Finding Contentment

April - the month of birthdays

07:19 PM, Tuesday, April 10, 2007 .. Posted in Family .. 2 comments .. Link

April is certainly the month for birthdays in my family. Within one week my older brother, my youngest son and my mother-in-law all have birthdays.

So this past weekend we had Adam's 4th birthday. I didn't put as much into it as I usually do (money or time) but I am trying to counteract the materialistic leanings my children developed before we changed our lifestyle. What better place to start than with the youngest, who is less likely to know the difference?

Also, because I am trying to get the kids outdoors into the fresh air more, we decided to run the birthday around an outdoor sports theme instead of the latest television show. I had planned to bake the cake and then create a bicycle on it, since one of his birthday gifts (from my mother-in-law) was to be his first real bike. Unfortunately, when I went to bake the cake I realized that I had boiled all the eggs in the house in preparation for Easter egg dying. So I just ran to the grocery store and purchased a cake. It came with Dragon Tales figures on it, which I took off before creating the bike.

The bike is edible, by the way. It is made out of various candies. The tires are Cow Tales, the frame is made of candy sticks, the handlebars, seat, pedal and spokes of cut-up Twizzlers and the streamers are sour airheads cut into strips. I added green cake glitter at the bottom to simulate grass. The tires were supposed to have an M&M in the middle of the spokes but being Adam's favorite candy, these were all gone by the time I got to that part! The second photo is Adam opening one of his gifts, and the third is Adam on his new bike. Notice the bit of chocolate ice cream on his shirt!