Happy Birthday to Eli! (part 1)

This is 2 days late, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ELI! He turned 2 on Saturday! He's such a joy (most of the time), I can't even remember what life was like before him! What DID I do all day with all that time?? We celebrated his birthday all weekend long. Kevin even took a 3-day from work and had Friday off to be home with us. What a treat!

Saturday we started the day off with star-shaped pancakes. Eli loves pancakes (cancakes, as Eli calls them), and today when I asked him if he was ready to eat [lunch] he said "pancakes?" =) But Saturday he had a bit of a cold and must not have had much of an appetite because he didn't really eat any of his pancakes at all! Bummer!

After breakfast he opened his first present. Legos from Grandma and Grandpa! While Eli was playing Legos, Kevin and I took turns getting ourselves showered and dressed for the day.

Then time for present #2: a digital camera also from Grandma and Grandpa! While he was busy with this, I slipped out to get some birthday balloons for the presentation of the next present...

Time for the tricycle! I tied a balloon onto it and parked it on the sidewalk for him to see when he came outside. It'll take him a little bit to learn how to ride it, but in time I think he'll really love it.

After the tricycle, we broke out the bubbles machine from Aunt Carri, because we LOVE bubbles!

Then we had lunch (at McDonalds) and naps. While Eli was napping I wrapped a bunch of presents and left them out accidentally (they were intended to be opened the next day at his birthday party) When Eli got up and saw two of the presents sitting there, he got excited and said "Open?" So of course, we let him open them then. So the next hour he spent playing with his new laptop from Great Aunt Eunie and Uncle Peter...

It was nice outside so it was time to get out again and find another present! (I "hid" it under the tree)
He loves baseball so we got him a small bat and ball. And he's so good at it too!

there's the ball...
he picks it up...
...and pitches it to daddy, right on!

But... that only happened like once and then Eli was off throwing the ball everywhere. So Kevin set up a make shift tee, using some tube from our old vacuum. Very creative he is.

After baseball we ate dinner (spaghetti!). Because we were planning on having cake at his party the next day, we didn't have anything for the actual day. But when we mentioned his birthday to our neighbor, she kindly ran into her house and came out with three cupcakes for us! So fun! So we had cupcakes before heading off to bed!

So that was his birthday! I'll do another post of his second day of celebrations!