Sunday, July 5, 2009

Five Alarm Fourth of July


Jack has been celebrating his birthday for several weeks now starting with our block party a week before his birthday. The second annual summer block party was a blast complete with moon bounce (which Jack refused to go in again this year).

The fun continued with dinner at Los Tios on Jack's actual birthday and lunch with Aunt Lynne the next day when Jack got his tricycle.

The big celebration was this weekend though. We hosted a cookout on the Fourth to celebrate my birthday (July 1), Grandpa's birthday (July 2), and Jack's birthday (June 26). We had a great turnout of friends and family. Grandpa and Alice drove in from South Carolina for the festivities and helped make the party a great success.

The main attraction at the party (besides Jack) was the fire engine cake, which was quite the production. Last year, we had Jack's birthday cake made by a great local baker, but she was busy this year (along with the three fellow bakers she referred me to). So, I "googled" fire engine cake and found a video about how to make one. How hard could it be? Well, it turns out it's quite hard to get white icing to turn red, even after an entire bottle of food coloring! The fire engine was almost hot pink until I got a tip on Wilton's food coloring gel at Michael's craft store. Crisis averted! Aunt Niki was a big help in the cake decorating adventure, including designing the hoses on the side. The red icing was a big mess (as you'll see in the pictures), but Jack loved it, and most importantly, it also tasted pretty good!


We finished the night by walking up the hill in our neighborhood to watch the fireworks across the river in DC. It's not a bad view for not being downtown, although the weather was so (uncharacteristically) lovely it would have been a nice night to go into the city.

Many thanks to all who brought or sent Jack gifts for one of his many birthday celebrations this year. He is so lucky to have so many people who care about him.


Jack's Birthday Celebrations