Stacer Days: Happy early birthday

My dad and sister share a birthday in October but due to busy schedules, Jenny and Barrett drove down this past weekend so we could all celebrate early. Since we are somewhat homebound, thanks to our high maintenance little wonder, we invited everyone over to our house Saturday night...

Jenny and Dad (and Aaron making laps on his trike)...

Aunt Jenny and Aaron (doing what Grandma refers to as his "shy face" pose)...

I made my dad a small book using blurb.com highlighting the historical and family events that occurred on his birthday...

Aaron keeping himself occupied while someone else controlled the room's attention. He is wearing his game day jersey and although our Longhorn-supporting family may lose one (Daddy) if they pull another game like last week, the boys and I will still wear burnt orange and still watch their games.

Adam keeping himself occupied, or maybe it is Aunt Jenny keeping herself occupied. Either way, Jenny can usually make him laugh pretty hard and Adam returns the favor, most of the time.

In order to lure her down, I told Jenny a couple of weeks ago that if she came to town for her birthday, I'd make her and dad a cake. I have a few cakes under my belt (literally and figuratively), so I thought it would be fun to try something new: fondant. So I collected my tools, supplies and studied a bit, as to not waste too many perishable materials. I carefully went through the steps and I was getting excited about the possibility of it looking pretty nice.

Then, Saturday morning, about seven hours before the honored guests would be arriving, out of curiosity I tasted the fondant. It hadn't occurred to me, until then, that I have never tasted cake decorated with fondant. I assumed that it had to taste good, as all of the fancy bakeries on television seem to cover every cake with fondant of some shape and color. Then again, at every wedding and party I have been to in my time, which is not a significant amount, but enough for supporting evidence, the cake is always covered and decorated with butter cream frosting. Well, I now know why, not only is it important for a wedding cake to look stunning and beautiful, but with the three bites you generally get, if you are lucky, there has to be big-time taste... and that is not something I would use to describe fondant. That evening my dear sweet husband, in an effort to make everyone else feel better about peeling it off, likened the fondant to Play-Doh, which we later figured would probably taste better.

All of that being said, I thought it looked pretty neat in the end...