Our Two is now two!

We celebrated our sweet Madeline's second birthday this weekend! She'd been looking forward to her "bert-day part-ee" for some time. . . And there are few things that excite our girls like the news of a party, even if it's only a family party!

Madeline's birthday banner was meant to hang outside, but the wind wouldn't cooperate.

We marked the second anniversary of Madeline's arrival with a bubble party. Nan lent us her bubble machine (because a Nan has marvelous contraptions like bubble machines) and that, along with a variety of bubble wands, made our little backyard a bubble extravaganza for our three and their younger cousin!

Madeline raced right in!

Kathleen loved the biggest bubble wand.

And Indy seemed happy to watch the festivities.

Eventually, we moved indoors for supper and gifts. Madeline couldn't wait to begin reading her new Richard Scarry book.

All of the gifts made Madeline delighted. She wore her new, homemade "2" shirt (a bit of a family tradition) with pride . . . along with a new backpack. And although she could nearly fit inside that backpack, she wore it all evening.

Testing, testing. . . Is this thing on, people?

When we'd asked Madeline what kind of cake she'd like for her birthday, she replied without hestitation: BIG! We did our best to accommodate her request with a nice, double layer chocolate cake. (It was Mama's first foray into royal icing for the dots and lettering.)

Somehow, somewhere along the line, we'd promised Kathleen that we could have both cake and cupcakes at Madeline's birthday. So we made cupcakes, too. Blue ones, at Madeline's request.

And since we had two birthday cakes, we had two chances to blow out birthday candles. That turned out to be a good thing, because candle-blowing wasn't exactly Madeline's strength.

Could you tell? Kathleen finally blew them out for her! Try number two:

Success! Madeline was pretty darn proud.

We can hardly believe that our sweet second-born, our Maddie Beth, is two. We are so grateful to God for this little girl -- for her snuggles and spunk and vibrant personality.

Happy 2nd Birthday, Madeline! Hooray!

(If, by some chance, there weren't enough photographs in this post already, all the photos from Madeline's birthday can be found here!)