My big boy is two!

Two years has flown by. I know it is such a cliche... but it never ceases to be true! Steven has grown into such a fun, chill toddler. I love watching him grow, developing a personality and constantly doing new things. I think every day he learns a new word or does something new. He loves to be tickled, play outside, and go places in the car. Seriously, he always asks to "Go? Go?....Car??" He's pretty much obsessed with all things transportation. He's such a boy. He's adorable.

Amongst his favorite activities these days is movies, especially Pixar films. Toy Story and Cars are the top two faves in our house right now. It was a toss up as to which one we would theme his birthday party off of, but the winner was Cars. This turned out to be a super fun party to plan! I got a few ideas off of Pinterest, and the rest followed.

His face as we sang to him was priceless. I love that he enjoyed it so much this year!

For his actual birthday, ironically Labor Day, we had a little party with just us at the house. We made him a special "2" cake and he opened some small presents. He loved the Lightning McQueen slippers the best. Then we watched Madagascar with him, another one of his presents, which was an instant fave ("Mamimals" as he calls it).

Our big party the next weekend ended being an awesome celebration with lots of our family and friends. Steven had a great time at his party, especially getting presents that he could ride on! I said over and over that I wasn't going to go all out this year on his party. Honestly, I have come to the conclusion that I really don't know how to do "low key" anything. I'm not sure why...guess it's something to work on. Anyways, his party was smaller than last year. There was no pinata. Ha!

"Helping" mommy make his cake

The play cars on the cake were his
favorite. They were missing off the
cake most of the day, and when they
were on, he was running them around
the track at the base of the cake.
 



Backside view of the cake.

His cake turned out great! Now, the perfectionist in me thinks I could have done it better, but he loved this cake and that's the whole point of it, right? He had a very hard time keeping his hands off of that cake (as seen to the left).

The rest of the food was themed for transportation (must give a shout out to my friend Beth here for the idea!). We had racecar jigglers, wheel pretzels, wagon wheel pasta salad, and the fruit was all car-themed (see pics below). Everything was a hit!

 It was slightly exhausting... but it was so worth it seeing him enjoy himself so much. I felt like he definitely got it. At least, he knew we were celebrating him. Side note here, I swear we are not doing a huge party next year.