Cate's 3rd Birthday!

Since Anna was born the day before Cate's birthday, we were still in the hospital. We wanted to make sure Cate had a special day (especially because she LOVES birthdays so much), so Nate took her out for smoothies that morning, she made cupcakes with Grandma (complete with all kinds of fingerprints and holes all over the cupcakes), and we had a little party in the hospital room. She finished the night off going for ice cream with Dad...needless to say Cate had a LOT of sugar that day.

So, of course we had to light and blow out candles, right? And of course when Cate wanted to do it again I said sure (b/c I felt guilty about being in the hospital as it was!). And of course we didn't stop to think we were in a HOSPITAL...5 minutes after the candles were blown out 4 nurses coming running in our room looking for fire. Come to find out the smoke detector in our room is connected directly to the fire department (DUH)...thank GOODNESS it didn't go off. So embarassing. But it was worth it - Cate was happy.


Present time!


What a beautiful setting for a birthday party, eh?


On Thursday night we threw Cate a "real" birthday party at home. We invited her friends Hannah and Amelia over...I'm sure she would have loved to have had more friends, but this was nice and small for us and as far as Cate knew it was a huge party. The girls were totally cute and danced like CRAZY people. My mom is the best at doing cool birthday cakes - Cate wanted a blue car birthday cake, so Grandma obliged. Cate sat there and watched her decorate - it was so cute.


Cate and Grandma.


Here's the cake!


The party animals.


Here's the real Party Anna-mal (ha ha). She slept through the entire party - don't know how she did it with those crazy girls running around, but she did. :)


Cate got all kinds of princessy-girly-dress-uppy stuff for her birthday, including this lovely pair of clip-on earrings. They must be really comfortable, huh?


Here she is all dressed up. Nate asked her if he could take a picture and she totally started striking tons of poses - it was so funny and kinda weird - we have NO IDEA where she picked up those moves. Nate and I could not stop laughing. When my sister Anne was in town we were watching Project Runway, at which point Cate told us she wanted to be a "perfect model"...again, have no idea where THAT came from. Apparently she's been practicing.