Sunny-Side Up: Happy 2nd Birthday Caden: Party #1

Call me lazy or call me EXTREMELY intelligent...but we decided and by we, I mean me, decided not to have a BIG birthday bash for Caden this year. Between Christmas, Baby Cox 2.0 and the Baylor Bowl game I just didn't think I could make it happen and with the opportunity for family to be together outside of the Christmas holiday I thought there is not better (easier) route than to throw TWO small family birthday parties. Originally, we thought we'd do one big party in Houston the day after the Bowl game, but Albi and Uncle Josh had to hustle back to the office and didn't get a chance to even stay the night in Houston, so it ended up being a Cox-side birthday bash and an Evans-side birthday bash which worked out FABULOUSLY. Caden didn't have to spread his love too thin and everyone got to enjoy the Chade during his birthday!

Prior to me not deciding to host a big birthday bash, I had already decided that Elmo would be the theme of any kind of party we threw... for obvious reasons that I don't need to explain! :) So I enlisted the help of my friend Jaime Ferg who is an Elmo-themed party pro and she gave me the inside scoop on turning a cookie/cupcake/cake into our favorite red monster! Thanks Jaime!! SO because Caden is WEIRD and doesn't like cake I decided just to do cookies... ELMO cookies of course. So in between Christmas in Say-yo and our trip to Houston I spent a lot of time with a tube of red icing, creating these materpieces... :)

Okay so they may not be masterpieces, but Caden knew EXACTLY who they were and that is entirely the point!! :) After the bowl game on Wednesday evening and the fun trip to the Galleria on Thursday morning, Thursday around lunch time we headed over to Dave and Buster's for Caden's first of two Elmo birthday parties! We thought it would be a fun place for Caden to run wild and play games and eat some good food too... I am pretty sure Dave and Busters' food trumps Chuck E Cheese's ANY day! :) And more than anything it was our way to say thanks to our sweet, loving family members who dote on Caden all year long! So to D&B's we went...

Before our food arrived we used the time to open up Caden's gifts from Aunt Ree and Uncle Tag and Nana and Bop too! First gift...

The lead up from Christmas made Caden extra prepared for the additional gift opening he'd do for his birthday... he's getting REALLY good at it! :)

The first gift was the CUTEST little argyle shirt and the second...

His VERY own suitcase! Complete with handle and wheels! Caden LOVES him some suitcases, so Aunt Ree Ree and Uncle Tag knew they had hit the jackpot when they came across this!! Now if he could only pack himself... we'd be in business! :)

Check out the face above... he is EXCITED about this next gift from Nana and Bop!

And you know why? Because it was ELMO PJs... YAY!! Next up... some accessories for Caden's new train table... a Thomas the Train bridge and water tower!! Thanks Nana and Bop!! He has LOVED it!!

After we gobbled up our yummy lunch, we had some singing to do... and some Elmo's to eat! The video below is of the whole candle lighting, singing, blowing and HUGE applausing that went into the official celebration of Caden's birthday!! Too cute!!

After our tongues were red like Elmo we headed out into the game room to let the REAL fun begin! Caden was in awe of the place and headed straight for one of my favorite games... Ski Ball... SO SO SO FUN! He and Daddy scored some MAJOR tickets together! It was too funny how quickly Caden caught on to the whole ticket phenomena... he knew that the more tickets the better and he was collecting them FAST! Bop had the highly esteemed job of holding the ticket bucket... I am sure he felt honored for Caden to have found him trustworthy of his precious ticket collection! After each game he played was over and the tickets started coming out he'd yell, "Ti-tets!!!" Yay, Caden you got some MORE tickets!

Part of the actual fun of the party was that we all got to play a few games too, thus the reason Caden's ticket bucket continued to get so full!

Amongst all of the Ski Ball their were rides in the Jungle Safari Jeep...

Shots taken on the ever-difficult moving basket...

Footballs thrown into holes in the wall, Aunt Ree Ree taking her turn at virtual jump roping, pulling various levers on a particular game that did nothing besides spit out large amounts of tickets, and pushing coins into the sliding board to see if other coins would fall into the pit of despair that would inevitably spit out even MORE tickets!! The games were FUN and Caden was a HOT, SWEATY mess by the time we were through!! He had a BLAST and was super excited that his ticket-winnings scored him a big stuffed doggie and a velcro-armed monkey! What more could a guy ask for on his 2nd birthday, I ask you?! What more?!

And now for a video that captured the TRUE excitement of the D&B Cox-family party... are you ready for the SKI BALL Champion of Texas, straight from the Rock... the one, the only...

CHADE-MAN!!!