Another Successful Celebration!

In Japan, birthdays seem pretty low key.  Kids traditionally wear all new clothes and may receive a bag of candy wishing them long life.  In Brazil, instead of birthday "spankings" kids pull on the earlobes of the birthday boy or girl, once for each year.  At my house, I've started setting the kids presents, balloons and cake on our dining table so I can pose the kids with it all and take a commemorative picture.  This is the first year I've done this with Mr. A.  I hadn't made a tradition of it for his first year.  Last year we had a small BBQ with friends and forgot to get the "birthday photo" before we cut his cake.  This is the best picture I got of Mr. A and his 2nd birthday cake.

Mr. A and his presents.

This year, the girls were SO excited to help open presents and eat cake they almost didn't let me get a picture again.  In the end, they remembered their own birthday pictures and helped set everything up.  They also made their funniest faces so the birthday boy would laugh for his pictures. 

The Dump Truck Cake

Another little tradition we have is choosing the cake.  I've always loved how excited they get about their cakes.  We talk about them for weeks, till they really know what they want.  Whether we buy one or make our own they always have great ideas and cannot wait to have a cake with their name on it.  This year, Mr. A saw a construction themed cake in the bakery display and that's all he had eyes for.  He didn't want to look through the design book.  He didn't want to consider other themes.  He just wanted the dump truck cake.  The word "excitement" doesn't do justice to how Mr. A reacted when he knew he had his dump truck cake.  He literally could not take his eyes off it.  Later, after we'd cut the cake, he didn't even want to eat it. He only wanted to play with the equipment.  

Otherwise, our birthday celebrations are usually pretty low key and vary from year to year.  However, I do have to share what we finally found for his big gift.  I actually spotted it as we drove past the yard and garden department at our local big box store.  As soon as I saw it, I knew he had to have it.  The picture on the left show Mr. A sitting in our turtle sandbox.  But that's obviously not your run of the mill sand.  You can see it's brilliant blue.  Yes, Crayola has come out with it's own line of super, incredibly cool play sand. 
I couldn't believe it when I saw it, and it was simply a matter of luck that I did.  We haven't really used our  turtle since we built a huge sandbox into our landscaping, but it's the perfect place for the new blue sand.

It's safe to say Mr. A had a fabulous birthday!

The birthday boy taking a rest with some new equipment.