Braden's Birthday Party

Today we celebrated Braden's 2nd birthday and we were joined by our friends and family to help us celebrate. I had a really hard time coming up with a theme for his birthday this year. I thought about dinosaurs but I have an awesome idea for the cake and I want him to be old enough to enjoy it, then i thought about a school bus theme since he is OBSESSED, but it was hard finding birthday accessories so I finally came up with a construction party theme. I ordered yellow hard hats for all of the kids that said "Happy 2nd Birthday Braden" and I bought tool belts from Home Depot and personalized them for each child. I also made construction lunch bags for each child that had a sandwich, chips, and apples and they were each personalized with a construction name tag that was stapled to each of the brown lunch sacks. My dad and Brad set up a tarp and cones in the back with construction tape and we put some of Braden's trucks out for the kids to play with.

These are the tags for the construction lunch bags....Of course I forgot to take a picture of them on the lunch bags! :)

Braden LOVES "big trucks Vroom...Vroom" so I knew that this would be a great theme for him. The thing that he love most was his AWESOME birthday cake that i ordered from Sweet Treats in Covington. It was designed to match his invitations and it had brownies in the back of the dump truck and before the party even started he climbed on the table 3 times to grab a brownie! He has been singing Happy Birthday to himself since Thursday when I took cupcakes for his preschool party. It is the cutest thing ever. He sang it multiple times today at the part and he has been serenading us with his beautiful birthday song this evening as well. What a sweet boy! He even sings "....Happy birthday Braden, happy birthday to you". PRECIOUS! I hope that everyone had a great time and we really appreciate everyone joining us to celebrate with our incredible little boy.

****Just a side note about my evening....I am crazy about taking pictures and I LOVE my camera. Well tonight my precious camera will join other fallen camera in camera heaven.....my eyes are actually dry as I write this. After I napped, while Braden was napping this afternoon, I decided to transfer my pics to my computer. Well to make a long story short, my card reader messed up (burned up/damaged the tongue& groove in the card) my CF card which damaged my camera when I tried to put it back in my camera. After a complete meltdown about losing Braden's birthday pics (the camera can be replaced, but my pics from his birthday can't) and lots of prayers (thanks mom, dad, Brad and Lori) I called Wollf Camera and they told me to bring everything in quickly. They were able to save my pictures and transferred them to a CD, but it will be $300 to fix my camera and Brad and I decided that we will just put that money towards a newer camera. Also Brad bought me a new flash for my camera for Christmas that was almost $200 so please pray that we will be able to return the flash. We are thinking about changing from Olympus SLR to either Nikon or Canon SLR just because it is so hard to find accessories and parts for the Olympus. If anyone has any opinions on which brand we should get let us know as I will begin researching shortly. Also I have 2 awesome lenses to sell that are in excellent condition if anyone is interested.