Birthday Cake

Next week, my husband will be celebrating his 80th birthday and the children and grandchildren will mostly all be here to join the party this weekend. Fortunately a new bakery just opened up not too far from us so I was able to order a special cake for him. The bottom two layers are white cake and the top two are Grand Marnier layers....yum!....and it's all frosted with chocolate ganache. I would have chosen white lettering, but forgot to mention it on my order, so we got red instead. But that's sort of festive anyway, don't you think?

Is it winter yet?

This is the view out my breakfast room window after last night's snow. It's 10:00 pm here now and it has been snowing all day and the predictions say it will continue through the night. We have about two feet on the ground now and it's still coming down! That's about enough for me now!


On a happier note, here's the smaller tree we put up this year. Most of the children will be coming for New Year's instead of Christmas this year, so I'm not putting the big tree up in the living room. This one sits in the corner of the family room in front of one of the bookcases where I can see it from the kitchen and the computer as well! I still have gifts to wrap, but at least I got started!

Thanksgiving 2009

Okay, I hope I get this right without having the photos in front of me. In the top photo from left to right: Kenny, Rob, Ken, Lisa, Dennis, Deni
And in the second photo: Gillian, Alex Devon, Vicki, (Kenny's chair), and Rob
We had a lovely dinner and a wonderful visit with all the children and grandchildren. I'm glad they all still seem to enjoy coming for these gatherings.
Oh, Roy and I had places at the end of the table nearest the camera, of course!

Photos of the week

Early evening visitors this weekend. I didn't see a deer in our yard all last fall and winter and I was so disappointed. They came often enough in the spring to eat my hosta, but not when I could spy them. So I was especially pleased to look out the window the other day and see three does sauntering through the trees into my backyard. I couldn'tgrab my camera in time to get all three in the picture, but got a good shot of two, anyway. (Now that I look carefully at this photo, that larger one may just be a young buck, you think?)


This is my sweet little red maple tree out back. My son and daughter-in-law had a mature tree in their front yard when they lived close by, and it died not long before they moved away. Fortunately, Vicki had thought to sprout some of the seeds that feel from it, however, and gave me two young seedlings. This is the one that survived and I love it! It's just about 7 or 8 feet tall now.