Good cake and Good kids

Before I jump in and show you everything we did this weekend, which was extensive and probably won't happen today but ended up on Saturday looking like this,

 

I thought I'd tell you about my birthday cake.  Since my kids schedules and the times to do a birthday dinner options were limited since Thursday, we celebrated Sunday night so we could be together.  I guess we COULD have done a birthday breakfast, but what fun is that with everyone saying they wanted to shower next or the many and various things our kids will even EAT for breakfast. 

And now that I'm 29 (x 1.65517241379) years old, I don't even feel like I really need a birthday party...  But I do love to pull out the china and have dinner with my family.

Anyway, back to the cake!  At my past employer, you got to pick what kind of a birthday cake you wanted and a sweet lady there would bake it for you to share with everyone on the day.  In the last few years I worked there, the employees were getting too numerous, so it became one day a month to celebrate the birthdays of that month.  But while it was still personalized, I always picked either a Twinkie cake or a Suzie Q cake, because I knew Shirley had the recipe and both are to DIE for!!!  

When Robb asked me what kind of cake I wanted, I chose Twinkie!  The recipe is online in many and various places.  THIS is the one we used, or close to it, if I didn't grab the right one.

Robb used a springform pan for the base and baked the yellow cake mix.  Immediately after it was done baking, he stuck in the freezer to cool off while we went to visit my bestie.  

Then he had me slice it in half with some thread.  I know you can use dental floss too, but I didn't have any handy.  We have dental sticks and those just don't work well for this.

 

This is the filling that you layer on the bottom half.

 

The taste of Crisco, butter, powdered sugar and vanilla is wonderful...  and because of the many taste tests I did, very well might be the reason for my horrible night last night...  Or it might have been the Chinese food Meri and I had for lunch after church yesterday...  Jury is still out...

Sprinkle it with powdered sugar and the cake was awesome!  

Robb gave me the book The City by Dean Koontz that I was wanting to read and the kids are working on Curb Appeal for me.  YEAH!  They were outside most of the our free time this weekend, weeding, mulching, planting, mowing and other things.  It looks SO great!  I am so proud of my kids!!

I'm hoping for my  29 (x 1.689655172413793) birthday means new siding or a paint job on the house!

In all the years past, all I've asked for when the kids ask me what I want for my birthday, I've always said first and foremost GOOD KIDS!  

I got it this year!