Pink Spiderman Cake + Presents

If you read the previous post on making cupcakes, you will know we have been baking fools. When Reed wanted homemade cupcakes, he asked for them to have cherry frosting. Now being the enlightened father that I am, I steered him away from taking PINK cupcakes to his kindergarten class (would he live that down by high school?) However, when asked about cake for home, he replied again that he wanted cherry icing with Batman on top. OK --- Pink cake with Batman. As the artistic father, YES, I can do that. Upon going to our local HEB Plus (my new favorite place to date my wife), there was NO Batman to be found. BUT, there was the ever present Spiderman who always serves and protects. Sooooo, drumroll please.....................................here is PINK, Spiderman cake for a sixth birthday!

Here is our after party once we had devoured luscious, healthy Long John's Silver's. Check out the pile of presents --- can we say "SCORE" for the six-year old.

Rip that paper boy! You're not a blue-hair yet!

Gram and Granddad got us a BIG box.


Let's all dance to the Shrek musical card................ we dance, put on your red shoes and dance........Lorna, you got the moves, Babe. Lane you dancing studmuffin, you! Maren is tooooo cool for dancing shoes plus she is sore from athletics after sitting on the couch for two weeks.

Reed concludes his after party with a round of learning games on his new V-Tech laptop from his Gram and Granddad. It comes with a laptop bag too. What is up with the toy industry these days? I'm sure our after party will be covered on Page Six. Reed is ready for his close-up. Thanks to all who loaded up our big boy with presents.

Birthday Lunch

Since I was "off" today from school, I got to have lunch with the Reedster at school. Interesting fact: Happy Meals are not made at Mickey D's before 10:30 a.m. This is a REAL challenge to make a 10:45 a.m. kindergarten lunch ------ but, I did it. See the chicken nuggets to prove it. Of course, the Bionical Toy in said Happy Meal was WAY more interesting at lunch than Dad. I'm not hurt Reed, really........

Love the eyes, dude! Reed takes after his very photo impaired brother who is only now at 16 getting out of the awkward photo stage. Gotta love six-year olds though! The birthday saga continues this evening at Long John Silvers --- Reed really is a cheap date. I do like that though!

Sweet 16

OK, so Lane really at times might not be considered "sweet," but he turned 16 yesterday. Because it was our usual maddening school / work day, we celebrated last night at our local Dave and Buster's. This was Lane's choice for a party. Because he is working on the driving thing ---- and I do mean WORKING on it, we gave him a choice on two of the following things:

• Party at someplace like Schlitterbahn, Fiesta Texas etc... that cost Mom & Dad mucho dinero.
• A physical present (his list here was quite lengthy) or
• a significant amount of money for a car.

He chose the presents and the car money. Soooo we took the guy and his friend Michael out to eat at D&B's and then played video games in their game room. A fun time was had by all, even Maren who did not do so well at the Dance, Dance, Revolution type game.

We came home for cake and presents. Lane got a new MP3, a cordless PS2 controller from his grandparents and a "significant amount of car money." Michael slept over and pancakes were had by all this morning. Now if you will excuse me, I have a new wealthy relative in the house....... he just LOVES me.

Happy Birthday Lorna!

It is a black day in our house, Lorna turns 40 on August 18th! She spent her Friday at work with peach pie, ice cream and lots of loving co-workers who decked her out. She now joins the over 40 set tomorrow! She hasn't changed alot from her early years. Tomorrow will be cake, special meals and presents. I love you sweety, the whole wide world and then some! Send Lorna some birthday greetings.

Birthday Buds

July is a big birthday month in my family. My brother Todd turned 39 on the 15th and my sister Susan turned 36 today. It is funny that both my siblings have spent their lives having birthdays two days apart. When we were younger, my mom would always let us choose what was for dinner on our birthdays. The photo was taken at Todd's birthday while we lived in Brownwood and I think Todd was turning 7 and Susan would have been turning 4. Todd was a big boy's boy and this particular birthday he got the BB gun pictured. Who would have guessed the BB toting 7 year old would grow up to work with my dad and the pigtailed, co-pillow carrying girl would become a mom to three and working for a large company managing money. The co-pillow thing is one of those family stories because Susan carried around a pillow instead of a blanket or stuffed animal like most kids, because the pillow was "cold" it got morphed into co-pillow. At this time in our life, VCR's were HUGE (literally), microwaves were the newest thing and kids still roamed the streets til the street lights came on "playing." How times have changed. My loving wife Lorna has also noticed that my mother's quirk for the birthday picture holding the cake continues to day - check out my Dad at his 63rd birthday this June. Happy birthday Todd and Susan! I love you!

Tim-