Helen and the Strawberry Shortcake Birthday Cake

It's what happens when pictures get stuck in your camera.  November birthdays don't get blogged about until January.  Nothing to lose your head over.

Our little girl turned six!  And just like me, she knows what she wants.  Or rather, what she doesn't want.  She had ordered a Strawberry Shortcake cake far in advance, but was unsure of the details, just that she wanted her little figurine to be on top.  Acting as cake consultant, I introduced her to Pinterest, and the child's tastes quickly exceeded my skill level.  I finally convinced her to ignore the pretty pictures, and just trust me.

And...she was happy with her cake!  But she was a little disappointed when her doll's head snapped clean off. Wouldn't anyone be?

Sweet and funny Helen, who loves to make things.  And draw.  And color.  And paint.  And cut.  And tape.  And learn how to clean up an art mess.  She got an art easel for her birthday.

 The boys ignored the pink, and were happy to join in the celebration.

 

Gimme some cake! 

This is what happens when you swirl lemon and strawberry cake mixes together.  Yummy prettiness!

 

Number Eight Racetrack Cake

  What kind of cake does an eight-year-old boy need?  Why, a racetrack cake, naturally.

Poor Owen didn't have a choice this year.  His mother had this one in her head for a long time.  I remembered a picture of a racetrack cake in one of my mom's cake decorating books that I used to page through as a young dreamer.  It was a little simpler than this one, and the car bodies were oval-shaped, fake-fruit-flavored, hard candies with Smarties for wheels.  The good old Minute Stop on 31 had Werther's hard caramels, Skittles and a friendly cashier.

The concept cars needed to be explained to the kids, but after they understood, they were all picking out which one was theirs.

I used a tube pan to bake two cakes, then joined them together to make a figure eight.  I had to curve off an edge of one of the cakes so they wouldn't look like two awkward round cakes attempting to mingle.  I frosted the sides and most of the top with a chocolate butter frosting, then piped on a road of gray-tinted decorator icing.  I smoothed the bumps in the road with a metal spatula dipped in hot water, then added Cocoa Puffs and granola for rocks. The most fun was free-handing the white road paint and lettering.  What a treacherous roadway.

two angel food cake pans = racetrack

Owen loves his cake.  Here he is, complete with campout dirt.

And he liked the cupcakes I brought to his class, because they looked like they came from the store.  (The deli trays helped a lot.)

Stripe your icing tint right inside your decorating bag, add white frosting and pipe away!

A Four-Year-Old and his Construction Cake

 What can I say about this small boy child?  He delighteth in heavy machinery.

So when he turned 4 in late June, planning his birthday cake was a cinch. 

I'm not sure I've ever had more fun decorating a cake!  Everything came together in the perfect creative storm.  I think I stopped to ooh and ahh more than I actually decorated. 

My sister in law found a multi-pack of brand-spankin-new John Deere toys at Tractor Supply.  I cleaned up Jack's sheep's foot packer, and we borrowed Grandma's excavator.

 

First, I outlined the number four using a straight edge.  Then I laid the crushed Oreo road.  The powdery sand is nothing more than smashed pretzels.  Cocoa Puffs made small boulders.  We couldn't find plastic traffic cones, so I whipped out a paring knife and a carrot.  So much fun!

My real challenge involved my *ahem* pride.  I wanted the cake to look perfect for our party guests, but sonny boy couldn't keep his hands off of it.  Oreo crumbs were spilling onto the table and floor, the road grader was not remaining in its neat and tidy place, and my nerves were fraying.  After a long moment, during which I realized that his little boy days are going fast, I decided it was OK to let the birthday kid play with his cake.  After all, he probably won't still be fascinated by silly things like cake by the time he is 12.  Better grab his heart while the grabbing is still easy!

Happy Birthday long past, Jack!

Helen and the Pink Poodle Cake

 Since it took a while to post Owen's birthday pictures, it was only fair to wait on Helen's as well.  Her big day of turning five began with a breakfast date with her daddy at the Anchor, then a trip to Mr. Joel's coffee shop to get a hot chocolate.  But he was out of milk, so he provided a verbal rain check for another special time.

We let Helen open her presents from us at supper that night.  She was gleeful over the jewelry crafting supplies and paint-your-own-fairy-statue kit. 

When we teased her about a birthday spanking, though, this happened:

Not one of our finer moments as parents!  Nevertheless, I rebounded with her requested pink poodle cake.  I have told my kids I hate poodles, that somehow they are a lesser degree of dog.  (Sorry Aunt Dot!)  Please don't send poodle hate my way.  They are just sharp and little and yappy, and I don't like them.  I guess when the Family Fun magazine featured such a cute cake, my little girl could not resist.  She had it picked out for almost a year.

Helen is getting sillier and sillier, and it doesn't have much to do with birthday parties and sugar either.

We combined her party at a family celebration at Grandpa's house.  She and her girl cousins each had a birthday to properly cheer.

I'm including this goofy picture for the benefit of viewing my side profile.  (And this was a month ago!)  Baby Boy is growing and kicking healthfully.

The cousins keep getting bigger.  I couldn't be happier for such wonderful nieces and nephews!

 And here's our little family.  Please excuse the crooked eyeglasses!  My last pair of contacts had torn, and I was still awaiting my eye doctor appointment.

Owen, Number Seven!

I fully realize this was Iron Bowl day in SEC country, and our favorite team did not do well. Boo!  But these pictures have been stuck on my camera for far too long--over a month?! 

Owen had been wanting an Auburn football cake for his 7th birthday for a long time.  We went with the football theme, and Jack, Helen and I brought cookies to school for him to share with his classmates.  The girls got the pompoms, and the boys got the footballs, and this was all there was left! 

We had his party on a Sunday afternoon, when Jason was sure to be off work and it suited the most family members.  Owen was a little disappointed that there was no Auburn logo on his cake, which sparked a conversation about Mommy's limits. 

It's still so great to see him blow out his candles!  I'm proud of all the work he's done in speech therapy, all these years.  It's amazing to think about how God is using him, even at his young age and despite his weakness with speech, to speak truth to others. 

Owen also has the gift of rhythm.  Jason and I cringingly bought him a small drum set.  I put it together in the living room, just because it was more convenient.  It was so loud it didn't stay there for more than a few hours.  Back corner of the basement, baby!

Helen snapped this shot of me, the chief cake baker and crumb cleaner around here.  Bless her for documenting me in my weary-eyed, swollen, pregnant state!  Happy Birthday, Owen.

Because I promised

Because it's hard to talk about your very own failures, I dreaded putting up this post.

We did a few things right when it came to remembering Quinn on her special day. We took the kids to Bass Pro, where they shoved quarters into the shooting range rifles, and I bought my first ever cast-iron skillet, an essential item in every southern cook's kitchen. We let the kids pick Chik-fil-A over the Mellow Mushroom. Apparently it's hard for my children to choose the unknown when the familiar is an option, even when the chicken is too spicy and the other kids in the play area are too loud.

Then we sped home for butterfly cake.

The cake. Helen had been imagining a butterfly cake for Quinn for months in advance. I agreed, remembering a cute cut-up cake my mom made for me when I was five. Helen helped me bake it. Helen also dresses herself.I tinted the frosting orange, a color I had fallen in love with while I was pregnant with Quinn. It got a little garish. We decorated the butterfly with bits and pieces of found candy. It got a little tacky. I stuck on Fruit-by-the-Foot antennae. They got a little droopy.When we finally arrived home, past bedtime, for butterfly cake, the anticipation of the moment had long since peaked, but Jason and I were determined to make this celebration happen. We lit the one candle and wanted all three kids to blow it out.

The mood started to change the moment we pulled out the camera.

And it just got worse with each picture.
Jason had to remove the sweet, sobbing daughter from the scene, help her into her jammies and tuck her into bed for the night. The boys ate their pieces of cake, and I choked one down. It was sickeningly sweet to me. I could hardly chew and swallow, it just felt so wrong.

So many times, my kids bring me back to reality. Are my dreams for them cleverly disguised dreams for me or my image? My wishes for perfect, glittery children frequently get interrupted by improperly extracted boogers, learning hurdles, embarrassing public behavior and bad attitudes. (And while some behaviors obviously need to be curbed and others eliminated, we can't tamper with basic personalities and talents. For example, we can tell Owen that he absolutely must stop playing air guitar on the soccer field, but we cannot make him cease to love music or turn him into the star athlete on the team. We can tell Jack that he absolutely has to tell us before he tries to go stinky at church, and that he may not walk around with his pants around his ankles in the lobby, but we cannot change his independent, confident outlook.)

I had really built up this moment in my mind. This cake that I thought would be the perfect way to remember what would have been Quinn's first birthday was a disaster, and in hindsight, more about me than about what our family needed. Forced moments. Can't we all recall those from our own childhoods? Yuck.

Jack and the Birthday

Whoa Nelly! We've been so busy this summer I forgot all about posting pictures from Jack's third birthday--way back in June. That little man has been such a joy for us, and he has also offered his share of challenges. He brings a lot of humor to our family, both the wacky physical feat kind and the complete sentence variety. He had a great year of being 2, and it was hard to let him grow older.

Jack loves cows, second only to roosters. I don't know why. He had been insisting on a brown cow cake for months in advance, and since I had never baked him our family's traditional lamb cake, I thought the two were close enough for a go.Although maybe not. But at least it was eaten quickly. And at least there were plenty of hay bales to distract the naked eye. Poor anatomically incorrect Jersey cow.Daddy gave him a boost for the candle blow-out,and continued to hold him for the obligatory first bite of lamb-cow cake.But cousins are really what make birthday parties fun! As are empty Elmo backpacks borrowed from brothers.

A few recent and/or odd Jack-quotes:

"Good morning, noodles!!!" (running into the kitchen and seeing fresh pasta hanging from a drying rack)

"Old MacDonald's taking a shower." (declarative on the Atmore McDonald's indoor waterwall)

"Mama is a lady...'cause she gives us treats."

(praying) "And Jesus, this is my pedometer I wear when I'm picking up toys. It tells me what to do. That's what it do's. Yeah."

Helen Turns Four!!

I love celebrating my kids' birthdays, but for some reason, Helen's recent birthday was a hard one for me. The night before, I hovered in her room, telling her and myself this was her last night of being three. I think part of my sadness relates to the fact that we won't know her little sister as a three year old.

Here's the birthday girl on Sunday morning before church, posing nicely with the requested pink princess castle cake. Her sweetness quickly morphed into rocking the world with her silliness. (Motherly roll of eyes.)
The Castle. Those little pink candies are pink Whoppers. I can't bring myself to call them strawberry because the only thing strawberry about them is the picture on the box. After a futile nap attempt, we let the kids lounge while we all watched the New York City marathon and cheered for Meb and Shalane Flanagan.

Helen showed off her cake one more time. I think the most beautiful thing about this picture is the husband vacuuming in the background. Mawmaw was the first guest to arrive, and Jack could not stop belly laughing for the sheer joy of parties.We ate and then opened presents! Grandpa and Grandma Weber hit the jackpot with this preschool workbook. A huge artist's tablet and new paints from Uncle Brent and Aunt Jan were also well received by Miss Can-I-Paint-Mom-Can-I?!!And wonder of wonders--a musical jewelry box with a twirling angel ballerina from Uncle Conrad and Aunt Les! Well. What a pleased four-year-old girl we have!