Marie's 14th birthday

Poor Marie--she's been 14 years old for over three weeks, and I still haven't blogged about it! For that matter, although I'd uploaded (and backed up to my external hard-drive) all the photos between Helen's birthday and last Saturday, I hadn't even LOOKED at those photos yet! However, now that I have, I'm pleased to post them here. We didn't go overboard with photos of Marie's birthday--too busy having fun, I guess. (Yes, the younger children's birthdays are fun, but I'm more an observer than a participater, so take a lot of photos...)

Marie had originally hoped to have a sleep-over, but far too many events were coinciding to find a possible date within a reasonable length of time from her actual birthday. So she settled on a pizza party at home, the evening before her actual birthday.

With store-bought pitta breads and a bunch of prepared toppings, everyone created his or her (the only "he"s present being Marie's male siblings and parent) own pizza, which was much enjoyed by all. It did amuse me to have one of the girls compliment me on my "cooking" on Facebook, referring to the pizza she'd had at our house, considering that I had NOTHING whatseover to do with them! Okay, so I kept the smaller children away while my husband cut up vegetables for toppings. That was about it. And I did make my own pizza, of course. But didn't take a photo of it, or anyone else's.

I did, however, bake and decorate the cake. True to my usual style, it wasn't finished until well after the guests had arrived, but at least it was finished before dinner. (Oh, and that would be another reason I wasn't taking photos...I was in the kitchen decorating the cake.)

Marie's been playing the violin for five years, and is quite good. I didn't even like violin music much before she started playing and I tried to discourage her from starting lessons. I told her she had to learn piano (from me) first, and that then she had to practice every single day for a month, without being reminded, before I'd even put her on the waiting list for violin lessons at the city music school in Mülheim, Germany, where we lived at the time. She did it. Then I hoped that the waiting list really was as long as they said, but she got in within a couple of months. Much to my surprise, however, she wasn't squeaky at all, even at the beginning, and now I love listening to her play. Anyway, so much to the theme of the cake. I guess I'm making up for lack of photos by rambling.

Fourteen candles is a LOT of candles to light. One of them turned out to be a trick candle, which kept appearing to be out but then re-lit itself when she blew them out. (Yes, I re-use birthday candles. They're all in a big jar and I just mix and match. Or not match, as the case may be, because I'm not coordinated like that.) I think we'll be going with the rule that as of 18 (or maybe after 18?) the birthday person no longer gets the correlating number of candles for his or her age.

On Marie's actual birthday, September 22nd, Jacob made her a jelly roll (Swiss roll), and this time she only got two candles, and one of them was even a new one, straight from the package. The "4" was left over from my last birthday.

Happy birthday, to my first baby forever, no matter how old she gets!

Helen's third birthday

Wow--here it is only five days after the fact, and I'm already blogging about Helen's birthday! For the same story from a different point of view, check out Sue's blog.

Although I didn't manage to remember with any of the other children this year, I did remember to get the semi-traditional "day before" photo of Helen, still two. Actually, she'd been telling everyone for the last six months that she's "two and a half" and resisted all efforts to correct the math, but for the last few weeks, did happily tell people that she was going to turn three.

And here's Helen three at last:

In the early afternoon, our friends Dena and Joseph (known to Helen as "Jo-fess") came over to give Helen a present. She was happy to cuddle with them, but didn't want to open her present, so it got put on top of the piano to be opened with the other presents.

Here's a not-at-all-organized collage (I've been having fun with picasa!) of the gift-opening. A Guatemalen bear backpack from my parents (inspiring another round of "Backpack was a little bear, little bear, little bear!" learned from Starfall...), a card with stickers and such from Margaret and Phil in Germany, fishing game from Dena and Joseph, and of course the presents from the guests and her siblings. There were officially only two guests: Aimee and Sue. Aimee will be three in October and came with her "bodyguards" (so we call them, as Helen is rather larger and rougher than Aimee), her three older brothers and both parents. And Sue of course came with her husband, Richard. Our downstairs guest also joined us for the party, so we were 17 people altogether, which isn't bad for only inviting two! (Nobody gate-crashed or was unwelcomed by Helen, it was just that Aimee and Sue were the only "official" guests.)

The cat, of which I don't have a good photo but Sue does (taken by Helen!), was crocheted by Marie. Not sure why Sue is getting the hug, except that Helen often needs to randomly stop and exchange cuddles with Sue.

Dinner for everybody, and finally the cake. As of their third birthdays, the children get to request whatever they want on their birthday cake, and I do my best to make it. Lukas and Katie in particular had been trying to give Helen ideas for months, but it was always easy to tell when the idea wasn't Helen's. I finally got Helen on her own and asked her what she would like on her cake. She first told me she wanted a camel and wanted her birthday at the Camel Park, but when I asked her where she got that idea, she said, "Lukas said it to me very quietly in my ear like this," and then whispered in my ear. So I asked again what SHE would like on her cake, and she said, "Mmmm...white and brown cake." I said, "You would like a chocolate and vanilla cake?" "Yes, for my birthday when I'm going to turn three!" I tried again and asked if she would like a picture from a book, and she thought about it some more and said, "Hmmmm...yes! A roof!" I did hear the sounds, but wasn't sure what they meant, and repeated, "A roof?" "Yes, a roof. With a hippo-hoppamus. Eating special cake." We don't actually have this book, but Sue does, and she has read it to Helen MANY times, and for that matter, I've read it to Helen a fair number of times myself.

So...here is the hippo-hoppamus on a roof, eating special cake. The "cake", incidentally, is dried, candied mango! But the cake underneath the frosting is indeed chocolate and vanilla.

And here is a photo of the book cover, and a photo of the two-page spread with the exact picture Helen requested:

Our oven, by the way, had quit a week earlier, so I baked the cake in Sue's oven that morning. (We did get a new oven the next day.) When I took it out of the oven, Helen said, quite quietly for her, "Is that my birthday cake?" When I said yes, she said, even more quietly, if possible, "Are you going to make me another one?" I said no, this was her cake, just like she wanted, with chocolate and vanilla. (I put half of the batter in, added chocolate to the second half, and poured it sort of on top, sort of swirled.) Then her lip quivered just a bit as she said even MORE quietly, "But I want a hippo-hoppamus on my cake." Poor Helen! I explained that I would decorate it later when it cooled down, and she was happy again.

And so, a final photo of Helen admiring her cake. With a roof. With a hippo-hoppamus. Eating special cake.

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: