The Big 35

We celebrated Sam's 35th birthday on Saturday.

I asked him to pick up birthday candles for his cake on his way home from work on Friday.  The checkout girl kept commenting on how someone must be really old if you have to buy two packs of birthday candles.  Honestly, anyone older than 20 needs 2 packs, so if that's really old, I guess we're ancient. In 6 more years, he'll need 3 packs.  Now that's something to comment on :)


The kids were super excited, and woke up extra early Saturday.  They wanted to "help" me make breakfast for Sam (Harrison did scramble eggs), but they also wanted to wake Sam up extra early. I'm sure just the birthday surprise he wanted on a Saturday morning.  While I was cooking up crepes, they went in his room and sang a chorus of happy birthday. So much for breakfast in bed.

The Sunday before his birthday I pulled out my trusty old cake doctor book, to figure out what kind of cake to make him.  Olivia took the book, and pointed to a cake, and said, "This one!"  I looked, and it was a chocolate peppermint cake.  We still had quite a few candy canes left over for christmas, so it seemed like a good idea, and Sam thought so too.  It was chocolate cake with a peppermint candy cane buttercream filling, and peppermint chocolate ganache for frosting. The kids helped me decorated the top with mini-candy canes forming hearts. As I was putting the candy canes on the cake, it made me remember my mom had made a special candy cane cake for me for my 2nd birthday - but it didn't do the trick, as I was distraught my baby sister came home from the hospital that same day.  Ah, memories.

The kids couldn't wait until after dinner to have cake, so we had it after lunch.  It tasted pretty good, but for some reason the cake was incredibly crumbly.  Not sure what I did wrong, as I followed the doctored up recipe, adding buttermilk and extra eggs or something.  I did forget to add the vanilla, but I really don't think that would make it crumbly.  Oh, well.

I forgot to get a shot of the cake before we stuck all those candles in it. 

The kids didn't seem to notice the cake was crumbly.  They ate it right up!

 Sam was a good sport about helping with projects around the house on his birthday.  I hope he felt appreciated, as we all really think he's the greatest - greatest dad, husband, and the greatest at everything he does for all of us.  We love you Sam!