We've already gone through a couple of 'quarantine birthdays' in the family, with the first being Benjamin's whose we weren't able to celebrate in person, right at the beginning of the pandemic. My sister's was on the 9th of April.
So, here we are at yet a couple more, celebrating from afar. Well, in Dana's case with the immediate fam anyhow. His actual birthday was on Saturday. I had pre-ordered Sandy's donuts for delivery the AM. It was so exciting to just have them show up on our (very muddy) doorstep!
I told Clara she could start us off while we waited to Dad to wake up.
Then we got the idea to stick a candle in a couple of them. We lit the candle when we heard him shut the shower off. Then we waited while he got dressed and before we knew it, he was talking on the phone and Clara and I kept nervously looking at the candle, wondering how long it was going to last before he came into the kitchen and noticed it.
He was video messaging with Auntie Christel, so they all sat down together to blow out the candle, with auntie's help. Hehe.
Random photo insert: Clara having fish sticks with her giraffe.
Obviously there was only so many options available to celebrate Dana's birthday. He found a park that has a walking trail that goes along the river south of the orchard. He thought it would be fun for all of us to take the four-wheelers down there and then walk around and see what it was all about.
It was a pretty nice day, albeit very windy, so there were other families there and people walking their dogs. And quite a few frogs!
It was really fun. I'm glad we made it down there to check it out.
When we got back, I ran to pick up pizza which is what Dana wanted for his birthday meal and then the girls and I decorated his heart attack on a platter...I mean birthday cake. He loves Reese's peanut butter cups and so I found a recipe for a Reese's cake. The further we got in the recipe, the more ridiculous it got. The peanut butter frosting alone called for 9 cups of confectioners sugar; we put in half and that was still pretty sweet. There are chopped up Reese's cups in between each layer of cake and then frosting on the outside, of course, topped with chocolate ganache, more frosting and more Reese's. I looked at the nutritional panel at the bottom of the recipe (not sure why I did that) and the fat content per slice is 94% of the daily recommended value. Ha! Oh man. It was pretty tasty, though, and clearly my first attempt at ganache.
Clara was excited.
It looks like his fist is in the cake. It wasn't. :-)
Gift time!
My card to him. :-)
Saturday was also our Uncle Lester's 70th birthday. It sounds like he had a pretty good celebration south of us in SD. Happy birthday, Lester!
Today we celebrated cousin Oliver's fourth birthday virtually. We tuned in at 3:00 with our cake ready to go, so that we could 'eat cake' with Ollie. He had a John Deere funfetti cake. We watched him open his gifts and were able to sing happy birthday to him. I spent the entire call trying to figure out who Micah was down in the bottom, right corner there. Turns out it is Oliver's physical therapist. I thought it was so sweet of him to join the call to help Oliver celebrate! He even had a cupcake ready to eat too. I think he's holding it in the pic. We wish we could have celebrated with you in person, Oliver, but we're glad we were at least able to virtually. We love you!
Happiest of birthdays to Dana, Lester and Oliver! I'm sure they were much different this year than anyone would have imagined.
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