Katie's birthday continued + our weekend

The weekend is over, we had a great Life Group tonight, I'm blogging, Buble is playing.....life is good.
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Thank you to all of you who commented with 'Happy Birthday' wishes for my sweet 2 year old. I'd like to write more about her big day. Thursday night, I set out her gifts and some balloons ont the table. Friday morning, I baked blueberry muffins in Elmo liners for her breakfast. We got her up right before Gracie went to school and she immediately started munching on the muffin. We let her open 2 gifts and had to promise Gracie that she wouldn't open any more until she was with us!

Katie played a little that morning while Chris & I finished up most of the cleaning that needed to be done since my parents were coming that afternoon. We drove out to a place where we were able to rent a couple of games for her party. After we got home to drop off Chris' truck, we delivered a goodie bag for her sweet little friend who'd been so sick all week and wasn't able to come to her party. Then we went shopping to pick up some more things for the party and the weekend. We went home to get things ready and waited for my parents to show up.

They came just a little while before we left to pick up Gracie from school. Of course, when she saw Grammer standing on the sidewalk at school, she got sooo excited! We walked home and just hung out a little while before going to decorate for the party. We opened the rest of Katie's gifts from us, my parents & Chris' parents when we got home, also. A little before 4, Chris, Gracie & I left to pick up some balloons I'd ordered. Katie stayed home with my parents and took a much needed nap.

We got the balloons and headed to the community center where we'd rented a room and began to decorate. We've been having our playgroup there since we haven't had a church building for over a year, and I tried to make it look as little like playgroup as possible. I wanted it to be more special than just "normal" playgroup. We got the decorating done then I raced to Dollar Tree to get 1 more tablecloth while Chris & Gracie went home to pick up the food and the rest of the family....especially the birthday girl!

We got back to the room and started having fun! It was really a rather simple party. We'd only invited 3 little friends and 1 couldn't come because he was sick. I picked up Happy Meals for the kids and the adults had chicken tenders from Wal-Mart (which were huge & very good, I thought!), grapes, chips & cheese cubes along with tea & sodas to drink. My good friend, Melissa had made a precious Jo-Jo cake for us, too. She is very talented in the cake decorating department.

A side note: for Gracie's 1st birthday, my mom made a cute cake that looked like a woman's hat, for her 2nd birthday, Melissa & Alissa rescued me with making a precious ladybug cake. (I tried to do it myself, but it looked more like a drunk spider.....I'm not even kidding!) For her 3rd birthday, my mom ordered a beautiful Strawberry Shortcake cake. For her 4th birthday, I ordered a Nemo cake from Publix but they lost the order, so we ended up with Nemo cupcakes and a plain~free~bakery cake. Surprisingly, I wasn't that upset. I'm still not sure why I wasn't upset because that's usually the kind of thing that will throw me into hysterics! For her 5th birthday, we had a real tea party at a cute little tea room downtown so we had no cake for the party. We had a cookie cake at home. For Katie's 1st birthday, Melissa made a butterfly cake that was really pretty.

Anyway.....I guess I kind of went off on a tangent there, didn't I???

After we'd sung and handed out cake & ice cream, her friend, Bryson threw up right into his mommy's hands! Good catch, Kate! I felt so bad for him~and for his parents! We missed them when they left to go home but understood that he needed to rest. Poor thing still isn't feeling great.

After we ate and the kids played some more, we opened the gifts from her friends. She only had 1 little friend there at the time, but we had the gifts from the other 2 who couldn't be there. She has sweet friends who got her such nice gifts. She also gave her friend a goodie bag. Then, we cleaned up and went home! We ended the night by watching 2 of her new gifts: a Miss Patty Cake video and Stanley the Stinkbug (a Hermie video).

She is a precious 2 year old and I'm so thankful for her! I am grateful that God chose me to be her Mommy!
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Saturday, we went to a flea market with my parents. As part of Katie's birthday, they are going to buy her a bed, and I like old ones, so Mom's been scoutin' out flea markets and the like. She has a booth at an antique mall where she sells antiques. (obviously, huh??) She loves antiques and anything old basically and is really good at finding a bargain on something great! When she finds one, she plans to have a lady paint it "shabby chic" white for me. I know she'll find something eventually. Until then, we plan to put Katie in a rollaway bed that we have. She got new bedding from Chris' parents, so we'll probably get that set up pretty soon. We ate lunch at a great pizza place. Sausage & Feta pizza is our absolute favorite!!!!!!

Gracie had a birthday party to go to for a friend from school. I was very nervous about leaving her at the party since it's a family I don't know well. The mom told me that I could drop her off or stay with her. I appreciated her willingness to let me stay if I wanted to. I was nervous, but I actually felt pretty comfortable about it because we've had at least 4 playdates with this girl and her mom. Once at Burger King, once at her house (and I stayed), once at my house (where her mom stayed) and once at the park. I also talk to the mom 2-3 times a week when we pick the girls up from school. So, it's not like I didn't know the mom at all. She is a very sweet lady and very attentive to her daughter, so I left Gracie decorating her goodie bag in the front yard. They also painted birdhouses, had a treasure hunt in the front yard, played Bingo, made their own pizzas and ate cake. I think fun was had by all.....and I gained a little independence, I think! I don't think I would have left her if I hadn't felt like I knew the mom well enough to know that she was a good mother, etc. I'm just not going to feel comfortable letting her go to somone's house that I haven't already been to and spent quite a bit of time with at least one of the parents.

The mom had mentioned a sleep-over party a few weeks ago and I tried to discourage that. I was "subtle" about it. I just said that Gracie had just recently had her first sleep-over and it was with a girl who we've known for a really long time. After a few minutes, the mom said, "Yeah, I think they may just be too young right now." *whew* I knew I wasn't going to let her do that yet and wasn't sure how to go about saying no without being rude. I'm just not ready for sleep-overs with people that I don't know really, really well.

Mom & I went downtown to check out some antique stores while Katie & Chris and my dad stayed home. We went to pick up Gracie then went home and hung out a little. The girls played outside some with my dad (he "coached" Gracie on how to make a basket when playing basketball and she did pretty well!) then we started cooking for dinner and bathed the girls, etc. Chris & I snuck out for a movie date since we had some built in babysitters! We saw "Failure to Launch." I didn't think it was that great.

Today was church and eating out for lunch. A wedding shower, run to Kroger to get a dessert for Life Group, go to Life Group and eat afterwards and come home to get the girls in bed. It's been a long weekend but a good one.