16 sixteen 16 sweet 16 sixteen 16

The birthdays continued in June....

We had a BIG milestone Birthday for Rachel.

Sweet 16

She requested a strawberry bottom Cheesecake dessert for her birthday cake.  

The funny thing about this recipe is that the first time we ever had it was the week she was born.  It was one of the things brought over in a "you just had a baby dinners" that the RS always provides.  We lived in a basement apartment and it was our landlady who lived upstairs.  She gave me the recipe and we've been making it ever since. 

We are a little on the conservative side when it comes to our kids having cell phones.  Part of it is financially motivated but also I have strong opinions on the matter concerning what is right for my family.  I don't think they all need cell phones.  Carly did get one a little younger (15) because she was staying after school for some activities and there were no phones available to her to call home and so we decided the time was right for her.  

She still doesn't have texting though.....

With Rachel we have been able to wait longer b/c if she was going somewhere she needed a phone she could borrow mine or Carlys.  She has really been itching for her own.  We had told her "maybe when school starts" and then when we decided to give it to her for her bday Mark started teasing her saying "I don't think we'll be getting you a phone until Christmas or maybe January...."  She got really upset about that.

Not having phones is hard sometimes for my kids because it means they are left out of the loop sometimes.  Not having texting does that too but honestly... some of the loops they are left out of are fantastic in my opinion.  A lot of drama is avoided.  

They grow up so fast, they leave you behind a little more every year.  I feel the no phone, no texting once they get phones thing has kept them closer to the family unit a little longer.  Carly has had texting on her ipod touch with the free texting app but she can only use it minimally at home so it has been a nice compromise.  

Mark and I wanted to come up with a creative way to give her the phone and we decided we'd hide it in a cake.  Well.... the cheesecake wasn't going to work for our purposes so i decided to make a small round layer cake with the premise that "Jacob doesn't like the strawberry cheesecake".  I had my cakes cooling on the counter when her cute friends from her new Laurel class at church showed up with this amazingly cute cake....

so cute.

I decided 3 cakes might be a little much so I put my cakes in the freezer, whispered to Mark to get her out of the house.  He took her to Macey's for a birthday ice cream cone and Jacob, Samantha and I got busy.  

First Jacob and Samantha had to pick all the M&M's off very carefully while I whipped up a batch of chocolate frosting.

Carefully, I spooned cake out of the center of the cake until I had a nice hole all the way to the bottom!

I double bagged the cell phone to keep it safe from cake and frosting.  Mark had charged it the night before and it was turned on.

We placed it carefully into the hole we'd dug....

Then we started replacing some of the cake we'd dug out 

until we felt we had a pretty even surface to refrost

We felt like our frosting was a pretty good color match and it was looking good...

The best part?

She wouldn't suspect a think since this cake was brought by her friends.....

We finished frosting the top and replaced the M&M's very carefully

and plopped some candles on top.

It was a very busy day with a first date planned for that very evening....

(More on that later....)

but we carved out some time before the date, before Mark and Jacob left for their YM activity...

We sang.....

She blew and then it was time for her to cut the cake.....

Pretty awesome! She gave us exactly the reaction we were going for....

ahhhh.... success!!!