The kids got a Dora and Diego cookbook for Christmas and they really wanted to make the Dora castle cake. We had an incident with the food color with the red lid on the yellow color paste. I did not notice until too late, thanks to 2 kids screaming at me about who got to lick the bowl and the beater from the frosting. So the cake was supposed to be purple but turned this dark green instead. Oh well, we decided it was a rain forest cake. I had been reading recently about using more natural food coloring and had even looked up where to buy some but a few times a year won't hurt too much (we hope).

Colin noticed that I had one gumdrop going the wrong way and he gave me a little talking to about following the recipe and the picture more carefully. Thanks Colin.

Jane was delighted.

It was windy and Brian loves any reason to use the culinary torch.

My mom got both our kids sparkler candles for their birthdays and they were very exciting.

We had some nice friends over (who sadly will be moving soon) to help us eat cake. It was funny talking about our efforts to limit sugar as we continued to pick at the cake.

Everything was green. It is even green today on the other end if you know what I am talking about.

The girls were being very cute tossing the soccer ball and then the boys tackled Jane.

Again, Happy birthday little Jane! We were also going to do a pinata but we had had enough for this year. This however was Jane's first birthday home since she was born.