The Birthday

Here is the now infamous princess castle cake that Lulu requested for her birthday. At this stage, in spite of its many imperfections, I felt quite good about the cake, and had spent some time the night before and a couple of hours on Sat building and icing and decorating. Caden declared that I was the best cake-maker around. If you look closely, you can see some trouble brewing in princess paradise.

Yes, the entire back half of the cake had fallen when we came in from shoveling heaps of snow. I should have taken a picture in that state, but hadn't the presence of mind at the time. So Shann helped me salvage the ice cream cone turrets, and I tried to bring some order to the now ravaged rear of the cake. Out of icing, I could not cover it completely, and to be honest, I was not really interested in fiddling much more on it. I was done. Meanwhile, Caden could not keep from making many dramatic statements, such as "Alyssa's birthday is ruined", and "I thought you were great at making cakes, but now I think you're not good at all", and "this is such a disaster", etc. Shann repeatedly told him to pipe down, and finally told him to leave the scene. Here is the fixed version:

Thankfully, Alyssa didn't mind hugely, and here we are about to blow out candles later.

(you can still slightly see some of her black eye from earlier in the week...it happened in the kitchen by Caden with a bowl, accidentally)

Among the attendees: John, Michelle, and Luke

Nate, Kara, and Avery
Jay
And Amy, who won the Alyssa trivia game. :)
So even though no one her age could make it (Caden declared earlier "only babies are coming to your party", thus earning him time by himself), she had a great party. Happy birthday, big girl.
We love you so much.