The first of the summer birthdays

Jedidiah starts us off at the first of July with our summer birthdays.  To say that I can hardly believe that he just turned SEVEN is an understatement! Oh. My.  I wish I was feeling better to make an attempt to take some half way decent pictures, but I suppose that will have to wait for another day. 

Jedidiah had a wonderful birthday.  He had first requested a pink cake, like he had last year.  But last minute he changed his mind and decided on one green cake, one white cake, both with gummy worms. This year I made a bean cake with a strawberry mid-layer filling.  The frosting, however, was made with powdered sugar.  There was no way, with the dinner and the cake prep, that I was going to punch out a gaps legal vanilla frosting.  There is only so much I can do :-)  This enabled Flannery to make the frosting, so it was hands off for me.

The kitchen has been a wreck, for like ever, so I decided to pick up some paper plates to make things a little easier.  Everyone had fun picking out which creature plate they would eat off of.  And to make this really fancy I even sprang for some straws!  Ha, ha.  Not sure why, but straws are always a huge hit at my house. 

Jedidiah awoke to see his birthday sign, which he LOVED. The girls did a bug theme, which is his current fascination.  I wish we would have been able to do something special for his day, but we had to pull he and his two sisters from runner's camp (due to finances), and it ended up being cancelled for the day due to some big storms that flooded the fields.  So it was an inside day for us. 

Jed's birthday dinner included, everyones' favorite, ham, mashed potatoes, and the must-not-be-forgotten cranberry sauce.  Simple, but yummy.  We had trouble locating one of his gifts.  A few of the stores were out of it.  Jeremiah found one that had what we were looking for.  It is a bug habitat/home.  So now Jed can keep his much prized bug catches in a proper home.  Though I do squirm at the thought of the cap coming off at some point!  We have another gift we are waiting to arrive in the mail, a hand held microscope. It is small, compact, and supposedly very good.  I know that Jed will be begging to spend hours outside finding things to put under his scope!

Here are a few birthday pictures:

Jed posing with his birthday sign.  Do not mind that his named is spelled wrong!  Isabella lost track of her letters. Or at least that is her excuse :-) 

Our very fancy table ware. 

The cakes.  And yes, a little someone got into the cake before we could sing happy birthday!  Sneaky little boy.

Speaking of Sneaky boy, here he is!  Playing all innocent won't help.

Why is it so difficult to get young boys to smile nicely?  Is that just my boys? This was attempt number 407 at getting a decent smile.  I would post some of the other, totally ridiculous ones, but my energy is waning.  Blogger is taking too long to load the pictures.