Lea is 2!

Someone must've been dreaming of a white second birthday, because we woke up to about 4 inches of snow, somewhat unexpectedly. (They'd been calling for a dusting.) Lea was thrilled. "It's snowy outside! See? See? See it's snowy outside!"

It was freezing, so we didn't last long outside before coming in for Lea's first hot chocolate. Also a big hit.



Most of the rest of the day was spent preparing for her party. We'd gone back and forth about whether we felt like throwing a party; I was afraid that our unusual house layout would be a challenge for families with little kids, but in the end we decided to just go for and make it as simple as possible. This meant simple food-- pizza from Bella's and cupcakes made from the box-- but preparing the house was still complicated, because we had to move tons of stuff around just to make sure there was a place for people to sit. I really only got pictures of the kids' section (we used our gigantic coffee table for the little ones, with milk crates to sit on.)

We had 11 kids under 6 and 11 adults. Not too bad. It was noisy and messy and chaotic, but totally worth doing. We realize that we actually have a nice core group of similarly-minded parents, who don't expect a children's birthday party to necessarily involve favor bags and organized activities; it's perfectly fine (preferable, actually) to just socialize and let the kids run around and wear each other out. Not bad at all.