Happy Birthday! Happy Father's Day!

Clark gets a double whammy today.  It's Father's Day, but also his birthday.  He's turning 36.  Boy, he's old! 

We started the festivities a day early.  I usually have a birthday week...so I guess Clark can have a birthday weekend! 

I had the flu this past week, so Clark took the girls to Redcliff Days Saturday afternoon so I could get some rest.  I think he had just as much fun as they did. 

After supper, we had my parents over for cake and presents.  I had bought a book at Costco the other day called Fun Stuff Party Cakes.  It has tutorials on all sorts of different cakes.  Most look relatively simple to make, so I let Annika go through the book and pick out the cake she wanted us to make for Clark's birthday.  She picked a cake that was supposed to look like strawberry pancakes.  It's a pretty cool cake.

This is what we ended up with.

It doesn't look quite the same.  The most obvious difference is the color of the cake, because Annika insisted that we bake a chocolate cake.  I also couldn't get my icing to look like the icing in the book.  They didn't give very good instructions on whether or not you put icing in the middle or just on the outside of the cake.  Oh well.  It tasted yummy, that's all that matters.

The girls picked out their present for Clark all by themselves.  Originally, we were going to buy him a build it yourself Angry Birds game (Clark is obsessed with that game), but when we went to purchase it, the store didn't carry it any longer.  Annika was a little upset about this, but then we found Angry Bird stuffies and so she got over it.  She picked the black bird.  

We also got the kids pictures taken with the letters to spell out DAD.  You can see it here.  It turned out so well, I was really pleased with it.  My friend Melissa helped me out with my part of the present.  (She says she helped me out, I think it was the other way around.  I provided the idea and models, but she took the pictures and did the editing which probably took more work.  Either way, I'm very grateful to her.)  We got the picture printed into an 8 X 10 and then framed.  He was THRILLED to get it.  Clark told me that this picture was the best present that he has ever gotten by anyone.  Ever.  That makes me happy.  It's a cute picture. 

After church this afternoon, we will be continuing the party by taking Clark and my Dad out for lunch.  I'm excited about that, I'm already hungry!  

I found this little questionnaire that your kids fill out with questions of their dad, so Annika and I had an interview the other day.  Her answers are in blue.

1. My dad is  13 years old.
2. His hair is black and his eyes are blue.
3. My dad likes to wear a Spiderman shirt and shorts.
4. He loves to eat hamburgers.
5. He is smart because he knows everything.
6. My dad works hard at Wal-Mart.
7. Daddy always tells me go to bed and eat my supper and then I eat it.
8. If he could go on a trip, he would go to the movie theatre and he would take Abigail and Annika.
9. It makes my dad happy when I clean up my toys.
10. I really love it when my dad cooks me the good meals.
11. If I could give my daddy anything, it would be an angry bird.
12. My favorite thing about my dad is he cooks the greatest meals.

Annika told Clark that he was the "bestest smart Dad I ever had".  Yep, that about sums it up.  Happy birthday/Happy Fathers Day to our favorite man in the world!  We love you!