Happy Birthday Madelyn! (Part 2)

On Saturday, we celebrated Madelyn's birthday with a party with some friends and family.  We were really excited that Justin's mom, sister, and brother were all able to make the long trek to Minnesota to spend some time with us and to be a part of the birthday festivities.

Madelyn was much more excited about her birthday this year than she was last year.  I'm not convinced she really knew what was going on, but she liked the decorations and the cake, and having so many people that she loves all together at the same time.  She asked all week who she was going to see at her party and was thrilled when all of those people really came :)

Our theme was a little difficult to pinpoint, but after a suggestion from a friend that with Madelyn's love of tea parties that it would be a good theme for her party we loosely went with that as a theme.  We had multiple varieties of iced and hot tea and also a teapot shaped cake that I ordered from a local bakery called the Sweet Retreat (they mostly do cupcakes and were actually on "Cupcake Wars").

The Tea Spread -  the blue teapot in the middle is the cake

The Teapot Cake :)

Formal tea parties probably don't include pizza or iced tea, but since Madelyn is only 2 I figured we were ok to bend the rules a little bit and have as many as her favorite things as we could.

She also did well with opening presents and was very interested in everything she opened.  She did have a little bit of a hard time sharing after the present opening, but all in all she did a great job!

Diva?

Possibly letting Madelyn have cake and chocolate ice cream on her own without a full body smock/bib was not a great decision, but she had a good time.

so busy eating cake and ice cream that there wasn't time to talk to anyone...she was focused!

We have seen Madelyn change so much in the last year.  She is getting more and more verbal every day, adding new words to her vocabulary.  She has opinions about everything now, from the clothes she wears to the color of her plate or bowl.  She looks forward to seeing her friends at church.  She wants to know about EVERYTHING and it is amazing.  It has been a crazy and amazing adventure and we are really looking forward to seeing what the next year will bring.