Happy 8th Birthday to Emily!

It's Emily's Birthday and she is soooooo excited for gifts. It's late afternoon, after school, homework, and dinner is cooking. The presents are (finally) wrapped and it's time to open them.

Wow! Mom remembered I asked for a Hanna Montana doll! This one even sings - a whole song that lasts a long time - and it's really loud too. :)

Emily with her cake (and doll). Now before you look at the frosting and think "GROSS! look at all that sweet frosting stacked on that cake" I have to tell you how I make frosting now. No more powdered sugar frosting. No one likes it and everyone scrapes it off. No canned frosting either. Just mix one small box of instant pudding with 3/4 cups cold milk (yes, it's less than half the box calls for) and 1/4 cup powdered sugar. Fold in 8 oz. of Cool Whip and you have the yummiest frosting you ever had. I love it with white chocolate pudding. Emily's birthday cake was made with a double recipe of Chocolate Fudge pudding. The cake was made in a 10" springform pan, and then sliced horizontally into three layers to hold even more of the yummy pudding frosting. Don't forget you have to store it in the fridge. The chocolate curls were made with a vegetable peeler and a bar of Dove milk chocolate at room temperature.

Now before you are convinced that Emily's favorite birthday gift was her Hanna Montana doll, I must admit it is NOT! It isn't her new wallet, or journal. It isn't her new books, or video games that plug into the TV either. It is the bug vacuum. It actually sucks up live bugs and traps them in a clear tube for examination. (I mean torture)

Once all her presents were opened, she raced outside to try out the bug vacuum. She was out there until dinner, and went right back out afterwards. That was yesterday. Today, as soon as she got home from school and finished her homework, she raced outside with the bug vacuum to find more bugs. She loves it! Adam and Miriam love it too. They follow her around dying for a turn. All I have to do is look at each and every bug she catches in the tube and praise her skills at vacuuming them up. :) So far I have witnessed the flies, potato bugs, lady bugs, moths, grasshoppers big and small, spiders, and even bugs I don't recognize. As long as they are let loose OUTSIDE and not in my house it's fine.

Here is Emily with her favorite toy of all! Look closely and see the huge grasshopper she has captured inside!

Well, Emily... it's a good thing you have a Dad to pick out a bug vacuum for you. I would never have thought of it, or even considered it. He just has a sense of what kind of things you like. (I have a sense of Miriam kind of things instead)

Happy Birthday Emily! We love you!