Happy Birthday Kiddo!

I declared this year to be a "keep it simple" year when it comes to birthday parties. How does one do that? Simple. Toss the parties. So I informed the boys that for their upcoming birthdays we would be celebrating them together as a family. That's it. And to my total surprise they were fine with that.

I asked Taylor how he wanted to celebrate with the family. He replied that he wanted to go out to dinner at Tepanyaki's and then go to a movie. Sounds good to me. Since my Dad's birthday is a day before Taylor's we invited him and Mom along for the meal. Now I must say I was a bit surprised that Taylor suggested this place due to the fact that they do not serve burgers and fries. His Grandma has told him all about it, so he decided to give it a go.

The entertainment, the boys loved. The food they thought was so so. They loved the meat. The veggies they could do without. That is no surprise.



As you can see the meal started out with a lot of fire. They loved it after they got over the initial surprise. Check out their faces!



Now I know this is all about Taylor, but this pix of Owen is so cute. He wasn't so impressed with the "cooking show." He didn't like the fact that this man was throwing food all over the place. I can't imagine why. He throws food all over our house. What is the difference? He sat awfully close to Grandpa and made sure he didn't smile.



Taylor was even brave enough to try to catch a flying shrimp in his mouth. He almost caught it. One of his missed shrimps, somehow ended up in Owen's boot. That caused him more distress and he wouldn't turn around and face the cook for fear he would get food thrown at him. Again, why is this any different than what happens at our house?



Happy Birthday Taylor and Dad!



Now Taylor's birthday cake didn't turn out so great. I'm no cake decorator. You know how you have something pictured in your mind and it never comes out the way you imagined it? That is what happened.

I decided I wanted to ice the cake blue and then stencil a white Y on the top with powdered sugar since he is such a big cougar fan. I cut out a Y stencil and put it ever so carefully on the cake. I dusted the Y with the sugar. Everything was going relatively smoothly until I realized my stencil was stuck to the icing. Trying to get it unstuck without letting the extra sugar fall onto the cake turned into an ordeal. I finally pulled the paper off, smoothed out the icing and carefully put the lid on it.

When I took the lid off a few hours later, half of the powdered sugar had gotten stuck on the underside of the lid and the other half had pretty much just absorbed into the icing. Then to top it off one of the other boys (Owen?) had pushed the lid down onto the cake far enough that a huge chunk of icing with cake attached ended up on the underside of the lid as well. Do I get points for trying even though it looked terrible?



Hope you had a good one!