Blake's 8th Birthday

Wow! My second child is now eight... how the years scream by, yes?

Simple, small party... just a few friends at one of those "Bounce House" places... we've done one there before.

Couldn't decide what to do for the cake. We didn't really have a 'theme' for the party. So he just decided on a character from one of his favorite video games... SackBoy from Little Big Planet. (those circles at the top are where the candles will go)

Oh no, but it didn't start off this pretty :-)

Baked up a nice marble cake, split and filled it with chocolate buttercream... and then just HAD to take a potty break. Come back to find this:


THE DOG ATE THE CAKE!!!!! Oh my heart just sank. I guess it was better now than after it was frosted, right?

So I put the dog outside and cut out the corner of the cake (is that wrong? Would you have still used the un-eaten part?) I really had no choice... this all happened about 10 in the AM and the party was at 1:00.


And filled it in with a half-a-chocolate-cake-mix-baked-real-quick-in-a-loaf-pan. This corner was not pretty marble... did not have filling... so I was actually hoping we wouldn't have to cut into it at the party.


Everything turned out well... no one was the wiser :-) (until I showed them these pictures anyway).

Dean absolutely LOVED this big slide...


He probably climbed these stairs 30 times:


Blake playing with friends:


It turned into a money birthday, too. I guess maybe 8 year old boys are hard to buy for??? He ended up getting well over $100 in birthday money.

Happy Birthday Bud! Love you!

Birthdays

We just had Paige's Birthday a few weeks ago. I was looking back over several years worth of pictures and love the chronicle of time the birthday pictures show. I also love LOVE love making their cakes. I thought about, at one time, selling cakes; but the 'right' way to do it involves having your home kitchen inspected and certified 'commercial' before you can get a license to sell. Way too much trouble... so I just do it for fun.

Some years I really went all out with the cake, matching favors and goody bags, etc. Some years there just wasn't time.

I know we should be looking at Paige, but somehow I'm missing her 3rd and 7th BDay pics and need to find them before I post hers.

So, Blake's 1st Birthday was just family and a small baseball-decorated smash cake for him. No digital pics - maybe I'll scan them in soon. His 2nd Birthday was the first 'big' one with friends. It was a firetruck theme.

Blake's 3rd Birthday was at Chuck E. Cheese's and was all about Spongebob Squarepants.

Blake's 4th Birthday was just a small 'party' at his daycare - but they didn't allow home-baked goods so it had to be a store-bough Dinosaur cake that year.

Blake's 5th Birthday was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - I forgot to get a head-on picture of the cake though.

His 6th Birthday was at Pump-It-Up (bounce houses and obstacle courses) and had a Star Wars theme. The boy loves him some TOYS on his cake :-)

And his 7th Birthday. I'll be honest here - I was 7 months pregnant and really just 'phoned in' this cake. The party was on a Friday night and I'd worked all day and just really didn't have time to decorate it like I wanted to. The party was a 'Night at the Museum' theme as I took him and his friends to see the 2nd movie and then have a sleepover. The cake just has two little toys from the movie and uses one of the lines "Dum Dum - Give me Gum Gum". Blake didn't seem to mind.

It's so neat to see how he's grown and changed over the years. He's a real sweetheart and will still cuddle with me almost anytime I ask. He's got a real sensitive side to him although he can be a real tough guy when his friends are around.