Happy Birthday Dave!

Dave took Luke and Jack camping on Thursday, and the plan was for me to meet them after work on Friday. Well, first the campsite was closed, then they could only get one night at another campsite, then they got 2 more nights in another spot, so they had to pack up and move, and then it rained and then the wind blew the rain shelter/tarp into bits. Then I got there and convinced them to go home. Good thing, since Jack threw up all day yesterday.

While Dave stayed home with the sickie, I took The One Who Can Not Keep A Secret birthday present shopping. I asked The One Who Can Not Keep A Secret what he wanted to get his dad for his birthday and he said, "A wii game, or a remote control car, or light saber, maybe..." I asked him exactly whose birthday we were shopping for and he said, "I KEEP ASKING DADDDY WHAT HE WANTS AND HE KEEPS TELLING ME I DON'T HAVE TO BUY HIM ANYTHING!" Sheesh, Ok. SO TOWCKAS and I went to Best Buy because I have been meaning to go there for the last 14 months since the light on the refridgerator starting telling me to replace the filter. I figured we could get a filter and shop for games for the wii. Long story short, we got Wii Little League, and thus began the longest 17 hours of secret keeping that TOWCKAS has had to endure since last year. Oh wait, last year he only had to keep the secret as he helped me carry the present down the hallway. So over the course of those 17 hours there were lots of,
"I can't wait until tomorrow."
"You want to open your present in the morning, right?"
"I can't wait to play with your present tomorrow Daddy." Etc.

Then, last night during dinner, Dave said, "After dinner, do you want to play Mario Cart Wii or play baseball in the front yard?"

TOWCKAS's response? "Wii Baseball!!!!"

Fortunately Dave was walking out of the room, so when we was out of earshot I said, "Sssshhhhh! Or you don't get to pick out any more presents!"

TOWCKAS's response? "What!? I said, we should play baseball!"

Dave likes a pink cake with chocolate icing, so this year, instead of the pink (strawberry? cherry?) cake from the box, I made a triple layer strawberry cake with chocolate ganache icing. It was really good. The batter seemed really pink from the strawberries, but I guess I should have added food coloring too. Mmm. So good. It calls for 8 egg whites, and I used a trick I learned from the cupcake class, where you separate the yolk from the white one at a time in a little bowl and then dump the recently seperated egg into the bowl with the rest, so you don't waste a lot of eggs by getting yolk in the main egg bowl on the 7th or 8th egg. However, I forgot to add in the last egg white , so I imagine that this cake would have turned out 1/8 again as tall if I hadn't made that mistake.