Asher's 16th Birthday

     Sylvia and I attempted making "cake-balls" for Asher's birthday cake.  After seeing several tennis cakes on pintrest using cake-balls for tennis balls, I thought I'd do the same.  I watched a you tube tutorial on how to make cake-balls (coating balls of cake crumbs with dipping chocolate)  and thought "no problem".   (After seeing the  ensuing carnage, Mattias later informed me that there is a website for "pintrest fails", which made me burst out laughing.)

 Sylvia was a great sport.  She squished the dollops of frosting into the crumbs with her bare hands.  After much trial and error, we had a few balls that looked like tennis balls, if you had a good imagination, and lots of balls that were just plain ugly... and would need to be eaten quickly.  Luckily, we had other family members around to assist.

 The cake turned out ok... but I feel like the ease at which the you tube tutorial showed making the cake balls was a bit misleading.  I seem to be queen of clumpy cake balls.  (But, they did taste good.)

That afternoon, I went to Madison to pick up Asher from a tennis tournament, only to arrive just as he was being sat down at a table, with coaches huddled around him and a large wad of tissues packed against his nose and face.  Yes, he got hit in the face with a tennis racquet on his birthday, and split the skin on the bridge of his nose open enough to require stitches.

After a visit to the local hospital, where the nurses got him a cupcake from the hospital cafeteria, and signed him a card... he returned home for his long awaited party.

 It was a pretty tame party.  Friends came over to our house after the local canoe race to polish off some cake and icecream and then go wander downtown to see what festival activities were still going on.

Other than seeing clumps of giggling girls, and loud teenagers hollering.. not much was happening, so they returned back to our house and listened to their parents discuss exciting subjects such as goal setting for homeschoolers and 4-H clubs.

 Even though it may not have been the perfect 16th birthday.. we are glad to have good friends to celebrate with... and a wonderful teenage boy who can still smile at the end of a very long day.   - And we had cake balls!  What more could we ask for?