Teresa's Birthday Party

Look, I'll just tell you now: this post has a lot of pictures in it. Like, A LOT of pictures. We took over 600 pictures of T's birthday party. But don't worry, not all 600 of them are in this post.


Only, like, 4-something.


Ha ha! I'm kidding, it's way less than that.


Anyway, for Tressa's second birthday, I wanted her to just have an awesome day of doing whatever she wanted to. We decided to take her to Greenbelt Park, which is a national park up here, between us and D.C. We'd been there twice before and T loved it. It is the perfect place for Tressa-like children, it has several playground areas and tons of open fields. It was so nice to just let her run and play and do whatever she wanted without us ever having to tell her no about where she could go or play. We had a picnic there, but of course T was not too interested in eating much, there was too much fun stuff to do!

Teresa and Granny had fun on the slide:






She did some swinging with Daddy:



Nora snoozed through most of the party:









Love it. This girl has endless energy and this was the perfect place for her to run some of it out:



She did finally take a break to eat some chips:



And Nora woke up near the end, so we took some pictures of her too :)





Both sets of grandparents got to come to T's party. Man, was it nice having six adults to two children!

With Granny and Grandad Ricker:



And Gigi and Poppie Milligan:









Ha! T is totally picking a diaper wedgie in this pic...





I can't believe she is two already! She can't believe it either, apparently. She's the best.



After two hours at the park (she still cried when we left, she would stay outside all day if she could) we headed home for cake and presents. She did not love getting sung to before opening presents. But then, wouldn't you cry if someone put a huge pile of presents in front of you, and then made you sit through their mediocre singing before you could open them?



I guess I should have flipped that picture. She was leaning against Marc's legs, and he took it looking down at her, so that's why it's upside down. Now you know :)



After last years cake, I swore I would make a much simpler cake this year. But then a friend offered the use of their Mickey Mouse pan, so how could I say no? I knew T would love it. I was soooo nervous it would stick and not come out of the pan right, so I shortening-ed and floured that baby three times before I put the cake in to bake. And it came out perfectly! Seriously, I was shocked.





T loved it, she kept asking to "open da Mackey".





We sang to her again before the cake, and she liked it a little better that time:

We sing happy birthday to T from Tara Milligan on Vimeo.

Nora didn't get any cake, but she did get to hang out with Grandad!



This one is the best, too. She is closing in on the four month mark already!



Just in case you wanted to see even MORE pictures from T's party, you may look on the facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150195268916205.308248.532436204&l=db5ab4dc2b