Happy Birthday Abe!

Today is a special day at our house!  It is Abe's 2nd birthday.  This time last year he was living in a foster care facility in Ethiopia and I am pretty certain that no one was acknowledging his birthday.  That made today extra sweet as we know this is his first round of birthday cake and present opening.  I must say, they seem to "get it" much better at 2 than they do at 1, making it extra fun.  

At our house, the tradition is that you get an Elmo cake for your 2nd birthday.  I never intended for that to be the tradition.  In fact, I am extremely over the whole Elmo thing.  But, the first two had Elmo cakes because of Abby's early love for Elmo and then, since they had both had Elmo, they insisted all of the others have Elmo too.  So I spent the morning making Elmo cake number 5 and it was a hit.  Elmo is actually about the only character that Abe can identify, so it was fun to hear him squeal "ELMO!" all day long.  

I have actually laid down an Elmo mandate at our house.  The kids kept asking Abe, "Whose world is it?"  To which they have trained him to respond, "Elmo's world!"  I finally put my foot down and informed them that it is not Elmo's world and they have since tried to reprogramed him to respond to the question with the response "Jesus' world!"

Anyway, here are some photos of our little birthday celebration in honor of Mr. Abe:

Here is the birthday dinner spread.  Nana's in town so that means homemade chicken and dumplings with cornbread along with Abe's favorites- baked beans and glazed carrots.

These were cupcakes Abby fashioned from leftover cupcakes and icing with some marshmallows thrown in.

Abe with his homemade party hat.

Elmo cake- number 5 in a series

Abe eating Elmo's eye, hopefully he won't need therapy for watching us dissect Elmo.

Cake and ice cream were a hit!

Abe got the hang of opening presents pretty fast!

He also got the hang of "mine!" pretty fast too.  This little robot claw appears to be his favorite gift thus far.