A Georgia Girl in Germany

Since she has a summer birthday, we often have an early birthday party for MacKenzie so she can celebrate with her friends before most of them head off in different directions for the summer. This year was no exception, and we had her birthday party two days after school let out (only one of her friends had left for vacation by then). She decided that she wanted to go to a movie (Nim’s Island) then burn off some energy at the playground. She actually wanted the party to morph into a sleep-over as well, but I would have been batty by then, especially since I helped chaperone her Girl Scout troop’s end-of-year movie outing with 12 girls the day before.

The first photo shows MacKenzie’s tomboy side -- climbing a tree in front of the theater while waiting for her friends to arrive. Of course, they girls decided to sit in the front row of the theater. Naturally, I opted for a seat a few rows back where I could sit with Zachary and Benjamin, yet still keep an eye on the girls.

In addition to designing her party itinerary, she also designed her birthday cake, although I had the dubious honor of actually making it. Yes, it’s a birthday cake of a birthday cake -- complete with 10 candles. Doesn’t Benjamin look like he’s ready to grab a piece!?!!

Here's the gaggle of friends -- Hannah, MacKenzie, Natalie, Chemya, Sammy and Aviana. I was surprised that they all stayed still long enough for me to snap this photo!

Benjamin enjoyed her party as well, especially since it gave him the opportunity to show off his new-found climbing skills. He’s a pro at climbing, and even straddling, the top, but he’s still a little unsure of himself when climbing back down and prefers to have someone stand behind him for reassurance. Not bad for a soon-to-be-5-year-old. I wouldn’t doubt it if years from now he and MacKenzie set off to climb mountains together (I still chuckle at the memory of MacKenzie at age 7 asking me to pull over while driving through the Appalachians so she could climb the mountain out our right window!).

On a “personal success” note, I was tickled with myself when I made MacKenzie’s cake. Usually I have difficulty making the wax-paper decorating tubes, and as a result the frosting oozes out the sides and top as much as it does from the decorating tip. But, I did something right this time, and the tubes worked like a charm! All those years watching and learning from Granny Walker and Aunt Mildred paid off! And the even better news is that I actually know what I did differently this time so I can (hopefully) repeat my success when I make Benjamin’s birthday cakes in two weeks. Woo-hoo!

However, on a “not-so-smart-move” note, I didn’t think through MacKenzie’s design very well until I was well into the decorating process. Notice the 10 individual candles cut out of the cake? As I was attempting to frost the ¾-inch spaces between each candle, I realized that if I had made such a design suggestion to Granny Walker, she would have immediately recognized the difficulty of the design and suggested an alternative solution. Nope, no such luck for me...I didn’t have the foresight to recognize how difficult it would be to frost the sides of nine miniature cutouts. Fortunately, I was able to drop just enough blue frosting into most of the cut-out areas that it wasn’t terribly noticeable, and MacKenzie didn’t care that I missed a few spots. I still count the cake as a success story though, and MacKenzie did too!

Labels: Benjamin, Birthdays, MacKenzie