April and May are often full with celebrations and family time. Because I am on a roll with catching up (at least it feels like it), I thought I would combine some of these birthday celebrations all together in one post.
Grandma turned 91!
Mom with her Mom and Ayden (Grandma's Great Great Granddaughter)
I can't get enough of this cutie!
Then a belated celebration for mine when I returned from Cabo. As my Dad often comments, birthdays for me have always lasted a month. I usually deny it but then chuckled when I got 4 different birthday treats. This was one of my favorites, though. Gluten free cupcakes from Extraordinary Cupcakes in Williamsburg. The coffee one is so delish!
3 gluten free just for me
And then Mom's birthday, which fell on Memorial Day. Her birthday usually falls on the holiday weekend so there's usually some celebrating on the water.
We had a great lunch for Mom on the boat...lots of fresh fruit, homemade potato salad, homemade Texas Caviar, and dogs on the grill. There's just something about eating on the boat that makes meals all that more enjoyable.
Because Spencer often needs entertainment, we thought we'd stick him on the tube on the ride home. He also has TONS of energy and is running wide open all the time (with the exception of when he is sleeping). So...tubing was the perfect way to end the day. Or so we thought. I don't usually like to make a habit of laughing at somebody else's pain, but in this case, it was unavoidable. That boy was so scared and we could not help but crack up...only because we knew he was totally safe and my Dad wasn't going to be wild with him.
At the point where my Dad turned and he went over the wake, he was not happy!!
The funniest part was that he never really loosened up or started smiling, but he also didn't want to get off (even when we offered).
Hayley saw that Spencer was having so much fun (or not) that she couldn't pass up a chance to tube...even in her clothes (because she didn't have a bathing suit on)! Her reaction was slightly different than his...
Calm, cool, and collected now that he was back on the boat
Because we had had such a great lunch and it's always a bummer to have dessert when you're too full to really enjoy it, we decided to have birthday cake and homemade ice cream for dinner!
Carrot cake is one of Mom's favorites (and mine, too) and I have the best homemade recipe. Of course, it has flour in it so I haven't made it in years. I wanted to make something special for Mom and could only think of the best cake I know of. I took a huge chance and substituted the flour called for in the recipe with a new gluten free flour mix that Trader Joe's is selling. Sometimes you can't do an even substitution with GF products (because it will not turn out right) so I went out on a limb on this one. And the cake even looked quite different when it finished baking so I was nervous.
We make it impossible to hide your age!
The cake was a huge crowd pleaser (Dad couldn't even tell that it wasn't the original recipe) and the ice cream disappeared in no time. We should do dessert for dinner more often!
