Jacob's 12th birthday

On June 3rd, Jacob's actual birthday, Marie made a cake for him.

Jacob's birthday party was a couple of days later. His request for the cake was "water balloon theme", and I was pleased that he was pleased with the result--one of the easiest cakes I've made.

Preparing for the water balloon fight:

Just the people living in our house (family plus one houseguest) would have meant nine people at the party, so it didn't make much difference how many more people Jacob invited...I think he invited 12, and 10 were able to come. We started with cake.

We unfortunately didn't get a photo of Elisabeth at her dirtiest, but I like the seriousness with which she approached "helping" me fill water balloons.

I spent the entire water fight filling balloons as fast as I could. We didn't buy many ourselves, but as all the guests knew that there was to be a water fight, Jacob was given a LOT more. I estimate that we used about 400. The guests all brought various water squirters, as well, and I think Jacob received four or five as gifts. Some of them, thankfully, are already broken.

We have way too many photos of the actual water fight, but there are always lots of other children in them, and I'm not sure if all of their parents are okay with their photos being posted, so here's one of Lukas, standing on top of the clubhouse that my brother built out of the two crates with which we moved to Cprus:

Katie and Helen, enjoying being wet:

We finished with dinner, for which some of the parents and siblings also joined us: