happy birthday james!

perhaps the "barack obama has a penis" was a bit much. i mean, the man is a our president. the last thing you want to do is focus on his, uh, unmentionables. and i have to admit, i felt slightly blasphemous when i wrote it. but really? how could i have left such a gem unsaid?

i hope i don't get too many weirdos on here now.

hmmm. . .

my mom is home from the hospital. and she's amazing! fabulous! fantastic even! the woman has more energy and enthusiasm in her left pinky than i do in my whole body. sunday night, while waving her arm around to show me that the IV is no longer there, she mentioned that james, youngest in our clan, is turning ten.

"and i want to make him a cake! but not just any cake! a mini hamburger and french fry cake that i saw on the bakerella blog! it'll be so cute! but i can't do it on my own! you need to help me!"

i think the enthusiasm stems from the fact that she's been so sick she's barely left her bed for the last few months, and her health before that wasn't much better. and it is so amazing to see things so much better (although exhausting). i mean yesterday, we went to target and she didn't even need a nap. you have no idea how amazing that is, so i'm going to repeat it in italics: she didn't even need a nap. and just the day before she'd been slaving over mini hamburgers and french fries. this is monumental. i went home exhausted.

"i don't think i can keep up with her," i told him. "she's got so much vigour!"

so monday morning ava, seth and i fetched the birthday boy's presents. then seth napped (it is exhausting to birthday present shop). then we went and got all the groceries. then seth and ava napped (again, exhausting). then we got to my parent's house where my mother had been working all day long on what i consider to be a birthday cake that is a bit too labor intensive for my taste. but how could i not enjoy myself while assembling little bags of sugar cookies sprinkled in sugar to ressamble french fries? we finished them just in time for me to snap a few pictures and for my brothers to descend on them with something that i can only compare to hun verocity.

before the carnage

they turned out insanely cute. As they should have. you don't dedicate an entire day with a perfectionist to have things turn out okay. at one point, i really had my doubts. and the nanny, eric (i affectionately refer to him as the "manny") almost lost his head when he took a moment too long to respond correctly to the question, "don't they look just like hamburger buns?"

i know that my project frenzied perfectionist of a mother sighed a great sigh of contentment when it was all over, but since i am neither project frenzied or a perfectionist i ended up feeling an odd sort of resentment towards those adorable little hamburgers and french fries. only a little. and i resented how fast they were eaten, too. but, watching james' face be so delighted with his special birthday dessert did a a good job of wiping up most of that resentment.


my poor children. this was their glimpse into everything they are going to miss out on because i am never going to do something so intricate like that again.


the finished project:

please note that the paper says "happy birthday james". no, not the paper holding the fries, the paper that rests between the mini-cupcake-burger and the mini burger basket.

afterwards ryan and i went to frozen yogurt with our friends tyson and heather (ava says tyson and feather. she loves them) and took the two remaining hamburgers and fries to them. if there was anyone who deserved miniature desserts in the form of a happy meal, it was those two. and their reactions wiped away the last of my resentment. i could never resent a dessert for long, anyway.

and in case you were wondering, this is what true mini-burger apprectiation looks like.