Whirlwind Week

The last week or so I feel like I've hardly had time to catch my breath, and while a growing baby-belly could have something to do with it, we've had some event nearly every day--not our norm.

We started off the craziness with a delightful visit from my in-laws and a birthday party for my daughter--complete with another lopsided birthday cake.

The Leaning Tower of Cake-sa

I'm thinking this problem was in part due to uneven cake layers and a small mishap when I tried to remove the parchment paper strips (which I'd placed around the edges to keep the plate clean)  from beneath the cake. Some of the cake wanted to come with the paper, so I had to stuff it back in. You can see this on the right side of the photo.

Nobody commented too much on that because it was a stinking tall cake, and the food-colored layers were impressive to our kid crowd. Some of the inveterate cake non-eaters nearly polished off most of their huge cake slices, and I'm guessing it was because they wanted to try the different colors. 

Pretty layers

My favorite thing about this cake was NOT trying to get those sprinkles attached to the sides, but instead the yummy chocolate frosting. Thank you, Pioneer Woman.

Another big day was when my oldest was on television.  He was a Sav-A-Lot Kidcaster on our local news. If you follow the link, you can see him in action. It was quite the educational experience to see, in part, how television works. The folks there were really nice to him, and I was proud of him (even if he didn't know what grade he was in-- typical homeschooler!).

My in-laws treated us to a Hagerstown Suns (minor league) baseball game, and that was a fun late night. I had our final homeschool review meeting for the year, and soccer filled in any open gap--including the whole day Saturday when my son played 4 whole soccer games in a tournament.

We ended the week with a birthday party for my oldest son. He wanted an ice cream cake in the shape of an abominable snow man that we had seen in a library book. He got this cake instead.

Well, it is an ice cream cake!

He wasn't disappointed because the essence of what he wanted was an ice cream cake that looked cold, and he asked for the blue frosting because it looked cold. Notice the reappearance of sprinkles? And, yes, those are tons of tasty Oreo cookies crushed up in the ice cream layer. His very favorite part of the cake was the hardened layer of Nutella between the cake layer and ice cream. I liked it, too, and not just because it was easier than making either frosting or hot fudge sauce to glue the two layers together. The frosting was simply whipped cream sweetened with powdered sugar and tinted with food coloring. And leftover chocolate frosting wrote out the "Happy Birthday" part.

Phew! I'm tired just typing all of this out. Only half of this week is filled with outside activities, and my pregnant body is thankful!