birthdays interrupted

This year Both Carly and Rachel's birthdays were overshadowed by other events. They were both a little disappointed but didn't make too big a thing out of it.

Rachel's birthday was the same day as Samantha's baptism so there was a lot of focus, of course, on Samantha. However we had lots of family on hand and they did their best to make it special.

Uncle David traditionally calls us on our birthday to serenade us with a very loud, very embellished version of "Happy Birthday to you"
This year he was on hand to do it in person.

It was impressive. She loved it.

CAKE #1: This was her 13th birthday cake choice. Lemon cake decorated like an Ipod, her favorite possession at the moment.

The cake wouldn't light outside in the breeze so she blew out the lighter.

CAKE #2: Her church classmates from her Young Women's group showed up that afternoon with a pink cake with a very silly decorated apple on top. It was so sweet of them to remember her.

Her dad thought it would be funny to take a bite right out of the middle.

yum.

CAKE #3: Her Aunt Abby brought a very pretty little cake decorated just for her with her name on top. We lit that and she finally got to blow out some candles.

That cake was especially tasty. We need to get your recipe Abby.

Now Carly..... Her birthday fell on the very week she'd be at Girls camp.

CAKE #1: The Young women leaders did a great job of remembering and making it special. I sent up a sort of birthday cake the night before. It was more of a birthday dessert I guess.

Apple Bars.

I was looking for something that would feed a large group and travel well and wasn't chocolate as they were having chocolate cake the night before her birthday with the Relief Society President. I knew it was something she liked and you could stick candles in it so it fit all the important criteria.

CAKE #2: Her Auntie Maury was here the day she got home from Girls camp and wanted to make her something special. Look at her wishing for something important.

She's trying to get that last little flame before she runs out of breath....

CAKE #3: Then last week we had a little birthday party for her. She invited 10 friends but only 5 could show in the end. Summertime is difficult for coordinating schedules. We BBQ'd hot dogs, had chips, soda, cantaloupe and frog eye salad. She LOVES jello cake so this year we made white cake with raspberry jello. We made a big mistake however in thinking the recipe just couldn't be right in calling for 2 C of water boiled with 2 packets of jello when we were pouring the jello on the baked cake. It looked like it was drowning so we stopped at one cup. Big mistake. Although the cake was still good, it wasn't as moist and flavorful as we have made in the past. My problem was I couldn't find the recipe we had used before and so went to Allrecipes.com. There were some recipes calling for 1 C of liquid and some recipes calling for 2... so we weren't sure who was right. Drat! we made the wrong choice. I wrote up the recipe so we won't repeat our mistake. I HATE mistakes!!!!!

They played some games with water balloons and watched a movie on the big screen that Mark set up. She had fun and was happy at the end of the night which made me happy. yea!

So

my girls learned an important lesson this year...

Don't worry if your birthday looks like it's going to be interrupted by other things~

People who love you will try so hard to fix it you'll end up with much more birthday in the long run!