Anna's birthday extraordinaire

Anna's birthday! We had so much fun getting gifts for Anna this year. We go a little crazy... probably because we never buy her gifts or clothes or toys the rest of the year besides Christmas. The majority of the time I am content to let her use the hand me down everythings that people give us that already made it through one or two or three child cycles.

But Anna's birthday gives Richard and I an excuse to be impractical and whimsical and indulgent. Hey, it only comes once a year.

We got her a pink kitchen, a pink tricycle, and a half dozen things that she didn't need and that don't matter...like an inflatable penguin...that is now sitting in our backyard...and a foam clock face (don't ask me, but Target is a brilliant marketer).

It had to be an Elmo party! We had it at the splash park by our house. No organized games, no door prizes for every attendee, no bags of treats to take home, no pinata, just pizza and cupcakes and a nice park on a nice day! Easy and fun.

I made the cupcakes myself, but I bought cupcake toppers because, you guessed it, it was easier and the kids didn't care.

it was so fun to have Anna's first friend party (the first of many I think--approximately 17 more). She had a good time and so did her guests I think!

Anna is like her daddy-- she prefers ice cream to almost any other treat in the world. Even this Elmo cupcake doesn't hold a candle to a fudgesicle in Anna's eyes. But Anna did deign to eat the frosting from the cupcake as a boon to the baker!

There is no better place we could have gone than the zoo on Anna's birthday. We wanted to show her the elephants, the zebras, the apes, and the Dave Matthews (by coincidence, we happened to be at the zoo at the precise hour when Dave Matthews was warming up for his gig that night playing for the Microsoft summer interns. We did see him and I was hassled by a guard for pausing too long to get a peak).

Anna loved the zoo. She especially loved the fact that at the Elephant pen there was a carrot floating in the water pond.

and there were caves to climb in.

my beautiful little 2 year old!

Here she is pointing to that floating carrot and holding what proved to be one of the great toy successes of the day-- a small plastic Elmo, just perfect for a little hand.

reverently approaching a stone lion. The lion was "asleep" and required "tip-toeing."