Happy Birthday Lily!

 Sofie LOVED the giant characters, and watched the whole afternoon.

 Lily's second birthday!

 She looks so big!

Sofie's first experience with cotton candy...oh man!  She was IN LOVE.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Aunt Lori's adorable birthday package arrived yesterday for Lily, and this morning Lily dug in, THRILLED to have another birthday.  She opened her card, "read it", and then started singing "Happy Birthday to ME!" all over again...

 In her new kitty shirt, she opened her new Tinker Bell panties, and immediately had to put them on and check them out!

 Then opened her too-cute little cooking set...

 pop up book...

and cookie mixes...to which she said, "OK, Mommy!  Let's go!" and headed for the kitchen.  This girl loves to bake!

Aunt Lori, thank you SO MUCH, and most for the best gift of all, the conversation hearts!!!  I looked EVERYWHERE for them before we came back and they hadn't hit the shelves yet...I'm already half through the bag, with Lily's help....SO GREAT...nothing better out there!

THANK YOU for thinking of our little one and blessing us through blessing her!  We love you!

Happy Birthday Lily!

Because Lisa and Adam had to leave today, we celebrated Lily's birthday yesterday a few days early with Grandpa and them at Chuckie Cheese!  While she had no idea what in the world everyone was doing or what all was going on, Lily had a BLAST, and especially loved the dancing characters, watching the other kiddos, and collecting her tickets.

Most, she was thrilled over her Elmo cake...Lily is just a cake (icing) kind of girl!  We had just an awesome day, and are so blessed to have had Lily in our lives for 2 whole years!  She is such a joy to us both and to those around us, and is a constant reminder to us both of His deep love and unending patience and joy for US!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LILY!

Lily had an AWESOME birthday! The morning started with 7-8 am worship rehearsal for church tomorrow, which she joined with her new maracas. Then, she and Daddy played around the house with her favorite hat :)

Later, she watched some Elmo with her new Elmo nu-nuse (stuffed animal) and helped us get ready for her big party!

We had a birthday party the day before my family left, and then today, her actual birthday, we invited 54 of her closest friends to help celebrate! Many of them didn't come, and yet we still had 50 people (I'm not sure how this happened...that's ok!).

I put up photos of Lily from birth until now, and that was a big conversation piece for everyone. We ate cupcakes (75 of them), Doritos, Twizzlers (which few people liked and I caught MANY people sneaking bits of them to Lily to hide the evidence of that fact), drank coke (30 bottles) and juice, and sang Happy Birthday (Lily, oblivious to the fact we were singing to HER).

Her favorite gift of the day? Paintbrushes. Which she clutched the rest of the day and "painted" everyone and everything in sight. Go Josephine!

Then, we all headed outside to play baseball, a sport not one of our Haitian brothers or sisters knew anything about, and all had a BLAST learning the game and playing while we learned. Some of the missionary kids stood in the outfield and mostly just shouted directions to all the others about what to do next :)

What a joy to be in the midst of a crowd of dear friends, surrounded by peals of laughter and joyful uproars...Those moments watching baseball and our friends alone made all the baking, icing, set-up and clean-up well worth it! Lily was just SO mesmerized to have everyone there and tons of kids to play with and millions of things to watch. She fell asleep tonight at 6:30, just completely partied out!

My sister inherited my mom's fantastic ability to ice cakes, and made this adorable cake for Lily, and along with the streamers, balloons and new toys, the day was filled with lots of "Doggie!" and "OOOOO!"

Yeah, we don't understand what was happening in this picture. I'm not sure why you'd bring a one year old a bottle of champaign for her birthday, or why you would insist on having a picture taken with it, while forcing the child to grip the bottle, BUT, it was VERY IMPORTANT. Gotta love it...

How blessed we feel by ALL the family that joined us to celebrate this miracle that the Lord has given us! We were both chocked up more than once, standing back, watching our little girl in her birthday shirt, covered in Twizzler stains, playing with the other kids and babbling to the adults...just overwhelmed that this little child of God is OUR child, too.

Praise the Lord for Lily!