When you turn 2...

your mom gives you your first French braid.

Then she makes you pose for a pic over

and over

again.

Then when Papa gets home, the real celebrating begins.

We take you to your favorite place to eat by your request (a girl after my own heart!)

You dig in,

and thoroughly enjoy yourself.

You invite cute party guests.

We sing happy birthday for the gazillionth time today.

By the third celebration (*see below), you finally have the candle blowing thing down.

And then we end the evening with present opening and a wild rumpus.

You also celebrated earlier in the week.

Below are the other three families that we went Christmas tree hunting with:
Scotts

Eliasons

Hartmans

We had a progressive dinner (a week before Natty's b-day) with all of them so that we could see everyone's trees decorated (so fun!) Since we were the dessert house and many of Natalie's friends were already all together, we had everyone sing (softly so as not to frighten the timid 2 year old) Happy Birthday to her. She's eating her special soy ice cream because she couldn't have the other desserts.

Natalie also had a birthday party this past weekend with Grandma and Grandpa.

Here are some other guests who were invited:

She got to eat a real cupcake! We got a super yummy recipe from a friend for vegan chocolate cupcakes (no milk, no eggs!) They were very moist and tasted like normal cupcakes. We used Pamela's vanilla frosting mix and substituted the butter with soy butter. It was super yummy, but Pamela's mix is basically organic powered sugar and vanilla powder. Next time I'll just use regular powdered sugar but hey, we had it on hand.

Only our kid would ask for a fork to eat her cupcake!

But she finally did just dive in,

Sort of.

Happy birthday, Natalie! You are a package full of joy, laughter, smiles, and silliness. We love you to pieces and are so glad that you are ours.