Ellis is five! We made some cupcakes to send into school on Friday. Ellis insisted that one of the girls in his class was allergic to chocolate and so we had to make both chocolate and vanilla. This, incidentally, turned out to be a total fabrication. Anyway, we'd planned to do shark cupcakes using this approach. It was approaching bedtime when I produced some initial decorated monstrosities and pronounced them ridiculous. I fiddled around with fin placement and eyeball size and position before deciding I must've been nuts to think that these cupcakes looked even remotely like sharks. I asked Trey for suggestions on how I could improve it, but he answered with "sharks aren't round" and somehow managed to prevent himself from adding "you twit".
So, I googled for some new ideas and Trey pitched in to help (largely to prevent a total freak-out on my part). He diligently went to work with two cutting board and some gum drops to produce octopi and star fish, while I piped on blue icing and, yes, this real, chocolate-coated gold fish. Result:
Ellis's actual birthday was Sunday and we had a pretty low-key celebration. Ellis awoke from an afternoon snooze to his favorite dinner of ham and pea pasta, an apple cake, and a much-coveted mylar balloon. This year, we bought a wooden play structure for the backyard (it's about 80% assembled, most of our time has been spent trying to get the ground adequately level) and so didn't really have gifts to open from Mom and Dad. Luckily, Ellis's extended family came to the rescue -- super soaker style squirt guns from Aunt Lucy et al., a selection of lovely books from Aunt Catherine, a watch, foam swords and a model rocket from Grandma Audrey, and a bank and constellation finder from Aunt Bridget and her boys. Everything was much appreciated!
