And the number of the day is...2!

Greetings to those of you who actually remembered that we have a blog! Since there is a lot of catching up to do, the next few blogs may be a bit out of order, but I thought that Karis'2nd birthday deserved the first post.

A couple of weeks ago, we celebrated our baby's-- I mean toddler's 2nd birthday. Let me just say, she must have read the manual on how to be a 2 year old. She has been exerting her independence in as many different ways as possible. By this, I mean she is making her opinion known. Her language and use of sentences has also picked up tremendously. For instance, when riding back from church last Sunday, she was apparently hungry and this is what I heard from the back seat- "Um, I want grapes. I want yogurt. Want hot dog. Um, I want churky (turkey) and ticken (chicken) and appa soss (applesauce)."

Ok, so back to the second birthday party. We had a family birthday party which consisted of 13 adults and 4 of Karis' cousins (all 3 years old and under). Her party theme this year was "ABC 123" with some Seasame Street splashed in. Karis has been singing the alphabet daily for about 6 months now. She can still name most of her letters when we write them for her, which we still aren't sure how she learned other than daily play. She is also a huge Seasame Street fan, which is probably because each episode includes so many letters and numbers. She refers to Seasame Street as "Elmo-Cookie" and says several times a day, "Ina see Elmo-Cookie. Ina watch Elmo's Wah (World)."

Since most people traveled in for the party, we started with a smoked BBQ dinner and later broke out the cake and ice cream after gifts. My mom took my ideas and some of her own for Karis' cake again this year and had a bakery in Murfreesboro turn those ideas into a travel-friendly version. The cake flavor was red velvet since that happens to be one of the specialties of that particular bakery, and it was in the shape of the old fashioned ABC wooden blocks stacked into a (travel-friendly) tower. If you look closely, you will see her name within the blocks. For party favors for the little one, I decorated school boxes with each of their names and stuffed them with crayons, ABC stickers, a magnifying glass (without actual glass of course), travel games, and an ABC notepad.

We are of course blown away that our little one is a full-blown 2 year old, but are so thankful for the meaning and laughter that she brings into our lives. Here are several photos from her party.