Happy 2nd Birthday Erika!

Today I took the day off of work to celebrate one of the best days in my life...the day my beautiful Erika was born. I often find myself replaying that day many times in my head and then I just look at her in awe. Erika is everything I every wanted and so much more. Birthday's have taken on a whole new meaning ever since I became a mommy.I decorated the living room and set the gifts up last night so that when Erika came down in the morning she would be surprised. I put out gifts from Mommy and Daddy, Damiane', Debbie, Fran and Aunt Peggie & Uncle Joe. Erika really got so many nice gifts. Clothing, a potty doll, play food, coloring books, a little people garage, doll diapers, the fish swim ring in the picture, a swimming Nemo...and so much more. It is so touching to me that so many people give Erika gifts. Oh that's right and she also got a bunch of Thomas The train stuff. AND....she still has gifts coming her way. LUCKY girl!

I also re-did her bathroom for her to make it more "Erika friendly." Now it is a jungle theme. It looks really cute and when I showed her she said "I like it." Sometimes she just really makes us laugh with the things that she says.When Peter carried her down in the morning, she said "oh look, my birthday!" and then ran over to the table of goodies. She enjoyed all the decorations I put up too. Especially the "happy Birthday" banner. She was all warmed up on opening presents from when we saw my mother so it didn't take her too long to get through all of them.Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling too well so it was difficult for me to fully enjoy the whole scene but I tried my best to hang in there for Erika's sake. Once she opened the Little People garage, she was very into helping Daddy put it together. Today she was much quicker with tearing through her gifts than the day with my mother.Erika is such a constant ray of sunshine in our lives. I am positive that since the day I had her 2 years ago, there has not been even one single day that I did not smile. It is just impossible to not smile when you have Erika. She is such a joy and so full of love. My goal for her birthday was just really make her happy and let her know how much she is loved.We even had some party horns that I had picked up at the dollar store. those were a huge hit between Daddy and Erika. The two of them were blowing horns at 6:30 in the morning. I had all intentions of joining them but not with the queasy tummy! I also had plans of taking Erika to the movies, but we decided to skip that too.After some good play time with all her new toys, Erika took a bath and did some night night. I even took a nap which is a miracle for me. I am usually feeling too guilty to nap and thinking i should get this and that done. When she woke up we ordered some yummy pizza and Erika's favorite garlic knots! It was a treat for sure.

And then before we knew it, it was cake time. I didn't want to do cake too late because of bed time so we did it late afternoon.

Erika was pretty excited over her cake. It was cute.If I remember correctly right after she blew out the candles I think she dipped her mouth directly into the cake! Funny part is that once she had the piece on a plate, she had very little interest in actually eating it!

It was a great birthday and Peter and I enjoyed giving Erika quality time as a family.

Opening a gift from Aunt Judy.