Happy 2nd Birthday, and a few days

 This post seems like it's taken me FOREVER to get posted.  Geez, I started this last Saturday night and it's been lingering in my list of posts for days.  I realize I already shared with you all about Gavin's birthday party, but I thought some of you might want to know about his actual birthday!  He had an enjoyable day and knew that something was different about the day.

For starters, I made biscuits for breakfast (suppose to be blueberry muffins, but at 7:30am I realized I didn't have a muffin pan to cook them in).  Gavin waited, um, patiently for the biscuits to cook.  

I sang Happy Birthday to him before eating his biscuits and even put some candles in his biscuit so he'd really know something was special about the day.  Only problem-- didn't have a lighter or matches to light the candles for him to blow out so we just pretended.

Brooks was able to take half the day off and came home around lunch time.  Yes, Gavin is still in his pajamas from the morning.  We played around the house all morning and were too busy to get dressed.  Gavin was so excited to have Brooks home!  At this point, Gavin was telling us it was his birthday.  So cute!

Once Gavin, and Brooks, woke up from their afternoon naps, Gavin got a call from his best friend, Cade.  Cade was singing Happy Birthday to Gavin in this picture and he was so excited to hear Cade'e voice.  It was priceless.  Gavin missed calls from his Grammy, and Captain and Kimmie.  They called while he was sleeping, but we made sure to tell him they called!  And yes, again, Gavin was still in his pajamas (so was I) and it was almost 5pm our time.  That's the beauty of living on a compound and not having many places to go.  

We decided to go out to the beach to play for the evening to help celebrate Gavin's birthday.  We've gone out to our beach before, but never made it in the water.  That night was our first.  Gavin was excited to be out there and actually enjoyed the beach since there wasn't ANY waves to scare him.  He did, however, have a confused look on his face when he walked into the water and felt how warm it was-- it was like bath water warm.  It really was a weird sensation to feel sand between your feet and have the water surrounding you feel hot.  Gavin got over the feeling and quickly realized the water was salty.  He swam a little and threw the ball with Brooks.  Micah and Stephanie were out there with us so they enjoyed the fun, too!  

We went out to dinner (totally last minute plans) to "celebrate" Gavin's birthday.  We went to a Thai Restaurant (the one I spoke about in my previous post) and ate some delicious food.  Gavin was showing off his choo choo train to Stephanie and Micah.  They didn't have desserts at the restaurant so we weren't  able to get Gavin anything sweet nor did anyone come sing Happy Birthday to him.  Oh well, mommy and daddy made up for that once we got home! 

The way we spent our day (not doing anything and just hanging out at the house) for some reason, we hadn't given Gavin his birthday presents from us yet.  After dinner, we got home and pulled them out and surprised him.  He was really excited.  Thankfully, I thought ahead and picked out Gavin's birthday present back in the states and had put it on our air shipment so it would have been here in time for his birthday.  Gavin has taken a HUGE liking to trains- almost obsession- so it wasn't difficult to decide to get him some Thomas the Trains and a miniature train track.  We really wanted to get him the big train table that is practically a city built around a train track, but we weren't sure if we would have had room for it here.  Anyways, he opened his gifts and was truly happy to have some new trains and a cool track! 

Needless to say, Gavin stayed up til almost 10pm playing with his new trains and track.  He was very grateful for the gift, too.  After he had opened it all he walked over to both Brooks and I, gave us each a hug and a kiss.  He told us, "Thank you!" and went back to playing with his trains.  It was a priceless moment!  Happy Birthday Gavin!  We love you!

One more thing- I don't know if I mentioned this, but Gavin was with Stephanie and I when we found the bike they got Gavin for his birthday.  He was so excited about it and did not want to let it out of his sight!  We had an hour or so drive back to our compound the day we went shopping and this is how Gavin rode home THE.ENTIRE.WAY.  Promise!  Not kidding.  He held onto the bike the whole ride home!