Monkey's birthday

November is a busy birthday month for our family. We went to my parent's for Thanksgiving this year. I prebaked the cake but hadn't decorated it. The little monkey got into the cake carrier and obliterated half of the cake. It was supposed to be double staked with a chocolate and a vanilla layer. It ended up being mostly 1/2 and 1/2, too short for the decorations and not exactly round. I guess a 2-year-old didn't care and we enjoyed it all the same.

We ran into another little problem. I found this cake design way back in February and thought it would be perfect. I waited all year to buy Twinkies (which I never do) for the aliens. Right about the same time, the unthinkable happened - Hostess Went OUT of business and there were no Twinkies to be found. We ended up using mini donuts. It just goes to show you, you can never be too prepared. I should have had a few boxes in food storage!

His brothers picked out a wooden train for him. He was happy to finally have is own set.

 My Dad's birthday is also in November. It is really hard to get presents for people who have pretty much everything so we were super excited to find this one-of-a-kind game at my favorite store - DI. My Dad was raised in Southern Washington just miles from Mount Saint Helens. He wasn't in town when it blew but it was a favorite location pre-explosion days. In fact, his father is buried with a beautiful view of the mountain and his old home site is on the road to the mountain. So, the point is, this game was perfect, in a very unique way. It wasn't till a few months later that they had a chance to play it. It was awesome.

Volcano

You can kind of see but the idea was to get from the town to the volcano and back without getting stuck in numerous volcano related situations. Fun because lots of places, including his high school were in the game.