Joshua's 2nd birthday party! Trains!!

We decided to put off throwing Joshua a birthday party until after David recovered from the (very good, but very intense) PEF/Manna winter retreat at the end of January, so we held this party on February 11.  And because Joshua's big Christmas/birthday present from us this year was a train table, and because he had been obsessed with his train toys and train books for months, choosing a party theme was a no-brainer!

Instead of designing all the party paper goods myself, I ended up buying a personalized set of printables from a really talented Etsy designer, Anders Ruff.  And I was really pleased with how it all turned out!  It was nice to have a fully coordinating set of party items, from the invitation to the birthday banners and food and drink decorations -- the OCD party planner in me was very, very happy.  :)








With the decorations pretty much taken care of for me (all I had to do was print, cut out, and assemble), I got to throw myself into the party baking.  This is actually the one part of party planning about which David kind of has an opinion -- his family always had homemade birthday cakes, so if and when it's possible, he'll always prefer a homemade cake over a store-bought one.  So I started Googling for train cake ideas back in January, and found a Wilton 3D cake pan and some frosting design ideas that I thought looked easy enough for me to try... And I also made up a batch of cupcakes in case the train cake was a total fail!




As it turns out, it was a good thing we had cupcakes, because the birthday boy didn't really like the idea of cutting into "his" big train!  Though we did end up slicing it up for small group the next day, when he wasn't really looking.  :)

We had invited a number of Joshua's friends (and their parents) to come party with us -- but that was the week that the gastroenteritis epidemic hit Princeton.  Many of the kiddos were out of commission that weekend, so we ended up having a slightly smaller party than planned.  But I think that was ultimately a good thing -- we still had five toddlers and a baby, which was more than enough chaos for one little apartment.  And even more importantly, we had just enough locomotives for each toddler to have one of his/her own.  :)






The kids also all loved poring over Joshua's books, finding many a willing parent lap to snuggle in and reading stories together.  Seriously, how cute are these little groupings??






And then Joshua got to relive that wondrous moment last year when he had his very first bite of cake.  :)




We all had such a wonderful time celebrating our dear little man.  It's hard to believe he's already two!  We're so blessed to have such a sweet, loving, fun-filled, rambunctious toddler, and we can't wait to see how he continues to grow and develop in the coming years!