Lou is two!

Lou is two!

We don't have any family in the area and will be traveling to see them in July, and since there will be more parties then... we decided not to do the big birthday party thing. We just celebrated with the four of us and a few friends who were able to meet us for some various opportunities to celebrate.

The cake- I scoured the Internet for easy but super cute pirate cakes. I was in luck, I found this great cake, in fact entire pirate themed birthday at Piece of Cake. We may have to revisit the pirate theme when we have a big friends party again. Nothing says homemade like a tilted pirate ship!

Here's the crushed jolly rancher 'water' before melting:

Here's the construction of the cake.... hmmmm, I don't think I'll be getting hired at the bakery any time soon:

Good thing there are sails. They are my favorite part and I think the saving grace for this cake. At least Lou and Bee know it's a boat.

While making the cake, I remarked about how it sure looked homemade, Bee asked what that meant. I explained that some people make their cake and some buy it at the store. She said, "that's silly, why would you buy a cake when you can make it." That's my girl.

The thank yous- I saw these cute note cards from my new blog friend over at 4 crazy kings and thought something along those lines would be cute for Lou's thank you cards this year. I always make them for the kids rather than buying, because I'm cheap like that-I mean, because I'm crafty like that. I'll have to dig them out for the other years and post those too. I toyed around with the cutout being a few different things, but decided on just the number two. We even were able to use up some leftover artwork from our dinosaur track painting.


They are pretty self explanatory, expect that I decided to trace the shape (yellow #2) backwards on the inside of the card to avoid any stray pencil marks on the font. Then I cut it out.

Party hat- I made this felt hat up after Lou went to bed. I wanted a really pirate-ish font for the back, but couldn't really find what I was looking for. However, the paint on the felt came out kind of rough and does look a little pirate like. The front is stitched on white felt, the back is painted.

ARRRRG!

Breakfast pancakes:

Opening presents:

After church we headed to Chuck E Cheese. Lou really wanted to go. I have some feeling about Chuck E Cheese, however, the kids LOVE it. We also had about 70 tokens left over from a trip we made there at Christmas time and Lou got a birthday card from them with a coupon for 20 more free tokens. We even had the exact amount for a pizza package meal thing left over in the grocery envelope and that never happens. Seemed like fate. The kids got drinks from the fountain, a treat for us all! This is the first time we let them have whatever they wanted to drink- they both picked hi-c. Lou kept saying "so good!" and cheering. I had a root beer, and enjoyed it a lot too, I cheered a little too.

After rests (that did not include any actual sleeping), we played with some of the new toys outside then had cake.

Bedtime came early. Three of us had belly aches and went to bed early. Good times.