I baked Annalie’s birthday cake (for our family party on her actual birthday) and dyed the frosting to Annalie’s specifications: a strawberry-lemon cake with lemon cream-cheese frosting. I would link to the recipe I used for the cake except I sort of made it up as I went along, combining parts of a few different recipes for the cake. Basically I used this recipe for strawberry cupcakes and added a tablespoon of lemon zest to the batter. Having made those strawberry cupcakes before, though, I knew that I liked the texture of these lemon cupcakes better, so I added a couple of extra eggs to the batter because that was the main difference between the two recipes. The cream cheese frosting I always make is this one, and again I added a couple of teaspoons of lemon zest to it to make it lemony.

When it came time to decorate the cake, I frosted it with the green frosting (“Green, like grass where the daisies grow, Mom!”) and then let Annalie decorate it all by herself. I remember decorating my own cakes when I was a kid and how much fun I had with them. Watching Annalie make her cake beautiful in her own way was just as much fun. And I think she did a pretty good job!

Because Troy had to go to work on Annalie’s birthday, which was also Mother’s Day, we had a late-morning present-opening and cake-cutting before Troy left. But first, the obligatory family birthday portrait:

Wish-making, blowing out the candles, and finally—FINALLY, as far as Annalie was concerned—the present-opening.

One of the gifts Annalie got from me and Troy was two books about ancient Egypt, a subject that has fascinated her for a while now.Once she’d opened them she spent several minutes looking at them, forgetting she had a stack of presents yet to open.

Once the birthday celebration was done, it was time for Troy to go to work. He put on this Homer Simpson shirt with the quote, “I’m here for the beer,” as a sort of joke protest that he had to work on Mother’s Day AND his daughter’s birthday. When he got to work, he sat around for an hour waiting for his boss to get out of a meeting, only to be told, “I was gonna call you last night and tell you that you didn’t have to come in to work today, but I didn’t have your home number. Sorry.” You better believe Troy gave him every phone number and email address he could think of on the spot.

The prettiest stage of homemade pizza, before the colorful veggies and herbs are covered with delicious cheese. (This is basically the same pizza I blogged here, if you’d like the recipe.)

A silly photo taken of some silly kids after Christa’s birthday party, the weekend after Annalie’s. We had fun at the movie party, but unfortunately it’s really hard to take good photos inside a dark movie theater which is where the majority of the party took place. So this is the best photo I got. Also I had just come down with a cold and wasn’t my usual photo-taking self that day.

Our favorite Chinese restaurant in Southern Maryland has fancy new receipts with the dishes’ names on them in Chinese! I thought that was pretty cool.

When Joe came to visit us a while back, he left this shopping bag from Tiffany & Co. for Annalie. His step-grandma had packed him some snacks for the road in it. Joe said, “Who packs chocolate chip cookies and grapes in a Tiffany bag!? I’m leaving this here for Annalie to play with so Kassie doesn’t see it and get hugely disappointed when there’s nothing sparkly for her in it.” Annalie has appreciated it, Joe!

We had brunch one day at a nearby diner. The food was good, the coffee was hot and bottomless, and the atmosphere was awesome.

One of the few days it wasn’t raining when my mom was here, we went downtown to see some sights. My mom took this photo of us in front of a fountain near the Natural History Museum, which I completely love because of the look on Annalie’s face.

These are probably my two favorite photos that I took while we were sightseeing that day. I took the one on the left with a really fast shutter speed (1/2500 second, to be exact) and the one on the right with a relatively slow shutter speed (1/13 second). I don’t really know how to use all the bells and whistles on my fancy D40, but I like playing with the settings I do know how to work. I’m learning, slowly but surely.

One of the sights we hit that day was the Butterfly Pavilion at the Museum of Natural History. Annalie had been wanting to go there for ages and was really excited about it. Which is why it was so heartbreaking that once we got inside, she was freaked out by all the butterflies darting everywhere in the small space. She wanted to like it, and she tried to hold it together, but after about a minute she’d had enough and asked to leave with tears in her eyes. We talked about it afterwards and Annalie said she was nervous about a butterfly landing on her head. We also decided that maybe because there were a lot of other people in the pavilion at the same time, talking and taking pictures, it was a bit overwhelming. We plan to try again on a weekday when it won’t be so busy, and Annalie plans to wear a hat.

We also went to the National Gallery of Art to see their da Vinci painting of Ginevra de’ Benci. Annalie has a kids’ book about Leonardo da Vinci, and in the end it lists all the paintings shown in the book and the galleries that own them. She was completely excited to learn that the National Gallery had one of the paintings, which meant we could go see it in person. Sadly, the day we were there they were doing some work on the gallery where the da Vinci painting is displayed, so it was closed and we didn’t get to see the painting we wanted to see.

Man, now that I think about it, that was two big disappointments in one day for Annalie. Poor kid. You never would have known it to see her, though. She was bummed about the butterflies at first, but then she was happy looking through the observation window and told us excitedly how one butterfly landed really close to where she was looking, so she got to see it up close. And when she found out the gallery with the da Vinci was closed, she just sort of sighed and went back to looking at the map of the gallery. Have I ever mentioned how this kid loves maps?

There’s a bit of a funny story about the National Gallery map, actually. When we first got there we grabbed maps and started trying to figure out where the da Vinci painting would be. I couldn’t remember the name of it, but I knew it was a 14th-century(ish) Italian painting, so I opened the map and was puzzling over the various galleries when Annalie said, “Oh, here’s the da Vinci painting right here! It’s on the cover of the map.” And so it was, along with its name and location.

You may have noticed several photos of my mom and Annalie with recognizable buildings and monuments in the background. That’s because we were taking photos with my mom’s postcard in mind. She always sends postcards to various friends and great-nieces and -nephews and godchildren when she’s out of town. Sometimes she buys them 4/$1 at Walgreens, and sometimes I make her a personalized photo card.

It’s kind of funny to me how fast I can make these now. I remember the first couple of years I made Christmas photo cards, it took me a month of tweaking and editing to get it just right. Now I can whip one out in an hour or two.

I tried my hand at smitten kitchen’s braided lemon bread a few weeks back. It wasn’t hard to make, just a bit fiddly with multiple steps. I probably won’t make it again, though. It was tasty, but I didn’t love it.

I did get to make a little mini-loaf from the scraps I cut off before fake-braiding the loaf, though. That was kinda fun.

I’m really starting to think that Annalie is a natural artist. She draws constantly, usually in small notebooks or on index cards when she can get them. And the drawings come so effortlessly to her, like she’s just dashing them off. I wish she would draw more on large pieces of plain white paper because I love so many of her drawings and would like to frame them, and lined paper just doesn’t work that well for framing. But at least I can take photos of the best ones, like this giraffe who is eating something (you can tell ‘cuz his tongue is out) and the pelican and the ocean wave. I keep thinking I need to find some fun art lessons for her. I bet she’d love that.

p.s. New banner’s up! Thanks again, Brenda.