Noah's 2nd Birthday

With Noah's birthday being on the first of July, it kind of makes planning parties for him really hard.  Especially since we're either on vacation or getting ready to go on vacation, or just coming back from a vacation.  This year, we were just getting back from our Family Reunion and then it was almost the 4th of July and we were also trying to get ready for our Pioneer Trek that we were going on the following week.  So, there wasn't going to be a "party" with games and stuff for him this year.  I was determined, though to make a cake and have some presents.  I was torn between Mickey Mouse or Trains for his cake since he loves both.  But since I've done Mickey Mouse twice, I went with trains.  We had to put his birthday off for a day, so that I could get the cake made. 

Opening Presents

We got him a train table with tons of trains...He was in heaven and didn't really want to open any other presents. 

We did have him open one more present.  (We saved the rest for the next day.)  I didn't get a picture of it, but here's the video with his reaction.  He also LOVES cars...he carries around two matchbox cars in his hands at all times.  So, we got him this Lightning McQueen chair to sit in, so that he doesn't have to sit in the princess chairs anymore.  He was so excited about this!

Nevermind about the video.  I can never get the videos from my camera to work on here.

 The Train Cake

 When we sang Happy Birthday to him, he got all sad, and scooted off of the table and Maggie held him until it was over.  Not sure why he didn't like it, but he was happy after it was over and blew out the candle on his first try. 

 Loving his cake...he didn't get very messy eating with his fork.

 Opening the other presents the next day.  He got remote control train and some more match box cars.

Driving his train

36 years and 2 years

Garrett and Bella share a birthday on April 30th. Last year, we celebrated on the same day since I didn't think Bella would care very much. This year, since Bella is a little older, I thought it would be good to have a separate party for her. So on Friday night, we celebrated Garrett's birthday as a family by going out to eat at Mazatlan (his favorite restaurant) and then coming home to open presents and eat his cheesecake that he requested. He turned 36 this year.

Then on Saturday morning, we had Bella's party. She loves the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, so I went with that theme. I found a cute skirt tutorial on someone's blog and thought it would be cute to make her a little Minnie Mouse skirt. I made it slightly too big, but I thought she looked really cute in it!

The games:

We made tamborines out of paper plates and decorated them with Mickey mouse stuff, then proceeded to march along with the music of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse March. Bella enjoyed making the tamborines, but I think was a little overwhelmed with the marching and the music and the loud tamborines.

Then we played a ring toss game

and "Knock down the cans with a ball game"

We also played "Follow the Leader" with Pluto. The girls took turns wearing dog ears and being the leader, but by this point, Bella was ready to open gifts and the other girls were way too hyper and silly.

Bella opening presents

patiently waiting to play with her new toy while Maggie opens it

Nothing fancy this year with the cake--just good 'ole cupcakes

She kept covering her mouth when she ate the icecream because it was so cold!

That night, I took Garrett out to celebrate his birthday with just the two of us. We went out to eat at PF Changs and then went to see "Date Night." What a funny movie! Tina Fey and Steve Carell are hilarious together! It was a fun night. I also gave him a gift that I had been working on that I found on another fabulous blog (I love searching through craft blogs for fun ideas. It's funny, because most of them are lds stay at home moms...they are so creative!) The gift is a book that I made for him about why I love him and fun memories from when we were dating. I just took an old board book and covered it in scrapbook paper, then typed up my reasons. I thought it turned out quite nicely. I think he liked it. It was fun for me putting into words everything I felt for him and also thinking about when we were dating and all the fun times we had.