Party Time!

We celebrated Eli's birthday on Sunday the 13th with a little family gathering.

As usual, I suffered from cake making troubles during my prep. For Ella's party last summer, my cakes stuck to the pan and fell apart, then I sliced my finger open while assembling it. This weekend I didn't learn from my mistakes...cakes fell apart coming out of the pan AGAIN, and then the next day I had icing consistency issues. (As a side note, if you have the same cake issues as me and NOTHING works - not buttering and flouring, not baking spray - line your pans with tin foil before you pour your batter in, then all you have to do is lift the foil out and peel it off the cake when cooled. I remembered too late (!) that this is what saved half of Ella's cake last year.)

However, despite my troubles, I ended up with a pretty cute cake!

We got home from church by 2:50 pm. Eli fell asleep in the car on the way home, so we transfered him to his bed to nap until party time.

People started arriving around 4:00 pm, but Eli was still knocked out cold. We woke him up around 4:20 once everyone arrived. He was a little grumpy at being woken up, especially since there were an extra 10 people in his living room! We decided to let him start with a couple of presents while we were waiting for supper to be ready.

He loves this Scanimation book!

Then we ate supper (BBQ pulled pork on a bun, potato salad, and broccoli salad), and opened up the rest of the presents! Eli, Ella and cousin Jaxson had fun trying out all the new toys and books!

One of the last presents was the present from Daddy....

Eli LOVES his new basketball net! He screamed and squealed every time he threw the ball in, and was very excited.

We finished off with our froggie cake and icecream! Eli finally managed to blow out a candle on his own after a few tries.

What a lucky boy! He had an awesome day, and got tons of great new things to play with. Growing up with an older sister, he is used to playing dress up, princess, dolls, and tea party. Now he has some 'manly' tools (power tools too!), a basketball net, and new books on trucks and other 'boyish' things.

Happy Birthday to Eli! What a fun little 2 year old you are!