Happy 49th Birthday to me!

As is tradition now 

(since I've done it 2 years in a row)

I am going to write down what I did on my birthday.

I have to start a couple of days before my birthday though because that's when I got my cake.

Since Frank gave me a trip to Anchorage for Christmas,

and the flight was scheduled to leave on my birthday,

we decided to have the birthday dinner and cake on Sunday 

(2 days early)

so that we'd have time to enjoy it.

It's just no good having leftover birthday cake and leaving it for the kids!

Just like last year, I gave him the recipe for my favorite vanilla scratch cake and asked him to make it for me.

Unlike last year, the cake totally failed!

He was very careful to make it exactly the way the recipe said.

And when he looked in the oven close to the time when it should have been done,

he let out a yell and called me over.

I looked in and saw this:

He even took a picture of me seeing the disaster that was my cake.

So sad!

But since it was a bundt cake, he flipped it over and it looked fine.

He decided to just frost it and pretend all was well.

The frosting recipe is SO decadent and full of butter that I was telling him to just skip it

but he would not hear of it

and, admittedly, it looked quite delicious.

But, as you might guess, the texture was not quite right since it had fallen.

We each at a piece anyway.

It was a good try.

Darn this high altitude baking!

(PS it's now a week later, and there is still leftover cake. Sad.)

Ok now on to my actual birthday!

I asked my sisters if they wanted to do a birthday breakfast so we got together at a local place and had a nice breakfast together.

I failed to take a photo though.

A couple of my friends here in my neighborhood asked me if I wanted to go to lunch.

So, obviously I said yes!

I remembered to take pictures this time.

They brought me a gift that I'm going to write a whole blog post about.

Neither one of them was super excited for me to take their picture but they were good sports since it was my birthday after all.

I came home from lunch to discover a cupcake and nice note from another neighbor.

Then worked on packing for the trip!

Our flight was scheduled for 8 PM.

Carter got home from school and quickly told me happy birthday.

He was thinking it really wasn't fair that I did a whole blog post about him being a bad birthday son before the day was even over.

I told him that I blog when I feel like it.

haha

But seriously he felt bad for forgetting to wish me a happy birthday that morning...

well, sort of bad.

He did say that he deserves some slack at 6 a.m.

Frank was feeling kind of bad about the cake debacle so he went out and got me some fancy donuts as a consolation birthday treat.

We opened presents before it got too late.

Frank gave me a warm shirt for the alaska trip, a dvd player and a nice card.

(I've been bemoaning our lack of a dvd player for awhile now)

After that we just finished packing and headed to the airport.

Our flight was seriously delayed so we were worried that we would miss our connection

but right when we entered the airport, the Alaska airlines people asked us if we were headed to anchorage and promptly rebooked us on a different flight.

We even arrived an hour earlier than originally planned.

Quite a successful and happy birthday overall.