Hot Dog! Jack Turns Two!!!

Can you believe my little boy is two?! We celebrated with some of his favorite people, including his two grammies, Grandpa and Pops, and Uncle Daniel. He's such a lucky kid to be surrounded by grandparents and family that love him.

Our original plan for Jack's birthday was to be in Disney World, celebrating with Mickey Mouse. That fell through at the last minute however, so I tried to throw together a semi-festive party for my little man, which was most appropriately Mickey Mouse themed!

So I've been watching entirely too much Cake Boss lately, and got very ambitious at my plans to make a gluten free Mickey Mouse cake. I printed out the face I wanted to do, figured out the clever wording, and got to work. The cake itself turned out quite tasty and you couldn't even tell it was GF. I made the butter cream frosting from scratch, because really, it's just sooooo much better. I trimmed the layers to make them perfectly flat, and stacked them up. Up until this point, I thought I was so awesome and started daydreaming of charging big bucks for making wedding cakes. But the Lord, as always, saw that I needed some humbling. Problem number one: my icing that was supposed to be RED turned out a lovely shade of hot pink. I'd used just about all of my food coloring and didn't notice how pink it was until the cake was frosted. Problem 2: my plans for making Mickey black with oreo cookie crumbs were crushed because I realized it was pointless to contaminate a gluten free cake with dang wheat filled cookie crumbs!! Problem 3: I didn't have the tools I wanted to do all the ambitious things I'd planed. Problem 4: For a most tragic ending to my drama my cake broke apart!!!! It split not just once, but twice!!!! I guess GF doesn't hold together like normal flour cake. Either that or I just completely stink at baking. AAAAAAAanyway, it tasted dang delicious, even if it didn't look like I'd hoped. Not even CLOSE to what I'd hoped. Oh well. Jack could tell it was Mickey Mouse and screamed with delight as soon as he saw it.

He got lots of great presents and my house has been so pleasant the last few days with him playing with all of his new toys. His favorite things were of coarse, his new stuffed Mickey who goes with us EVERYWHERE and even gets tucked in at night next to Jack, and his new, pocket size version of Thomas the Train. His other most favorite thing was the card from his Grandma that sings. He opens it and delightedly dances around. Too cute!

I absolutely adore my two year old and love to watch him all day long. He makes us laugh so hard with all the funny things he has to say. He's started getting a very stern look and pushes his eyebrows together when he means business. He has started to get the hang of "please" and frequently requests "please Nemo" as soon as we get in the car. He is obsessed with Finding Nemo and has probably watched it 50 times in his short life. He can spot a Mickey, Elmo, or Thomas from a mile away. It's seriously quite impressive. When he really wants something, he gets overly excited and studders "wa wa wa wa wa wa want Nemo" for example. He loves candy, applesauce, hot dogs and cheese. He refuses to eat any vegetables and can pick them out of EVERYTHING. I've tried many methods of masking them, and the only successful ones so far are mushing them up in applesauce, and disguising them in zucchini bread.

Jack loves his daddy, and loves to help him with handy work around the house. He folds his arms for prayer and yells "AMEN" when it's over. He does this in church too and people have started asking me if we're raising him southern baptist. Hey, the boy's on fire with the Holy Spirit what can I say?! :)

Happy Birthday my favorite little man!!!