Happy Birthday to my darling girl!

Today my sweet baby turned 2... and is quickly approaching the end of being a baby. She is really blossoming into a little girl before our eyes. Between the rapidly expanding vocabulary and the sassy attitude, we have ourselves a toddler! But we couldn't love that sweet face more. She brightens our days and fills our lives with joy. We can't wait to watch her grow and to see what God has in store for her life. Whatever it is, I feel certain about one thing. We were definitely getting some divine guidance when we decided to name her Gabriella, er, Gabby. I'm not kidding that girl talked non-stop from 9am to noon today. Three straight hours. I almost did not make it through. Fortunately, they were mostly (not all) sweet conversations, er, monologues that would be enjoyable in their own right. But stringing three hours of them together was quite a feat. That girl is amazing in more ways than one!

We started the day with me, Matt and Oliver going into her room with two pieces of cinnamon toast with candles in them to start off her second year right! With breakfast and lots of sugar! We sang the birthday song which she never gets tired of and Oliver brought her a little present he helped wrap for her. He then proceeded to put his foot on top of her cinnamon toast when we told him those were for her and not him. Just trying to keep things real for y'all.

After dropping Oliver off at school, we headed to meet Matt's mom at Sprinkles to get that birthday girl some cake. Every birthday girl needs cake at 10 in the morning, right (wait... maybe THAT'S why she talked for 3 hours straight: a massive sugar rush). The cupcakes were very rich and yummy... so we should have split one between us instead of each getting one. Oh well. I'm sure they were calorie free.

We are very en vogue in the Dillard family only shopping at the chic-est cupcake boutiques.

Posing with Granna and showing off the cupcake shirt mommy made in celebration of her 2nd birthday! A cupcake shirt... how fitting!

On her own, with no prompting from anyone, when presented with the assortment of cupcakes on display, she chose the "Hook a Horns" cupcake. I think some family members (who shall remain nameless) are working overtime in the early indoctrination program. The Cottonbowl is coming up this weekend so they had their OU and UT cupcakes on proud display.

Digging in

Loving that icing!

Loving that girl!

Then after daddy got home, we headed to Chuck E Cheese to play the night away at one of the kids' favorite hang outs. I had a birthday coupon for 20 free tokens... which we split between the two kids. Gabriella decided to sit in this Photo Ride (which I'm sure all of you moms recognize) and continuously feed it tokens each time it stopped moving. I have at least 8 of these strikingly similar pictures for the scrapbook. She loved it... and since it WAS her birthday, I bit my tongue and let her spend all of her money in one place.

We also ran into a couple from our church and had a nice conversation with them... only to discover all 4 of us graduated from Trinity the same year! And Trinity is a small school... so it was interesting and surprising that we didn't really catch on to that at all. As we began to reflect we thought we might have remembered each other, but once you are approaching 30, memories begin to blend together. But it was a very fun and cool ending to our evening.

So happy birthday baby girl. We love you cupcake!