Dorothy's Second Birthday

Dorothy turned 2 years old on January 14th. How time flies! We had a party for her at our house on Sunday, January 11th. This post contains a ton of pictures, so I will let them tell the story.


Here are the cupcakes I made, and the beautiful centerpiece Rob's mom made.


Rob's mom is an incredibly gifted scrapbooker. We were able to display a few of her beautiful pages at the party. Above are the pages from Dorothy's first birthday. It was amazing to see how much she (and her hair!) had grown.

And the above pages showed pictures taken in May of 2008. (By the way, she's not picking her nose in the one picture on the bottom - she's pointing to her nose in response to the question "where's your nose?" But from far away, it does look like she's picking her nose!)

At the beginning of the party, Dorothy was finishing up her nap, and when I got her up, there was already a house full of people. This probably wasn't a good way to bring her in to the party, and she was being rather shy. To escape, she climbed into the bottom of the entertainment center. Needless to say, everyone found this quite entertaining! I wish I had a shot of the "paparazzi" - training a dozen or so cameras on her at this moment.

As a side note, this was the day that the Ravens were playing in their wild card match. (The STEELERS, having won their division handily, had a bye week.) Kelly's family all loves the Ravens (I know, sad, but true) and many of them showed up wearing their purple jerseys and stuff. So it was kind of funny that Dorothy was hiding from the Ravens fans and preferred to curl up on our new Steelers blanket (a gift from Aunt Jackie, even though she is a big fan of the Ravens, wasn't that sweet of her!?)

Next, Dorothy climbed up next to her cousin Porter. Dorothy really loves him and gets so excited when she sees him!
It was time to eat, so Dorothy got in her high chair and her fan club began to gather. Here is her cousin Noah - she really lit up for him!

Next, Emma stopped by to share a giggle.

Emma, Ryleigh, and Dorothy

Ryleigh, with Uncle Dan

Lots of folks enjoying the food.

The big pile of birthday gifts. Our family is so generous!

In this photo she is wearing her birthday "Princess" headband with Daddy looking on as she opens her gifts. She was really funny with trying to open the next gift when she hadn't finished with the current one yet. Daddy helped make sure we were keeping track of which gifts were from whom!

I love the way she is holding up her shirt in this picture (from Uncle Shawn and Laurie). She got a ton of cute clothes, and did a great job of holding everything up for us all to see.

Aunt Jackie gave Dorothy The Potty Book (For Girls). We've been giving this book a workout!

Much to my surprise, my family had decided to honor me with cards and gifts since the day of Dorothy's party was also my birthday (our birthdays are 3 days apart!)

Kristin and Peter were among those who were laughing as I read one of my birthday cards. The card, which was a very sweet card from my brother Shawn, said something about doing "whatever you want to do all day long, because it's your birthday". I had thought it was funny since I spent all day working on Dorothy's party, so sitting around all day was not for me! (However, in reality there is nothing else I would have rather been doing than celebrating the day God gave me my very own daughter!)

Rob gave me another Life Is Good t-shirt. This one says simply, "Laugh." For Christmas he had gotten me the one that says "Love." We both really like the Life Is Good apparel.

Rob also got me some socks, which I was very excited about. Woo hoo!

Dorothy's cupcake with two candles for her to blow out. She did a GREAT job!

After Dorothy blew out her candles, everyone started singing again, and I was confused. I thought someone had missed getting a picture of Dorothy blowing out her candle and wanted to do it all over again. Then I saw another cake being brought out, which was a yummy carrot cake that Michelle had made for me!

As expected, Dorothy made short work of her cupcake!

One of the great gifts that Dorothy got was the Thomas and Friends starter set from Rob's Mom & Mike. Over the next few days, they got her even more pieces of track and more engines and cars for the train. She has really enjoyed playing with them!