Two one's

Last weekend my boy turned two years old, and if you ask him how old he is he'll proudly say "two one's".  This is something worth celebrating, and so we did. There was cake. There was laughter. There were plenty friends and family. It was one of those busy, action packed, wonderful weekends where all the finest things in life get wrapped up into two days.

I love my boy. I love that this was a baby hand picked for me, and no matter what our future holds Jakob will always hold a very special place in my heart because he was the little who made me a mama for the very first time. What a great gift he gave me.

The least I could do in return was make him a train cake for his birthday.

And oh how worth the effort it was to see his face light up when we brought it to him. 



I pause here to admit two things, one: the cake master in our family came up to the help me ice the darn thing the night before the party (no easy feat), and two: I pretty much copied the cake my mother-in-law made for my husband on his 4th birthday many, many years ago. She sent me a photo which I had up on the lap top as we decorated.

It is an easy cake to make in principle, it just takes a lot of putting together. I would do it again any day though. It was fun, and tasty, and most of all it was worth it.

Said cake-master at her craft.

At our house a two year old's birthday smorgasbord looks something like this:

There were a few impromptu balloon blowing lessons, and Jake's older cousin Oliver was most determined to get the hang of it.  Jake was a focused student...

But in the end Oliver was the only one who got it.

Sort of....

And if you are going to have a train themed party, you'd better have a pretty decent train network set up.

At one point there was about five kids nicely playing on these tracks.

The birthday extravaganza spanned two days. Day one was for friends and their parents. Day two saw all our nearby relatives in our cozy home, and a less extravagant cake. Plain - but delicious.

Carrot cake with cream cheese icing, an old fave.

This party might have seemed more subdued to the naked eye, what with all the calm story book readings and all.

Uncle Dave reading "On the day you were born"

But don't be fooled. Jake still got his Great Grandpa to play "snake attack" with him.

Yes, that is a stuffed snake around GG's neck.

How many Boyd's does it take to set up a Hot Wheels Car wash? One...and a couple of handy relatives.

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Since the birthday weekend, these Boyds have all come down with wicked colds. It hit us almost as soon as our last guest walked out the door, and just today did I see hope of recovery through the mounds of kleenex lying around this place.  It's not been a fun week, luckily we had plenty of Tylenol and memories of last weekend to get us through the worst of it.

He never got the hang of balloon blowing, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have fun trying.

 Happy Birthday Jakob,
 Mama loves you.