Happy Birthday Thomas!

We spent all day Saturday at Mom and Dad's house, which is fine by me! I love spending time there, and I'm so glad that we live close enough to do so. Anyway, I needed to use Mom's glass pan for the birthday cake, and that's why we went over there in the morning instead of waiting until evening.

In order to not be too much of a drain on my parents' resources, I combined as many cake and frosting ingredients as I could here at our house, and just mixed them up at Mom's house. For the cake I made my own cake mix by combining all the dry ingredients here at home, then all I had to do was add water, butter, and eggs when we got to Mom's house, essentially making it just as easy and convenient to make as a simple cake mix! I frosted it with a delicious peanut butter frosting. I posted all about the cake - recipes and decorations - on my food blog. Check it out!

We had such a fun day. Michelle and her adorable boys came over in the late afternoon/evening for dinner and cake and ice cream, and we all had a great time together. Here come lots of pictures:

After snacking on a little chocolate, Thomas was just so upset to find that he suddenly looked like Hitler!

But later, when he saw his birthday cake, he cheered right up.

When we served him his piece of cake, he tried to grab at it to eat it, but was only able to get handfuls of hard-to-eat cookie crumbs. He didn't let that deter him - he just found an easier way to eat the cake. Look Ma, no hands!

Here's all the folks in attendance: Left to right - Janelle, Thomas, Marie, Morgan, Rheanna hiding behind Morgan, Mom.

Left to right - Mom again, Samuel, Michelle, William, Jeff.

Zaylee and Nathan.

The obligatory picture of me with my mouth full.

Oren decided not to eat any cake. I guess he just wasn't really hungry, and those K'nex toys were really fun! Sorry this is a bad picture, it's the only one we got of him.

Here's Thomas playing with his new toys. I have about fifty pictures of Michelle and I wrestling that dump truck out of its box - it took both of us, and several minutes! He really loves these new cars - the dump truck from Michelle kept him occupied all evening! He had so much fun filling it with smaller toys over and over.

Mom made Thomas a few pairs of way cute shorts. Here he is wearing one of them.

We didn't leave until late, and the kids were so tired! It's only three miles from Mom and Dad's house to ours, and both kids were asleep by the time we got home. Well, that's a sign of a well-spent day.

Happy birthday Thomas!