Birthday Bash

Handsome is gone for his annual training for the army, leaving me home with the four kids by myself.  Add to that the chicken pox and, well, you can imagine the kind of week I've had.  But Dude had his first birthday over the weekend, and regardless of our crazy schedules we wanted to celebrate together.  (All pictures swiped from my mother-in-law since I was running around like a crazy lady and didn't take any pictures myself.)

Singing "Happy Birthday"

Handsome was able to get off duty early on Sunday so he and two of the guys from his unit came home for the party.  Because of my recent FLYing everything came together rather easily.  I went back and forth on the menu but settled on tacos.  I also made 2 cakes.  Oh.  My.  Yum.

Birthday cakes

Both recipes are from Kate at Modern Alternative Mama.  Well, actually all 3 when you consider the frosting.  The cake in the front is a white bean vanilla cake.  I made it once before and got surprising reviews from my husband.  He asked me what was in it because it was reallly good, ha ha!  I put a very thin layer of  raspberry jam I canned last summer in between the layers.  The first time I made the cake I used my springform pans but had a bit of trouble with leaking or seeping out the side so this time I used some round cake pans.  Blasted cakes wouldn't come out, I had to cut them in half and pull them out half at a time.  I'm not sure if it was because I waited until they were cold to try or if I need to use the springform pans in the future.  I soaked and cooked the beans a last week when we needed beans for our dinner recipe so they were already in the fridge.

The chocolate cake is also from MAM.  Mine is much darker than her picture, perhaps because I have Hershey's Dark cocoa powder.  Now I know, "Hershey's?  Really?" you say.  Well, yes.  Because on this road toward health and nutrition I have to make some compromises.  And for things I'm going to bake I tend to go a more conventional route.  I do have some raw cocoa powder that is undeniably a more nutritious choice.  However, do I want to use a cup of that at $12.95/lb when I'm going to cook it and thereby destroy the enzymes and live bits that make it raw?  Or do I want to use a cup at $8/lb?  I save the raw cocoa powder to put in smoothies or for homemade hot chocolate.  As a side note, I operate the same with honey for the most part.  I use raw honey in tea or even homemade ice cream, but I use conventional stuff for baking.  Including this ah-maz-ing sourdough banana bread.  But I digress.  Chocolate cake.  Also amazing.  For real.  I was hesitant to use that much maple syrup (because let's be honest, that stuff is expensive) but the cake was so delicious it was worth it.  Huge hit for the whole family.

Dude eating his birthday bean cake

 For both cakes I used a frosting that's new to me.  To be honest, I thought both the cake and the frosting were new to the MAM site but I see that they're dated 2012, so the joke is on me!  But this frosting was no joke.  It is a buttercream frosting, but I've always made that by beating butter and sugar together.  It makes an alright frosting, albeit a little sweet and sometimes a bit more granular than I'd like.  Kate's buttercream though is heavenly.  It's light and buttery and sweet and uses a fraction of the sugar my other recipe does.  You do have to do some cooking and some paying attention, but I found her instructions plenty clear and the frosting turned out perfectly the first time.  I did use my KitchenAid stand mixer to make it.  My kids have been eating the leftovers all week on their sourdough banana bread.  Now that the bread is gone I'd imagine they'll take to just eating it straight (fortunately - or unfortunately - there isn't much left).  The bean cake tends to be sweet enough with just the layer of jam so I was worried that adding the frosting would overwhelm the cake.  I didn't want to leave it naked though because a frosted cake is much prettier than a naked one, and since I had to cut them to get them out of the pans I wanted to cover that up at least for display.  That said, this frosting did not overwhelm the cake at all.  It added just a bit of sweet creaminess but didn't make it overbearing, as I'm certain a more sugar-laden frosting would have.  This is my new favorite frosting recipe.  I'm in love.

Dart gun fight!

And of course no family gathering would be complete without shenanigans.  So, Handsome, my two brothers, my brother in law, and my sons got into a Nerf gun fight.  Apparently the discs are much more accurate than the traditional darts and they were hilarious.  I think Handsome's army pals were a little surprised to see grown men hiding in closets and creeping up the stairs to shoot each other with children's toys.  I'm pretty sure at one point my brother was using his girlfriend's head to stabilize his shot, and I know he used the Birthday Baby as a shield.  All in good fun of course.

As I was making the banana bread/muffins for the boys (they had to leave early Monday morning to report back for drill) and cleaning up the dishes after everyone had gone I couldn't help but feel so blessed.  I'm so thankful God pulled me out from the darkness.  I'm so thankful He gave me the strength to start FLYing.  I'm so thankful that I have an amazing family.  You see, I fed 18 people in my home Sunday night.  My house wasn't super clean, but it was presentable.  I wasn't up all hours scrambling to prepare, I didn't run around like a crazy woman and yell at my kids all day.  I was relaxed and I was mostly prepared.  I ran around all night, but that was making margaritas in my Vitamix, making more guacamole (in the Vitamix), finding candles, and cutting the cake.  I got several compliments on how great my house looked because it's so much better than it was, and I'm so thankful for that.  The fact that I could willingly invite all those people over without apologizing about what tragedy caused the disaster is nearly a miracle - and that after a week of sick kids and single parenting!  It was eye-opening for me to see how these habits and routines I've begun to develop have impacted me in real life.  And I'm just so... thankful.  I'm blessed.  And I love my huge, crazy family.

I've been thinking today about how to write up my journey out of the darkness, and I hope to have that up soon.  Perhaps that will give you even more perspective on how much better the light is and why these small victories are so important.  In the meantime, do you have any family traditions surrounding birthdays?  What do you do?