Favorite Photo Friday

I is for Ian

(of course!)

My growing up too fast, doesn't cuddle often enough, suddenly doesn't need doggie to go to sleep at night (seriously, that is killing me....) new first grader, just turned seven year old boy! Where the heck did the time go?!

This is Ian enjoying his requested birthday breakfast of pizza! I think he was very pleased to wake up to the smell of pizza. Ana was thrilled too, 'cause you know she was having no part of her cheerios and fruit after seeing brother having pizza!

I is also for Improvisation

Which is what Ian's birthday was all about this year. I have always tried my best to have really cool, themed birthday parties (I enjoy planning them!), and I've always been able to get Ian to agree to something I can come up with neat ideas for. Well, this year he was insistent on having a Bakugan birthday party. I have to tell you, I was bummed. For those of you who are thinking, "Baku-what?!", these things are the hottest thing in Ian's peer group at the moment. Which makes them equivalent to Cabbage Patch Dolls when I was a kid...you cannot find them ANYWHERE! This makes planning a Bakugan themed party extremely difficult. I searched everywhere to figure out how to make a Bakugan cake, and found a very cool one here. Greg was pretty sure we could come up with a pretty good version so I let him be the sculptor, and I would be the decorator. It was actually looking good for a while, but lets just say things didn't work out as planned and Greg's creation crumbled at about 11pm the night before the party. He was subsequently up until 1 am making cupcakes (without cupcake wrappers - they were not pretty!). So that left us with mounds of half frosted, crumbled cake, and a pile of lumpy looking cupcakes...I was freaking out! I remembered reading something somewhere about cake balls, so I did some research and found that they are made by mixing crumbled cake with frosting (okay, step one done!) then forming balls and coating them in chocolate...BINGO, that's what I was going to do. I could even make them look like Bakugan balls (the party planner in me started to perk up)! So to make a long story a little shorter, we wake up on Ian's birthday still with nothing final. Cake balls aren't done, we still have a plate full of deformed cupcakes, and the pinata Greg started late the day before is still drying in the garage. My mum comes over to help me make the balls (they were a mess, and they were kind of yucky to top it off), and we try and salvage the cupcakes by slicing off the tops, cutting them in half and perching them atop the cupcake bottoms like wings (you have to see a Bakugan to understand, even so they looked nothing like them). Greg and Ian went about finishing the pinata (a very interesting design), figuring out goody bags, and planning the party games. Everything was ready by the time the party started, and everyone seemed to have a good time but I was just so disappointed how everything turned out. Ian said he had the best birthday ever, so I guess that's all that really matters, right? Anyways, here's some pictures from the day. Please be gentle about my ugly confections, I'm still fragile!

The collapsed Bakugan cake:



The cupcakes. That plop of frosting in the front is supposed to be a head. We started with tootsie rolls for that purpose, it just made the cupcakes look like pooping bums...it was very, very disappointing.

Ian decorating the cake balls. He seemed to have a lot of fun writing everyone's names on them (at least they were good for something!).

The pinata:

Ian blowing out his candles:

The youngest guest, isn't he just the cutest little guy?!

Ian running around the house to express how much he loved his presents. He was very happy, in case you couldn't tell. Mimi and Bumpa, Nannie and Papa, Greg and I all chipped in to get him a Wii. We've had it for over a month, and I was starting to freak out because the only thing he was asking for was Bakugan. He was so excited though. And the icing on the cake was that he also received a couple gift certificates to get some Bakugan when they become available again, a Bakugan launcher, and Auntie Shel and Uncle Mike miraculously found a "Bakurack" (a Bakugan case) that he had been dying for. He also got a Cranium game, some K'nex, Legos, a bag of cool goodies from Gramma Char and Grampa Scot, and an I-Dog that he was equally excited about.

All in all, for as stressed out as I was about it all, he had a really great day, and really that's all I can ask for. I will say though, never again with I have his birthday party on his actual birthday. I really felt bad about being grumpy for a good part of the morning of his birthday, just because I felt things weren't coming together. Lesson learned!