Jörn's birthday

We've had three more birthdays since Jörn's at the beginning of May, but this was almost finished so I'm going ahead and posting it, just a month and a half late. Maybe after the next birthday or three, I'll get around to writing about the June birthdays...

Germans like to exchange presents first thing in the morning, with a big breakfast together. However, Jörn is the only full German in the family and not everybody wanted to be (or was) up before he left for work, so the celebration was postponed until lunch. We had an angel food cake (made from a mix, from the U.S., at Jörn's request...) covered in chocolate.

All of my children have inherited their father's love for giving presents. Lukas and Katie worked very hard for a long time, pounding lots of nails into wood scraps they'd gotten from the neighbors, and proudly presented Jörn with this...wooden object with lots of nails:

 Then it was Jacob's turn. He and Jörn share a love of plants:

And Marie's was as thrilled to give Jörn a pad of good art paper as Jörn was to receive it:

In the evening we had a party with a dozen or so guests, and two more cakes. The first was for one of the guests, whose birthday was the day before Jörn's:

Jörn had requested a Bird of Paradise plant for his birthday, but the ones at the garden shop that looked sort of okay were way out of our budget, and the ones that were only somewhat out of our budget were pretty scraggly looking and "might bloom in two or three years", so I didn't end up getting him one. However, I did attempt a sort of one on his cake: