Wordless Wednesday #22 ~ If you like to talk to tomatoes...Have I got a cake for you!

The Bob and Larry cake I decorated for a church bakesale last Sunday.

The Slumber Party's Over ~ Well Almost

It's 7:45 AM and there are three girls in my kitchen eating ICE CREAM, because it's NOT just for breakfast anymore! We ended up with just 2 of Molly's friends here last night. The third girl that was invited was not at school yesterday, so we're assuming she was sick. So we had a total of 3 girls, 2 dogs and one 4 year old boy. After finding out how much noise 3 twelve year old girls can make, I was glad we hadn't invited anymore.

They were all pretty good though, and actually DID slumber last night! I went upstairs at 1:15am and they were all fast asleep. The DVD was still playing, so I shut it off. I had my suspicions that they were only feigning slumber, but I never heard another peep out of them. Unfortunately, I had to wake them up early this morning, because one of the guests is exactly one day younger than Molly, and has her own party to get ready for today. That's why I didn't protest when I found them helping themselves to ice cream for breakfast. I drew the line at putting 12 candles in Nevynn's ice cream though.

Here's Molly's birthday cake. Molly had picked this one out quite a while ago, but I couldn't find the flip-flop cake set anywhere. Finally, last weekend , I won one on ebay. The auction wasn't over until Saturday, and I was afraid we wouldn't get it in time. Luckily, it arrived yesterday, just about the time I was going to decorate the cake.

My back-up plan was to use these little Hawiian figurines and palm trees. Since we didn't nee them for the cake, Jessica used them to garnish this lovely fruit tray that she'd created.

Here's Christian, modeling his new Hawiian shirt, and trying to snitch fruit off of the tray.

Jess also decorated the upstairs family room for her, and bought this scary-looking lovely balloon boquet and banner, along with some pineapple-scented candles, to set the tropical island atmosphere up there.

Molly had a special lei to wear, that had a "happy birthday" sign hanging from it. She wore it to school, just to make sure everyone there knew that it was her birthday.

Here are the three girls and CJ enjoying their strawberry daiquiris (NA of course), complete with umbrella straws, also provided by Jessica. They each had a name tag with their Hawaiian name on it, and received a lei and a new pair of flip-flops as party favors.

For some reason, "Mana'olana-Ana" was avoiding the camera all night. Perhaps she's practicing to be a famous rock star some day???

Or maybe it's just because her mom, Lisa is a blogger too, so she's used to covering her face every time she sees a camera lens pointed in her direction. We did catch her here, but the picture is a bit blurry.

"Moli", "Newine" and "the future rock star" eating cake and ice cream last night

And last but not least, Jake or "Iake" had to get in on the act too, complete with Hawaiian name tag and lei. Jessica's dog Bart, "Palaka" had one on too, but I caught him sneaking a cold drink of water out of the bathroom, and then noticed he'd left his calling card. His name tag was floating around in the toilet. All in all, it was a pretty good party.

Happy Birthday Patty, Happy Birthday Jesus!

Today would have been my late sister Patty's 49th birthday. Patty went to be with the Lord on April 27th, 2003; after a 2 year battle with breast cancer. She was a great sister and a wonderful mother to 11 children. We all miss her very much, but I know that I'll see her again someday in heaven. Every year since she passed away, most of her remaining 9 siblings have gotten together on her birthday to remember Patty and celebrate her life. I suspect we will do that again this year, but not until later on this evening. There's something else we have planned to celebrate first tonight.

It's Wednesday, which means it is AWANA club night at church. My husband is our church's Awana Commander, and I help out in the nursery. Every year around this time, we celebrate another birthday too. We have a "Happy Birthday, Jesus party", with cake and ice cream for all of the kids, their parents, and AWANA staff. Seeing as how I'm the Commander's wife, and a former professional cake decorator to boot, I get the honor of decorating a birthday cake for Jesus each year, and then I usually ice a couple more sheet cakes to serve to everyone. This year, I opted to bake and decorate one cake and 12 dozen cupcakes. Sound like fun? It actually was. And as an added bonus, it warmed the house up nicely too, having the oven going for about 5 hours straight.

Here's this year's model. The only thing is, I used a "Christmas Red" paste food coloring, that turned out a little more like "Barbie Pink". Oh well, pink poinsettias are pretty too.

Happy Belated 4th Birthday, Christian!

Saturday was my grandson Christian's 4th birthday. I can't believe he's such a big boy already! Here he is sitting on his mom's lap. I made him a birthday cake, but since I wasn't able to make the 600 mile trip to see him this year, I sent it out there with Jessica's dad, who was going out there for CJ's birthday weekend. He ordered a SpongeBob Squarepants cake. This is what it looked like when I had finished decorating it: However, I couldn't get the dome to fit on it with the figurines on it, so I took them back off and sent them along with the cake. When it was reassembled, the characters had switched positions, but other than that, it looks like the cake made its way there in one piece. Here's Christian (CJ) with his birthday cake:

Here he is checking out his birthday presents us. He specifically asked for "lots of robots" so I found this transformer type robot that can either be one big or 5 smaller robots. I also sent him the new "Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" DVD which he seemed to enjoy in the theater on his 3rd birthday.

Here he is with his "lots of robots":

I wish we could have spent this birthday with him, but I was glad his mother got to spend this one with him. She is in the USAF, and was serving in Iraq over CJ's first birthday. He was with us for 5 months while she was there. I believe she did get to spend his 2nd birthday with him, but last year, she was sent to Mississippi for some training over his 3rd birthday, so we met half way and spent a weekend in a hotel with a waterpark where we had an early birthday celebration for him, so his mom could at least be a part of that. I hope she doesn't have to miss any more of his birthays, since she has decided to re-enlist for another 4 years. Happy Birthday Christian! Have fun being FOUR!!!!