) in the background on my laptop...

(Les Miserables is the perfect project movie, because I can listen and sing and still work without having to watch it all...)

Jeff and I made a train track around our kitchen to go with the party theme:

At first we visited for a bit, then Shad opened his gifts from Jeff and I and Grandma and Grandpa.

Elephant pillow that turns inside out to be a pillow! From Grandma:

ABC puzzle:

Horse towel:

Lots of new shoes:

And here Jeff is modeling Shad's new bath towel for us:

We then did cake and ice cream. Shad loved blowing out the candles... so we did it twice. He also HAD to help me cut the cake.

Licking candles:

I'm not sure if he even had any cake, he really just loved the Oreos. So I let him stand there and eat every single piece of Oreo out of the "coal" car. It was his birthday after all...

I knew Shad would like the track, but it was a much bigger hit among all the kids than I'd imagined it would be. They spent at least an hour running and laughing in circles, round and round the kitchen. It was loud and chaotic and awesome. These pictures don't even do it justice... there were many more opened-mouth happy faces than is evident here...