Aaron's birthday

Aaron's actual birthday is today, but he is not with us - he's at sleepaway camp! His birthday was last weekend, and at the last minute we moved it to a local park, because the weather was just too beautiful for anything else. He had friends from school, from the neighborhood, and from boychoir, which was a great mix.

 Leo had an actual potato gun. Are those so fun or what?

Here we are at cake time. It is always an adventure getting candles lit outside, but we pulled it off.

Aaron designed his cake to feature his current favorite item, which is a Greek/Trojan/Spartan style helmet. He loves everything to do with Greek mythology and draws these all the time. (I added the stars because the kids always want a piece of the fondant.) I was rather pleased with myself for managing to make gold fondant out of primary colors... would you know what colors to use? I had some gold candles to match, and I dusted it with edible gold glitter. Chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream frosting.

We ended the day with a family celebration over at the cousins', mostly on the lawn.

Jordan's birthday

The boys are at sleepaway camp for ten whole days including both of their birthdays, so we moved them up a couple weeks. Very much unlike last year, Jordan did not select a major theme or even any organized activity; he just had twelve friends over, and they hung out.

I was a little nervous about the lack of structure but everything was grand. No injuries, no arguments, and no destruction of property! Instead, there was pop fly frisbee in the backyard.

 This is where the frisbee went over the fence:

 And this is where they clambered around to retrieve it.

Another contingent of friends played band in the basement. Dale was particularly happy to offer Natalie the chance to try out his electric guitar (she's pretty good), and she was soon joined by her sister Shoshie on vocals, Nat on drums, Lily on keyboard, and Franklin on the bongos. It was a lot of fun down there even though it doesn't photograph well.

There was eating. I am prepared to offer preteens very big bowls of snacks and watch them disappear. This occurred.

There was cake. As is our tradition, Jordan designed the cake and I executed it, except that this year Jordan made the fondant swords. He was impressed by how tricky it was, and appreciative of the cake miracles I have wrought for him over the years.

Delicioius, too: Jordan wanted a lime cake (he cheerfully settled for lemon-lime) with green cream cheese frosting. One of his friends exclaimed, "It's like key lime cake!"

Only at the very end of the party did they collapse into phone land.