Yay! Another January birthday. And another cake. Yay!
The day started bright and early with fresh-picked, fresh-squeezed orange juice. Everyone was involved.
So sweet. It went perfectly with the popovers and fresh tropical fruit. Nice job everyone!
The human birthday card.
A quick game of Sorry, followed by a trip to the harbor to buy fish, the beach for lunch, the library for a seed swap, the YMCA for a basketball game, the grocery store for cake ingredients and wine, and then home to bake, shoot hoops, grill fish and eat was how the day went down.
Almond cake, almond buttercream frosting with raspberry filling. Pretty darn tasty.
The cake was huge and it is half gone. Way to go us.
Yep, our little Maemo is a decade. I know this isn't a great picture, but it is the only one showing festive decorations. She and Henry continue to be very agreeable siblings.
Smiling for the camera? Yay! I love this old girl!
We had our usual family party with dinner and cake chosen by the birthday girl. Homemade macaroni and cheese, grilled asparagus, and banana chocolate chip cake. All the food was terrific.
For some reason, Mae blew out her candles one at a time. You don't turn 10 every day, so it is important to linger in the moment.
(Just tooting my own whisk. )
You know me, I'll take any opportunity to make a cake. Sometimes the birthday-person doesn't even need to be in our time zone to get a cake. But this time we were lucky enough to have Grandma Cindy here on her special day.
She requested the family favorite ice cream cake, but with her own personal flavors; coffee and mint chocolate chip. Brilliant.
I don't think any of these pictures have anything to do with today, but they all have to do with me. Above is the school garden, but I didn't go there today. I spent most of today working on our home garden. YAY! It looks so great.
I didn't work on this today, but I did do some crocheting.
I didn't make these today (they are banana chocolate chip cookies made in this pan), but I did have a fabulously sweet apple fritter this morning.
At least I think that is how you spell it. For many years, we've gone to Lucy's friend Alva's birthday parties. And every year she has the same cake and every year I love it, so I decided it was time to make my own. Above you see half the cake and below the other half covered with whip cream mixed with fruit.
Not a pretty cake, but so incredibly delicious it doesn't matter.
Here is the final product topped with the other half of the cake. Did I mention it was yummy, melt in your mouth fabulous? And pretty easy to make. Luckily, along with the translation from Swedish, you see Alva and her family are from Sweden, her mom gave me a set of metric measuring cups for my birthday!
Another year of heart cookies (see 2008 here). I don't think I'll ever tire of these, however I did switch it up this year with chocolate.
They are so cute, taste good and are easy to make.
Lucy sat for quite some time writing every child's name on a paper heart to go with a cookie.
Hope your day was full of love.
I am so behind in posting, sorry about that. Last weekend (not two days ago) we were lucky enough to have Grandpa Dave here on his birthday. Of course, a cherry cake (recipe found here) was in order. I think this one turned out pretty well. It was light, sweet and the frosting tasted of cherries. Yay!
We had a great and pretty busy visit with the east coast grandparents. First was ballet and basketball. Next baseball and basketball. Then a short bike ride (only 5-6 miles) to the beach and lunch. Each night was a delicious dinner and dessert. Salmon, vegetable pasta, flourless chocolate cake, chocolate cookies, ice cream and caramel sauce. Hmmm, I've listed more desserts than dinners.
Agreeable siblings? I think so!
This is nearly all of us at the beach during our ride (duh, the picture says it all really).
Okay, marshmallow crispy treats aren't really a solstice tradition around here but they sure were a big hit. We used the recipe found here. 
Perfect lemon tart is hard to photograph in a dark room with a bright white plate, but you get the idea. The sun bread was made almost entirely by Henry and Mae this year, and can you believe I didn't even get one picture of it?! Oh well, I did get a taste and it was great as always.
And here's our tree. Can't wait to start filling up that empty space with presents!
Hi and Happy Birthday! We made these cupcakes just for you. We'll bring them over after dinner, okay? Sigh. Wouldn't that be awesome???!!!
Well, in lieu of an actual present... I present your sock. Yes, singular. Sock.
And not even finished yet. I just wanted to let you know that I have indeed started them.
We did our usual pumpkin carving, but this year we had a lot of pumpkins (7).
That big one (32lbs) is from the school garden. Actually, they all were except for two scrawny misshapen ones from our yard.
All those pumpkins gave us lots of delicious seeds and smiles.
Cinderella.
Cookie monster.
Henry was a pizza delivery guy, but he was too quick to run off trick-or-treating with his friends, so I didn't get a picture of him.
These are brownies covered in vanilla candy melts (inspiration here). Pretty tasty.
