Cake, Visitor and No More Decorations!

Here's RLs birthday cake in all it's fiery glory! R made a wonderful spice cake for him. One of her goals for 2010 is to make something from a new recipe every week. She found this recipe on King Arthur's Flour Blog.

See how moist it is! It was delicious. The little fink neglected to tell me that it had a can of tomato soup in it until it was completely gone! Yes, I was a little put off by that, but the cake was so good I couldn't complain too much.

Here's our visitor. RL was sitting on the love seat and looked outside to find this hawk in our tree out front. I've seen them fly over before but never this close. It gives me the heebie jeebies just looking at it!

See all the paper chains and origami decorations? These have been hanging up since early December. We couldn't agree when to take them down. The kids talked me into keeping them up until after the first of the year. That turned into Rs birthday. Which turned into Valentine's Day. Which turned into RLs birthday. The day after his birthday I took them down! I was tired of hearing, "Let's leave them up for Easter, then Mother's Day, your birthday, Father's Day, 4th of July, Ls birthday, back to school, Halloween, Thanksgiving and then we'll be prepared for next Christmas!" Yes, that was the argument. I couldn't believe how big the living room looked when they were finally taken down! RL walked into the house, noticed right away and declared that THAT was his birthday gift! I think he was beyond ready just like I was! So nice to finally have just the usual junk cluttering up the place.