Ethan's 4th Birthday

Let me preface this post by saying that I am not a crafty or artistic person. I like to do them when someone else does all the preparing and tells me exactly how to do it. I really don't feel like there are too many crafts that I enjoy or that I feel are worth my time. With that being said, for each one of the birthdays, my mom made me a birthday cake. I really appreciated it and looked forward to it every year. I couldn't even tell you what most of the cakes were decorated like, but I remember feeling very special on my special day. So when I started having kids, I wanted to continue that tradition, regardless of my craft deficiencies.

This year for Ethan's birthday, I wanted to make him a Lightning McQueen cake. I had originally planned to just do an outline of a car. However, I was intrigued by an online tutorial that showed how to make a 3-D cake. I thought to myself, "I can do this...I watch Ace of Cakes and it looks easy enough...I don't have fondant so frosting will have to make do, but this is going to be awesome." I also had the dilemma of figuring out the red frosting. I kept having thoughts of a pink McQueen...so I opted for red sprinkles instead.

Here is the final result- you can tell I'm not a professional, but I was SO excited to show Ethan:

I felt pretty good about the finished result. And Ethan loved it! He even said later that night, "Thank you for my Lightning, Mommy." Totally worth the 3 hours I spent! Here are some more pictures of the big day and activities later in the week:

Eating at Giggles N' Hugs, a fun kids restaurant

Annalisa had fun too

Blowing out the candles

Look at that face

As Ethan said, "I'm eating his Ka-Chow"

One of his presents

At the Natural History Museum and Butterfly Pavillion

Annalisa looking really small

Looking at the butterflies

Ethan pointing at one of the big butterflies

Sitting for a picture

With friends Korven and Westin

Dinosaur bones

More bones, bad lighting on the kids...

At the Peterson Automotive Museum with Dad

Riding in a real race car