Two... almost

Since Memaw was in town we decided to have a birthday dinner for Jacob a little early with the Haller side of the family. I made a 3D train cake and learned a few life lessons in the process:

1. FOLLOW DIRECTIONS: when directions say make enough cake batter so the pan is almost overflowing, there's a reason for that -- mine was lopsided and almost fell over a few times.
2. PREPARATION IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS: coloring icing yourself is tricky -- if you don't make enough of a color the first time, making more of that color later is impossible and making red icing takes a LOT of red food coloring.
3. THINK AHEAD: icing a 3D cake has its challenges -- the icing got so gooey after mixing it with color that it wasn't ideal for using my handy cake decorating tool. Next time a visit to the fridge first.

But this day wasn't all about me (ha!). Jacob enjoyed stuffing his face with pizza, he recognized that the cake was a choo choo train (mission accomplished), and he loved all his presents. You can see that Owen really enjoyed himself as well. Speaking of Owen, it only took 9 weeks, but Jacob now refers to his brother as "Oh-wee". Progress.