Double birthday

We had originally planned to have Aaron's birthday this weekend (with friends from the preschool) and Jordan's next weekend (with his elementary school buddies); that's the kind of thing we've done in previous years.  But unfortunately no one was going to be able to come to Jordan's party... I guess the weekend of the 4th fills up.  By last night only one friend had said yes.  Meanwhile Aaron's party, for today, was logging the RSVP's beautifully, 11 kids and 10 grownups.  I was fretting, until I realized that almost all of Aaron's friends have an older sibling who is Jordan's friend; those siblings were already invited; could we possibly just make it a super double brother birthday?  I pitched it to Jordan and he loved the idea.  I think it might be nontrivial for him to endure his brother having his birthday first, and really the two of them love to do things together.  I promised to make each of them their own special cake and they were thrilled.  we didn't even have to change the guest list.  Excellent corollary: one less party to prepare for!

The whole thing was a giant hit.  15 adults and 14 kids (mostly either 4ish or 7ish, plus one infant and two toddlers), and I don't think there was a single argument or tantrum or accident.  The adults had a great time standing around snacking and chatting and drinking Moscato, and the kids variously played baseball, water balloons, and paper airplane war, as far as I know (they were quite independent).  I made a lego cake for Aaron and pokeball cupcakes for Jordan; both were tremendously well received.  (Thank you Danny for these terrific pictures!)

Pokéballs, for those of you not in the know, are what pokémon come in.  The pokemon characters themselves are more than I can handle in cake form, but the balls are graphically simple enough to be doable, and they were very popular.  My usual butter cake recipe.  For the lego cakes, chocolate (by Aaron's request), which made frosting them with a thick smooth bright color trickier; if I were not in the habit of freezing cakes first it might have been rough, but as it was, it just took more frosting.  The connectors are halved marshmallows.  You stab them with a fork to paint them with frosting, then slide them onto the cake.  Of course legos make great layers.