MINNESOTA BABY: Linna's 2nd birthday party.

Silly birthday girl! Thanks Auntie
Nancy & Uncle Lonny for the wings.

She's still a few days away from turning two years old, but this past weekend we celebrated Linna's 2nd birthday with a big Princess Firefighter party in Minnesota! Thanks to my Dad, we were able to have 25 of Linna's little pals, along with family and friends, celebrate with us at the Hopkins Fire Department. The kids and parents went on firetruck rides, "Sparky" the fire dog made a visit, and we had a lot of fun with a pinata! There was tons of food, including some delicious chicken salad sandwiches made by my mother-in-law, cupcakes made by my cousin Bridget, and a yummy pasta salad that my mom made. I got Linna's Barbie Princess cake from Target for under $40, which I thought was a huge bargain, especially when cake companies wanted to charge me like $200 to make Linna a "custom" birthday cake. For $39.99, Target made a gorgeous Barbie Princess cake WITH Linna's name on it, and I "customized" the cake to fit the Princess Firefighter theme by putting a fire hat on the Barbie's head, and gluing some fairy-princess wings on her back. I was pretty excited about this cake! Plus, she got an actual Barbie with the cake too.

Although I love planning parties, this one would never have happened without all the help from our family! I really appreciate everyone who helped wrangle the kids, set everything up, serve food, dress up in a dog costume, take photos, and clean up afterwards. The only thing that could have made Linna's party better, would have been having Papa Saigh there with us (AJ went back to Singapore a couple weeks ago, while Linna and I stayed in MN for a few more weeks). AJ stayed up until 1 a.m. (Singapore time) so we could Skype him in at noon (CST time) to watch Linna blow out her birthday candles. However, he couldn't see anything with the connection we had, so I just video recorded everyone singing "Happy Birthday" to Linna and showed him the video later. He'll definetly be Skyping in on Linna's actual birthday this coming Thursday. We miss you AJ! It wasn't the same without you. Looks like Linna will be getting yet ANOTHER birthday celebration when we return to Singapore in two weeks! Here's some video of Linna at her birthday party...

Other than a broken ceramic firetruck (sorry Dad), and a toddler's first bee sting (sorry Dylan), Linna's birthday party went off without a hitch. She had a blast playing with her little friends, and LOVED Sparky! Linna almost fell asleep opening her presents around 1 p.m., so she was wiped out when I laid her down for a nap around 1:30 p.m.

Thanks to everyone who came and made Linna's birthday party really special!