Guess Who's TWO!!!!!!!!!!

Emma Jae is two years old!! What an incredible little girl she is!!

Emma loved her purple balloons!

We were really surprised and very excited to get our first packages in the mail on Friday. Kevin returned from his week of travel and brought us mail from the office! Thank you Terry and Marsha, Mark and Kim and Grandma and Grandpa for the birthday cards and gifts!! (I was way more excited than Emma, but she was happy too!) Emma loved her new books, new letter games and the perfume that the hotel owners bought her! However, one of her favorite gifts was her new Hello Kitty chair. The wife of Kevin's boss gave Emma this birthday gift and definitely scored! Emma loves kitties so she was pretty excited. She calls it her own "spessal" chair. She loved playing letters with Daddy and she knows all of her letters now! She's counting to 13 (and sometimes 20) in English and 12 in Portuguese! We're amazed at all she's learning right now!

So I asked the hotel to make Emma a small cake for her birthday. I wasn't expecting much because we weren't going to invite people. We just wanted to do something small with the 3 of us, but when the lady showed me the cake on Sunday morning, I started calling people to come share it with us. I think we fed 15 people and the cake wasn't even half gone!! This cake was amazing! It was 3 layers of white cake with some sort of vanilla pudding/caramel/sliced strawberries filling, covered in strawberry icing, covered in strawberries and M&Ms!! I'm not sure I've ever tasted anything so yummy!!! Monika, the gal who made the cake, took a lot of time and care in making this cake. I really didn't give any directions on what to do, but she did an amazing job! We borrowed two little candles from Mollie, but Monika had bought a number 2 candle to place on the cake. I about started crying. It meant a lot to me that they would care for Emma in this way. I was very grateful that she helped Emma have a great birthday! Everyone sang "Happy Birthday" to Emma and then the Brasilians sang to her in Portuguese, "Parabens para você!" The rest of the day she was saying, "parabens, parabens". Cute.

I had to laugh as I watched Emma feed herself. Thanks to Kevin, Emma had a massive piece of cake on her plate, as did we all! I've really been trying to get Emma to eat without making a huge mess of her meals and her progress showed yesterday! She ate her entire birthday cake with a fork and was very concerned when her little fingers accidentally grazed the icing! What a difference a year makes!

Emma had her first mandolin lesson on her 2nd birthday! She was incredibly interested in strumming with the pick and Kevin had a great time teaching her. I'm sure this is the first of many lessons to come! She'll probably get a mandolin or ukelele for her 3rd birthday, if not before! I'm so proud of Kevin for taking the time to teach her! It was pretty sweet! I read tons of emails from friends and family back home and we even got to watch a video of the Sponheims singing to Emma! She loved that and she loved seeing pictures of her friends, Mallory, Blake and Leah, wishing her a happy birthday. Emma was very blessed, as was her mommy. Thank you friends and family for loving Emma on her birthday and in so doing, loving her parents.

After Emma's nap, we all went for a walk around Horizontina, down to the Foundation, which is a park here. There are soccers fields, a sand soccer field, short trails to walk and small buildings where people have parties. We enjoyed a beautiful day and Emma had fun running up and down the little hills at the park. As I prayed with her at bedtime, I was reminded of the incredible gift God has given us in Emma Jae. I am so thankful for the last 2 years and my love for this little girl is growing all the time. I prayed for her next year and asked for the wisdom to raise her in a way that would bless God. I prayed that her transition here would be smooth and that she would be blessed by many Brasilian friends. Thank you God for Emma Jae.

Emma Jae at her one-year birthday and at 3 weeks old.