Eddie's Second Birthday

Due to the timing of my exam, I didn't want to throw Eddie a birthday party...at least until after my exam was out of the way. Lucky for me, he doesn't know the difference so I figured we'd do something in September. Even luckier for me, my mom decided to throw him a party in Livermore since we had to be there to attend a wedding. I chose the Thomas the Tank Engine theme since Eddie loooooooooooooves choo-choos right now. She took care of the decorations, party favors, food, and cake.
We arrived in Livermore on Friday afternoon. After dropping our stuff at the house, my mom dropped me off at the library so I could study before dinner. Once the library closed, it was a short walk over to Emil Villa's for dinner.

Saturday I took a break from studying and instead just hung out. My dad had fixed up an old lathe we inherited from Dave's grandfather so we played with that for a while. Eddie rode his bike around a LOT that day, too. There's a little slope in the backyard and he'd really get going fast!

That night we got dressed up in our fancy clothes to go to Kristin and Caesar's wedding at Poppy Ridge golf course. It was a nice ceremony and we got to sit near another grade school friend, Elizabeth, and her parents for the ceremony and dinner afterward. We chose the steak for dinner and it was GOOD. The cake took forever and a day to be served, but it was worth waiting for! Edward and Jennifer crashed the wedding an hour before it was over (I checked with Kristin ahead of time and she didn't mind). Too bad they got there just after the bar closed. Oh well. Jennifer and I had tons of fun dancing.

The next morning I headed back to the library to study. At 3pm my mom picked me up from the library and we went to Almond Avenue Park to set up the party. It was a pain to carry all the coolers and heavy stuff from the school parking lot to where the tables were, so I decided to remove one of the walkway barricade posts in order to drive into the park. Genius!

We set up the table cloths and all that while Edward and Jennifer went to the store to pick up all the food. My mom ordered SO much food from Safeway that we were literally eating mini croissant sandwiches for days afterward (even for breakfast...).

All the guests showed up around 4pm. The guests were some of my high school friends who are still in Livermore, plus all of our family friends. We hired my childhood friend, Katherine, to come take pictures of the party. That was a real treat because I didn't have to worry about taking pictures AND I got to enjoy flipping through all 200+ of them later (some of which are included here...but the cake one was taken by Mrs. Porter). Everyone seemed to have a good time eating, chatting, watching Eddie scoot around on his bike, and then eating cake.We asked that people not bring gifts since we don't need more stuff and want Eddie to learn that the people are more important than the presents. As expected, some people did bring small gifts or a donation to his college fund. We appreciated everyone and everything!

In no particular order, here are some pictures of the party.
Sweet baby Batiste was the hit of the party:
I should try to find an old picture of the three of us, back when we were grubby kiddos ourselves--me, Katherine (photographer), and Dyani:My mom made goodie bags for each of the guests. This was amusing to me for a few reasons: 1) She used fold-over sandwich baggies; 2) One of the "goodies" was a pocket pack of kleenex; 3) There were only 2 kids at the party; 4) She put extra fun stuff in the kids' bags--crayons, bubbles, and wind-up toys...which all the adults had fun playing with, too:
Three cheers for a family photo of us Bowers. It is a very realistic picture, as you can see from Eddie's super grubby face and hands.