T-W-O!

On Saturday, our baby girl Olivia turned 2!  We had her birthday party at the Natatorium in Allen, the same place where we had Carter's 2nd Birthday Party.  (wow, I've been blogging almost two years!)  We had an absolute blast with our family and friends, and Livvy brought home lots of lovely new toys and clothes.


Carter spent the night with his best bud, Nathan, so it was just Nick and I and the birthday girl on our way to the party.

Once Carter did arrive, he was so excited about the party that he decided to take a few pictures.

It was only when I uploaded the pictures to my computer I realized that not only did Carter leave me with a few artistic beauties, but he also left me with a giant fingerprint on the lens of my camera.  Awesome.  So, Olivia's birthday party pictures have a nice... glaze about them, shall we say?  Ah well, such is life with an independent three year old, I suppose.

Anyway, back to the [hazy] party...

Here are a few of our guests:

Clockwise from the top: Rachel & Trey, The Roeschleys, The Buchanans,
Nana & Jaja/Courtney & Gracie, and "Aunt" Amber & Baby Cohen

Minnie & Daisy and the whole (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse gang) proved to be an excellent theme.

Though I didn't gather up enough courage (or time) to create a Mickey cake (like the Elmo one I did for Carter's birthday), I did decide to save some cash and make the cupcakes myself.

Olivia didn't seem to mind that they weren't professionally made.

And she really got into opening presents...

especially when so many girly, pink, princess-y things started emerging from the gift bags.

Finally, it was time to swim!  The kids couldn't have been more excited.

At this point, I turned the camera over to my mother-in-law (thanks Gwlynda!), and I spent the rest of the party chasing kids and making sure everyone had a good time.

And except for that one time when we lost a child, I'd say a great time was had by all.*

Happy 2nd Birthday to the darling of our family, 

our little princess, Olivia Gayle!

*So about that lost child thing: um, yeah, that was OUR lost child.  Carter, to be exact.  We had been in the water maybe 10 minutes, and last I had checked, he was bee-boppin around the playset.  Nick and I were doing our best man-on-man defense, but somewhere in all the people, we had lost him.  We weren't panicked, at first.  Then it was pretty much ALL the adults looking for him and I started to get worried.  The pool was rather crowded, so it was kind of hard to spot one little person, but finally, after about 5 hurried minutes of looking, he was spotted at the top of the giant twisty slide, which he was WAY under the height requirement to ride.  But somehow, he had walked his happy little butt up several flights of stairs and ended up stuck at the top.  Nick retrieved him and my heart began to beat at a normal pace again.  The end.