Happy? Birthday

No, that question mark after the "happy" is NOT a typo. Look at the boy in these photos. Does he look happy to you? His reason for crying? Well, he hates singing. And there were about 20 of us standing around singing Happy Birthday. He was havin' NONE o' that.















It gets better once we break out the "Cars" movie-themed gifts.















Let's talk cupcakes for a moment. These are cute, aren't they? It's a good thing, too. I ruined them. You may be asking yourself HOW in the world is it possible to ruin boxed cupcakes where all you have to do is add three simple ingredients? I'll tell you how: Forget to add one of those three ingredients. Oopsy. Yes, that's right. 1-1/4 cups water is missing from these cupcakes. And the sad part: I didn't even figure it out until I took the cupcakes out of the oven and saw they were brown and caved in at the centers. Hmmm...what could have happened here? (as she looks to the left and sees the cup of water that never made it to the recipe). Again, oopsy.
















Flopped cupcakes notwithstanding, this year's birthday was a much bigger success than last year's. Last year, the poor kid's first birthday was not even acknowledged until the month of June. Hey, I was busy, ok? I forgot. Another oopsy. Nevertheless, I tried to make up for it by using this year's birthday as an excuse to have MY friends over. Worked out quite nicely. Thanks for coming Pam and Polly, and for bringing your brood and your husbands (strategically not pictured, but useful for taking out trash and turning off gas grills). Is it just me, or do all three of us look like we went a little crazy with the blue eye shadow? None of us looked that way in person (no, really, we didn't), but for some reason it looks like someone played with the "street-walker" feature on Photoshop. 'twasn't me.