Birthday Pictures

We had a wonderful Wednesday celebrating Jason's birthday. Thank you to those who posted comments. They are always deeply appreciated!

Jackson and I worked very hard in the kitchen making buttermilk pancakes with strawberries and fresh whipped cream and homemade hashbrowns for brunch and then an Apple Walnut Cake with Caramel Cream Cheese icing for the big celebration. The cake recipe was from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook of NYC courtesy of Natalie introducing me to New York's sweetest bakery back in 2005. Here are some photos of Jackson enjoying one of the best parts about baking desserts...licking the beaters!!

That batter must have been good:

The cake recipe called for apple brandy. While I searched the rounder of liquor bottles at the store, Jackson had a marvelous time pulling the tiny bottles off of the rack and then putting them back inside. When he saw the empty bottle at home, he was very enthusiastic about filling it with water. I know it looks terrible, but it is so innocent. He has no clue. It's just a fun little bottle to drink out of and he was really enjoying it:

So here's the cake:

And the inside:

It was really good and we shared half of it with the people in our village - Oma, our neighbor, Johann, our other neighbor, and our friends at Geimer, the restaurant at the center of our village.

Here are some photos of Jason preparing to make a wish and blow out the candles on his 33rd birthday cake. We could hardly keep Jackson's fingers out of the icing. Then, once the candles were blown out, he enjoyed eating the icing off of the candles. It reminded of us a memory of Jason's sister Jessica who once ate a birthday candle.

Daddy finally joined in:

We enjoyed a wonderful, stress-free dinner at Geimer. We had a room to ourselves and Harold and Agnes brought a tractor for Jackson to play with. It was great fun!