My Landlord Turned Fifty!

Another one of the hundreds of shots we have of our girls together to start the post off.

But the main reason for this post is to inform you that Grandpa Tractor turned 50 last month!!! We made plans to go out for dinner and celebrate. That day while he was at work the kids and I made a cake and banner.

Nora supervised the banner making.

This is a little boring guys!

We hoped that the restaurant would allow us to hang up the banner where Grandpa could see it.

We waited to greet the birthday boy at the door when he walked in. The sweet hostess kindly hung up the birthday banner in the entry way for us. After we were done taking pictures by it, she carried it to where we were sitting and hung it up behind our table. What a great gal. This restaurant is very kid friendly also. They give a free (big) bowl of pasta, your choice of noodle type and sauce to kids under 6 and bring a tray of starters for them too.

Nory Pory got in the party mood. Look how happy she is, even with that chin strap cutting off circulation to either her neck or one of her five chins, I'm not sure which.

Party hats all around.

Okay, that's about as silly as it gets...oh wait, nope, we can step it up a notch with another hat.

Daddy's ferry got him back just in time to join the celebration. He's a very stereotypical Seattleite these days. He drives from Gig Harbor to the Soutworth ferry, rides to Vashon Island and then hops a "water taxi" (a ferry with no cars, passengers only, that goes a bit faster) to downtown Seattle where he walks very fast up the steep hills to his office in the heart of down town. Who woulda thunk it of this Idaho boy???

Grandpa with his choice of cake--yellow cake with chocolate frosting, and some pudding for the filling, just for good measure. By the way, the recipe is from Marcy Goldman's A Passion for Baking (one of my fave cookbooks) and it's delicious. I'm not generally a yellow cake fan since there are so many other great flavors out there. However, this one was moist and wonderful. And the frosting...ohh la la! It calls for cocoa powder AND melted semi-sweet chips. The mix is fabulous. And if you put the cake in the fridge overnight and forget about it and the frosting hardens to the consistency of concrete, don't worry, pick it off and eat it like fudge, cuz that's about what it tastes like : )

And that's all we got, folks! I'll try to do a catch up post later this week. I want to blog more, I really do. It's just a little crazy with all of us sharing my mom and dad's computer and figuring out where to store all the pictures from my camera while our computer is not out, etc., etc. I'm sure we'll still be spotty with the posting--but I'll keep trying!