Tate's 6th Birthday Party!!!

We celebrated Tate's 6th birthday at our local park again this year complete with the same train and conductor!!!  Though the weather here has been unbearably hot this summer, I decided to brave the climate once again.  And once again we were blessed with unbelievable weather.  It was warm...don't get me wrong, but not nearly as warm as it could be and this park is super shaded...I don't think I felt one sweat drop :) even with all the preparations.

As always my amazing family came through and helped me out...Goodness I love them!  My mom and dad picked up the balloons for me as well as the ice, and Lindsey came over right after she ran and helped with the setting up as well.

Then the festivities began!  Tate had a blast as did all his friends who came.  I got to hang out with my friends and chat and just enjoy the day.  I had an absolutely wonderful time...I wasn't too stressed or running around doing last minute stuff.  (I was a nutcase for the set up, but that's to be expected I think :) )  But people pitch in like crazy which is so awesome!!  All in all I think the party went really well.

Most importantly, Tate had an absolutely fabulous time!  His BFF Leo was there, so all was right with his world.  They rode the train, swung in the swings, ran around together, ate cake together...they were just together.  And it was awesome.  Those sweet sweet boys.  

 The maiden voyage on the birthday train!

I rode with one of my BFFs!! 

Others joined in while the rest played on the playground....

Love this sister of mine!

Too quickly it was time for the ride on the train!

After I settled up with the conductor it was time for cake!!!! (which turned out fabulous if I do say so myself :) )

Lots of love that day in the park...

My awesome next door neighbor and her little guy!

 I had fun coming up with fun and original ideas for the food for our Cars/Planes Birthday Party!

Lightning McQueen's Stoplights! 

Dusty' Clouds

Luigi's Tires (my homemade
mini zucchini chocolate
chip muffins)

Sally's Cozy Cones

Flo's V8 Veggie Cafe

We said farewell to most of the partygoers and headed back home to have lunch (pizza), wine and present opening with our family and close family friends!

Vincent is amazing with kids who annoy him greatly!

These two were inseparable!

Time for presents!  Tate's joy at every single one was so cute!

 

The Fab Four!

How I love them!

Tate with his awesome Grandmommy and Papa

H loves being in pictures :

Six years.  Six years that I've mothered this little boy, this precious soul.  I cannot believe it.  These six years have absolutely flown by.  I look at him here with me and I look at his baby pictures on the wall, and I can hardly believe that he's here and he's mine.  Mine for now.  For in 12 years, he'll be flying away if I do this most important job well.  Six years.  I waited 41 years for him to come into my life and it seems like a lifetime ago in some ways and just yesterday that I lived here in this house alone.  He fills every corner of this house with laughter, joy, tears, frustration, fun, happiness, exultation, disbelief, anger, disdain, surprise, quirkiness and most of all love.  I've never known love like I've known it the past six years.  And not just for my son, but for my mother and my father.  Goodness I have never loved them like I love them in this time in my life.  I look at them and wonder how on earth did you do this 3 times?  I look at them and all they still do for all three of us and think, I now understand the love you have for us.  My dad struggles to express his feelings, yet I know, I know how much he loves me and he loves my son.  He shows me each and every day with all that he does for us; that's how he shows us.  My mom wears her heart on her sleeve...she tells me she loves me and she shows me. And she shows Tate.  Mothering is tough work, but the rewards are tenfold.  I never really knew that until now, six years into this mothering.  It's not just about me and my son, it's about my family.  And I adore them.

Happy Happy Birthday to my sweet son!
I am so blessed to be his mother!

The 9th Week of Summer 2015!

Week 9 started off with church and a birthday party for our old friend Alie from daycare!  What a fun party it turned out to be at the Downtown Aquarium!  It was an absolute blast!!!

On the train!

Another old friend from daycare!! 

Tate and the birthday girl!

Those two = Trouble

Me?  Trouble? 

Creepy!!

Monday found him going to Zoo Camp for one final week!  We had a new babysitter who came to our house in the morning then picked him up for me in the afternoons!  I'm so very blessed that Tate is so easygoing about having people come in and out of his life to take care of him.  She's a sweet young black woman in between jobs with a college degree.  I'm happy to help her out any way I can, probably paying her more than I should, but she was laid off in early April, so she needs so cash.  I'm really hoping she finds something soon.  

A couple more birthday presents came in the mail....the one from Daddy Christian was a HUGE hit!! :)

He immediately started putting it together!!  We only had time for part of it the first night;  as soon as he got home from Zoo Camp the next day he finished putting it together and took pictures of his finished product :)

Our festive week ended with Tate's birthday party!!  WooHoo!  It was an incredibly festive party with an even yummier HOMEMADE cake!  

However, the cake was not supposed to be homemade.  Tate and I went to Whole Foods on Sunday to order his cake...I had already ordered the Lightning McQueen cake topper, so I needed a half sheet cake.  I ordered a vegan (due to his egg allergy) cake with vanilla buttercream icing to be picked up Friday at noon.  I was told I could pick it up anytime after 8am that Friday.

Thursday early evening as I was leaving work I got a voicemail telling me they couldn't make my care.  Mind you this was at 5:30pm...they had called around 4:30pm.  I called to see what had happened.  They no longer used the bakery they had used for years to make their vegan bakery products; in fact they hadn't used them in over a month.  Yes a month.  So when I had ordered our cake on Sunday it was a known fact that they had no way to make my cake.  Even stranger they do not look at their cake orders until the day they are to be due.  Seriously?  A cake that I was supposed to be able to pick up as early as 8am the following day?  You didn't look at the order until 430pm the afternoon prior?  I was furious.  I explained to the manager, who it took me several tries to get a hold of, that I knew not having a birthday cake was far from the end of the world, that in the grand scheme of life it was not a big deal.  I also explained though that I had a little boy who was super excited about his birthday cake, and that getting another vegan cake was not a simple as walking into Kroger and buying one off the shelf.  That I had trusted them to help me keep my child safe and provide him with a cake for his party.  I understand that people make mistakes, and the woman who took my order made a mistake.  Now I was stuck trying to figure out how to order a cake with less than 24 hours to receive said cake or make a half sheet cake MYSELF.  That seemed so incredibly daunting especially given I had a massage appointment the following morning at 930am for 90 minutes that I would get charged for canceling at the last minute (and ooh boy did I need that massage!)  I didn't have a cake pan for a half sheet cake, and trying to find a recipe for that large a vegan cake seemed almost impossible.

I did find a local bakery online that specializes in allergy friendly cakes, and I sent an email to the company around 6pm explaining my situation asking for just a simply vegan cake that I could icing myself the next day.  

Imagine my surprise when the owner of that bakery, JodyCakes, called me herself that night at 8:30pm to tell me she really wanted to help me, but just didn't see how it was possible so late in the game.  She offered to make us cupcakes as long as I called by noon on Friday.  She was so kind and so generous with trying to work through options with me.  She most definitely did not have to call me from her home;  I will definitely be visiting her bakery soon.

I found a recipe online that I decided to try.  So after my fantastic massage I made my way to Williams Sonoma to buy a half sheet cake pan and something to decorate the icing with...piping around the border.  I then ran to Target to buy last minute party supplies and cake cooking supplies (as always I forgot something...thank goodness for my next door neighbors!).  Then I picked Tate up from Zoo Camp and we made our way home for an abbreviated Game/Movie Night which ended up being 'Make The Birthday Cake' Night.  I made four separate batches of the cake and poured them all into cake pan.  I was worried that just quadrupling the recipe would make it weird, so 4 individual  batches seemed the better alternative.  My biggest worry was that the cake would fall in the middle as that seems to be the most common mishap in making an egg-free cake.  And the fact that my cake would be so huge made it seem, to me, that that was more likely to happen.

Guess what?  

It didn't sink!

My kitchen was a hot mess though!

There it is...cooking away!  And yes yes I know I shouldn't have opened the oven...I only did it the one time for the picture...I promise!

Wanna see how it turned out?  Well you gotta read the birthday party post!!