Birthday Girl

Today is Gabriella's 2nd birthday. I can't believe my baby is already 2. She's still too young to even realize what a birthday is but she sure is loving getting the gifts. We had a Rains family party for her on Saturday (my parents were only in town until yesterday) and tonight we're having a Smith family party. It's hard having a December birthday. Last night I went down to our gift hiding room to sort through the gifts. I had to decide what to give her for her birthday and what to save for Santa.
This is Gabriella's "cake" for the Rains family birthday party. That's the kind of donut you get when Grandpa Rains does the choosing, but at least he chose chocolate. No matter, Gabriella loved the giant donut. Once the candles were blown out she insisted they stayed in the donut. (Notice the blinds in the background. They were hung by myself and my dad just 3 hours before this party. For the past 18 months we've had broken blinds that had to be tied up with a string. These are cordless and are wonderful.)

This is Gabriella and her daddy on her birthday morning. We had to wake her up in order to open her gifts before the older kids went to school and Dad to work. She's not exactly a happy morning person (kind of like her mom).

Gabriella loves puppies and bunnies (she even calls our hamster a bunny).

Gabriella's hands had to be held because she thought the candles were so fascinating she wanted to touch them, not to mention poke at the bunny again (look closer at the closeup photo of the cake).