Happy Happy Birthday....

We are backing up a bit to April 8, Travis's 31st birthday!!!

April is the Month of Birthdays in our family, specifically the first two weeks, and I have a ridiculously hard time keeping up. So I just send e-cards and bake one ugly cake after another and inwardly promise myself I'll do better next year.

Travis's uncle Bob, aunt Nancy, and cousin Anthony came into town on his birthday for an extended East Coast tour vacation in conjunction with a North Carolina wedding reception for their son. Their timing was perfect, since this is the week our house is FILLED WITH CAKE!!!

The cake you see here is a lemon cream cake with crumb topping. Travis's favorite kind of cake is lemon (random?) so every year I try to come up with some unique kind of LEMONY cake. This one is supposed to be a copycat of the Olive Garden recipe? (It came highly recommended by Shauna & Jeff!) Not that I've ever tried that one, so I have no idea how close the replica came. I DO know, however, that my crumb topping (a) failed miserably, and (b) was a stupid idea for a birthday cake. Please note the cloud of crumbs billowing up in the air as Travis blows out his candles...

{The aftermath:}

You may also note that there were not 31 candles (not enough room on the cake! Ha ha just kidding babe) but they were placed in the shape of a "31". Really... you kind of had to use your imagination. On the phone was Tim, Travis's twin who--GUESS WHAT--had his 31st birthday that day too!!! So we are singing to them both.

Kate got Travis a little tree that you can grow (it's a tiny pot and a pine tree seed, I guess) and I got him an iPod, and we all three made cards. We had a dinner at home of shrimp scampi linguine. It was so fun to have extra family members there to share his birthday with us! I don't really have many birthday pictures, since this week was really crazy and I was not well prepared for it. If you want to see some other birthday pictures, you can check here or here. He pretty much looks the same.

Happy birthday sweetie!!! We love you!

I am trying to catch up one day at a time, working chronologically.
Stay tuned for: Our day in DC...