FOUR!!!!!!!

Trace turned 4 on April 22! He was super excited and asked for his presents the minute he woke up. Did we give them to him you ask? You know we did. We even took Taylor to school 30 minutes late so he could open them. You only turn 4 once.





As his birthday was a Thursday, it was business as usual, but we had a family cookout to celebrate on Saturday. I somehow got the honor of not only baking Trace's cake, but also doing all the cooking out, so I don't have many pictures of the event, just of the cake.

Thanks to Taylor selling magazine subscriptions for Girl Scouts, I get the Disney Family Fun magazine. It is full of cute ideas, and a couple months ago they had several really fun birthday cakes. Trace saw this dirtbike cake and HAD to have one. I got a crazy idea that I'd make him one - remember, you only turn 4 once! (Those that really know me are all chuckling at this...I am what you would call domestically challenged.)

The model cake used chocolate icing (like 3 tubs) and I'm a buttercream fan, so I decided to go as far as to make my own icing. I also refuse to put pretzels on a cake, or cocopuffs, or glazed chocolate donut holes. That's right, it's my first cake and I'm already deviating from the recipe. Picture me standing in my kitchen with 2 boxes of yellow cake mix, eggs, oil, vanilla extract, almond extract, 2 lbs of powdered sugar, crisco, and butter and staring the oven and mixer thinking "I have three freaking engineering degrees, surely I can bake a cake".

I will admit that there were times I was scared, and at one point John and our ferrier, Beamer, came in the kitchen and relentlessly made fun of me and my half put together creation (Beamer wouldn't even try a bite of the leftover wedge of cake, he was totally skeptical). But, I didn't give up, and I think this cake turned out pretty good.







The festivities aren't over quite yet...We're going wild to celebrate Trace turing 4 and Eaden turing 3! We'll see you all after the zoo party this coming weekend!