Brandon's Birthday - sans Brandon

Here's irony for you.  I think this is the first time I ever actually made Brandon a birthday cake - and he wasn't here to enjoy it.  

But in my defense making a cake was the only thing I did to celebrate Brandon's birthday today (and thanks to a horrible head cold it was basically the only productive thing I did all day.)  It's easy to make a cake when I don't have to worry about presents and activities.   

The girl had fun helping make the cake.  

 And they had fun eating the batter.

 I love this picture of Lydia.  Can you believe how curly her hair is?  Lately people have been asking me if I curl the girls' hair.  That question always makes me laugh.  I'm like, "You actually think that I have time to curl their hair? If I had time to do that I would curl my own hair."  Actually, their hair is naturally curly.  It doesn't come from me (unless years of wishing for my hair to curl went into my children) It actually comes from Brandon's Mom.

 Anyway, back to talking about Brandon's cake.  I didn't have frosting, but I did have candles.  Several weeks ago I found Lydia sticking bobby pins into a bar of soap and singing, "Haaapppeee, Haaappppeee."  When I saw her doing that I knew that we needed to celebrate Brandon's birthday even though he wouldn't be here.  I wanted the kids to know that it was their dad's birthday.

 We called Brandon's phone and left a voicemail of us singing Happy Birthday.  The girls' version sounds something like this. "Haaaappppeee Dah tooo Haaapppeee Dah you"

 Then we all enjoyed cake.  Derrick has been sick for the past few days, but he was finally feeling better and loved eating cake.  Derrick loves real food.  He only has two little nubby teeth on the bottom, but somehow he can still eat most food that I put in front of him.

 After we finished the cake I decided it was time to put up the tree.  We always wait until after Brandon's birthday.  This was after enough.  We got this far before bedtime happened.  

 And then I put the lights on after bedtime.  We'll put ornaments up later (if we have any toddler safe ornaments.)

And what did Brandon do today?  As far as I know he spent the week doing field exercises.  He was probably cold and tired today.  I feel bad for him, but in a twisted way I'm happy about it. Sometimes he can be pretty moody about his birthdays.  Now if he ever gets moody and acts like he's having the worst birthday ever I can remind him about the time he celebrated his birthday at basic training.

He'll get back to his bay tomorrow.  There should be lots of birthday cards waiting for him there. The cards will help him know that people still remember him and care about him.

I do plan on celebrating Brandon's birthday with him. In just 11 days I will be with him in Georgia for Family Day and Graduation.  We are going to do lots of celebrating then.  I probably wont make him a cake though.