Lots of Cheesecake

Two birthdays in one week. Despite our higher than average total number of birthdays in the family, we don't often have two within a week of each other. Okay wait... Bayley and Aislin, Erin and me... do Kegan and Rhys count? So maybe we do double up occasionally. Bayley turned 17 last Wednesday and Aislin turned 12 on Sunday. We now have more kids out of Primary than in.

The celebrations this week have mostly been about the food. There were balloons and the traditional Happy Birthday posters (custom made by the siblings)and the home movies of the birthday girls as babies, but the focus was definitely the food. The tradition in our family is that the birthday person gets to pick the meals for their special day. Several years ago we had to ammend this tradition to say that they could choose a breakfast and a dinner, but no lunch. We were just too darn stuffed by the end of the day to eat the desserts. So lunch on birthdays is on your own grazing, but dinner and breakfast tend to be fantastic. Oh...if you happen to have a twin, you each get to pick separate meals and they are consumed on different days. This went into affect after a birthday breakfast one hot July morning that consisted of chocolate french toast, chosen by Kegan, and strawberry cheesecake stuffed french toast, chosen by Rhys, or maybe it was the other way around. It is true that I still have a few children who will choose things like hot dogs or cheese sticks, but for the most part the tastes have become more sophisticated. And some children will spend literally months planning their meal, combing magazines and websites for the right recipes.

This year Bayley chose cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting and fruit for her breakfast. Her dinner was chicken cordon bleu with an alfredo type sauce on it, green beans with sugared almonds and garlic mashed potatoes. And the dessert was a white chocolate, raspberry and chocolate truffle cheesecake with a raspberry sauce on it. Luckily, our schedules were such that Bayley's meals had to be broken up over two days. So we could feel free to pig out on cinnamon rolls at breakfast and know that the cheesecake wasn't coming until the next evening. So we finished off Bayley's leftovers on Friday. We took the weekend to recover.

Even though Aislin's birthday was on Sunday, we ate both her meals on Monday. Sunday is just too crazy with church at 8 and then meetings afterwards and firesides in the evening. So, on Aislin's actual birthday, most of us probably missed breakfast all together, the lucky ones got some cold cereal before rushing out the door. And dinner was waffles, a very common Sunday afternoon meal at our house, we did put chocolate chips in them and made a fruit sauce to top them with though. Aislin's day late birthday breakfast was baked brown sugar cinnamon french toast and turkey sausage. The leftover french toast was consumed cold throughout the day by the deprived children whose mother wouldn't make them any lunch. Dinner was italian chicken with both spicy white and tomato sauces on top, tortellini with olive oil, spices and parmesan cheese and more green beans. Dessert was cheesecake again. This one was strawberry, Aislin wanted the cake itself to be strawberry, so I made my regular plain cheesecake but stirred in pureed strawberries before we baked it, so the cake turned out slightly pink. On top of it we had a strawberry sauce, a chocolate sauce and fresh strawberries.

We still have Aislin's leftovers to consume, so I shouldn't need to prepare much food tomorrow. And even when the rest of the food is gone we have one last birthday tradition--that the very end of the birthday dessert is consumed by the birthday child with Mom and Dad one evening after the big day has passed.

Backyard Funeral

Yesterday we held an impromptu bird funeral. I was sitting on the family room floor, leaning against the couch that is situated under the window when there was a terrific crash against the window. My first thought was that one of my children had hit a ball into it, and the looks of shock and gasps of horror from the children all around me, momentarily convinced me that someone had carelessly broken the window. Never mind that all the likely culprits were the same chilren who were staring in horror at the window behind my head--these were instantaneous thoughts. Then began the chorus of "It was a bird!" and "That bigger bird was chasing it!" Dreading what I would see, I went to look out the back door, as the majority of my children moved to look out the window. There on the back porch we watched a robin take it's last few spastic breaths before becoming completely still.

Our family room window looks out on a covered porch of reasonable size, this bird had to have made some calculated moves just to have gotten near the window. Then there is the matter of the second bird that was sighted. The younger eye-witnesses claimed it was a hawk. I think this is unlikely, as I have never seen a hawk in my backyard. However, we have Arizona Woodpeckers in the area, and one in particular that frequents our yard. The coloring is similar enough to a Red Tail Hawk, to be mistaken in a moment of excitement. So my assumption is that the other bird must have been our resident woodpecker. Another mark against him. This woodpecker loves to pound on my house! Usually in the early morning hours, right outside my bedroom. You may not know this, in fact it is a sign of the desperation this bird has driven me to that I do, but you can't shoot a woodpecker. They are a protected species. Interestingly, the woodpecker has ran into that same window before. So the prevalent theory among my children is that he purposely led the poor robin to its death, chasing it into a window he had previously ran into himself.

Well, we could hardly leave the bird lying just a few feet from the back door. So Erin and Bayley got shovels and picked a spot in the yard where the ground wasn't impossibly hard. Fionn was desperate to oversee every aspect of the proceedings. A bit of scientific curiosity/ ambulance chaser mentality/ honest sadness all apparent in her words and actions. "I want to see, I want to see!" "Oh...he was my favorite birdie." "He broke his neck!" Before the earth could be piled over the bird's body, Liam felt moved to proclaim "He was a nice bird, and the other bird was a meany bird." Erin and Bayley filled in the hole and Aislin led Ronan, Liam and Fionn about the yard finding violets, rocks and pine cones with which to decorate the fresh grave. Inside, the older boys had watched most of the proceedings through the dining room window, at most, faintly curious. When the funeral goers returned inside though, Kegan expressed the opinion that he thought it would be fitting if we took the rest of the day off from school. In honor of the poor bird, of course.