Finally, A Real Celebration!

After school in the morning, Caleb baked his own cake.  I'm not actually a cruel slavedriver--Caleb is my child most interested in cooking/baking, and he really wanted to make it himself!  While it cooled, we rushed off to get pictures of the kids taken.  That ended up taking longer than I expected (because I am a starry-eyed optimist, LOL), so when we got home, Caleb and I quickly mixed up a batch of Mrs. Harner's yummy frosting.  We had talked in the van on the way home that he wanted to make a fall-themed cake.  While we were waiting at the picture place for our pictures to be printed, we walked around outside.  It was an absolutely gorgeous fall day, with a blue "Colorado" sky and trees with fall-colored leaves, so that was his inspiration for his cake. 

It is so wonderful that he wanted to decorate his own cake, because that freed me up to make dinner!  Caleb requested "chicken packets", and they are a bit of a pain to make because you have to make these filled packets out of crescent rolls, dip them in butter, then cover them in breadcrumbs.  It's not too bad if you are just making 8, which is what the recipe calls for, but I made 24, so it definitely took a while.  That is why it had to be a birthday dinner request, as opposed to something just on the regular dinner rotation, LOL.

As soon as we ate, we cleaned up quickly, downed some cake and ice cream, and opened presents.  We were in a hurry because Nathan and Luke were headed over to the McC's to watch "To Kill a Mockingbird" with their literature teacher.  There's always something else going on!

Anyway, Caleb got a Lord of the Rings lego set from Bob and me, as well as a small one from Jonathan, which was really sweet.  He also got this cool lab set from Grandma and Grandpa B.  He and Jonathan made a glow-in-the-dark bouncy ball last night after the girls went down.  Oh, we also got him a double set of cards, since he is always complaining that when they want to play a card game, the only decks we can find are missing tons of various cards, thanks to the girls and Micah also playing "games" with them.  He is keeping these new decks up in his room!