My Youngest Turns Six!

Ah, today my youngest turns six. Last year when he turned five, he held up his five pudgy fingers and said, "Now I'm a real handful!" This past year has been another year of delight in watching him grow and mature.

In our home we have a few different birthday traditions. The first is the Birthday Queen. She comes in the middle of the night and decorates the bedroom of the birthday child. Banners, balloons, and streamers great the birthday child. And today was no different for Justin. She will come again tonight to reclaim the banners and streamers. The balloons will stay for the kids to play with.

Another tradition is the birthday dinner. At some point throughout the week, I like to make one meal with all their favorite foods. Last night we enjoyed homemade pizza, homemade breadsticks, canned beans (his Grandma's secret recipe!), and canned peaches. For dessert we enjoyed rootbeer floats in good quaffing mugs! But the thing that sets a birthday dinner apart from other dinners is that we use goblets to drink from. This adds a touch that really says, "I'm special!"

Another tradition is the birthday cake. We don't get a store-bought one. (Although one year I was too sick to make one, so we resorted to a store-bought one that year.) I make the kids' cakes myself. It's not a matter of fancy decorating. It's more a matter of shaping. Figuring out how to shape a cake into something each child has enjoyed a lot lately. For example, the year we got a swingset, my daughter's cake was in the shape of a swingset.

The past couple weeks we have been working on a quinzee. We made a huge pile of snow, and we are now in the process of digging it out. (It's sort of like an igloo other than you dig it out rather than pile blocks of snow.) So, Justin's birthday cake will be a quinzee. I'm planning on baking it in my batter bowl. Flipping the cake upside down, and frosting the whole thing white. A chocolate cookie of some sort will be placed on it to resemble the door. Then I'll sprinkle the whole thing with coconut to resemble loose snow. I'm thinking maybe a flag coming out the top would add a bit more color. Usually birthday cakes are a bit more colorful than this, but there's not a lot of color in a white pile of snow!

Well, I'm going to go enjoy my birthday boy and start working on my "indoor quinzee!"