Chad is THIRTY-EIGHT!

That seems a lot older than eleven.

Chad's cake was an experiment in creativity. I've learned that things rarely come out the way I envision them. Strangely enough, I keep trying anyway.
Can you tell what it is? Chad thought it looked like an armless Mongolian warrior. Admittedly, that never came to me. But I can see how he thought that. Instead, it is a king chess piece on a chess board. Nathan and I made the chess piece. I made the cake.

I tried to make the frosting red, but after I put enough red food dye in to give an elephant cancer, I decided hot pink would have to do. When I tried to frost the cake, the frosting was too runny (probably from all the food coloring) and I ended up scraping it off the cake to add more powdered sugar.

I had a chess board stencil I cut out on my Silhouette and sprinkled on the chocolate candies for the squares. (Getting the stencil back off the very wet frosting was another fun trial.) All in all, it ended up OK...I guess.

The kids had fun giving Chad his presents they'd scrounged up for him. Leah gave him her fold-up binoculars she's gotten from school. Then Sarah stole them.

Daniel gave him a collection of church magazines...all for the month of June...some of them several years old. Those went right back into the magazine basket. (Yes, that does need to be cleaned out.)

I gave him some gifts that I scrounged up around Walmart and we moved on to the cake.

On thing about turning 38...it's a lot of candles. When you add a foil-covered piece of cardboard, you have a significant heat/light source. We nearly roasted Sarah here!

But that foil backboard does help get the candles out in one breath. It was right about now that Chad realized how hot metal gets when exposed to 38 small flames!

Happy Birthday, Chad!