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The last few weeks have been absolutely crazy. From the week before Riles birthday up until today I’m not quite sure what’s happened. I’ll try to recap:

Riley’s birthday came and went. It was a two day food fest that was just a riot. Riley was a good sport through it all. As with all 1 year olds, he didn’t really know that he was getting gifts. It was more of a second birthday party for me, the gift opener, if I were 1 years old. He enjoyed the cake. We have pictures somewhere but I’m not sure which camera they’re on. I think even Chad and Tina have our pictures somehow on their camera.

We spent Riley’s actual birthday (a.k.a. Halloween) buying ourselves Anti-Riley furniture. We replaced our Ikea television stand with something from Slumberland that was taller and contained doors. Riley’s favorite past-time is banging stuff on the television and digging through the poorly managed stereo wires. So we thought it was time to finally pony up and get some real furniture.

After Riley’s birthday weekend we spent last weekend cleaning up leaves. We had ignored them for most of October which meant we had to spend a fair amount of our Saturday catching up. We had shipped Riley off for the weekend to Camp Motylinski so we enjoyed some time to ourselves. We even caught a movie at the theater, something we hadn’t done in well over a year.

The next few weeks hold a ton of work for me. At the client site we’re trying to get the final release of the Q3 software out the door (if you hadn’t noticed, it’s Q4 now which tells you the urgency). Every day I am lectured about needing to put in extra hours. In the very short time I’ve been here the team has shrunk by 50% so some days it feels like almost a Herculean task that we are still on pace to launch on time. Regardless, by Thanksgiving all should be settled down.

Oh yeah, and in any free time I may have I play Guitar Hero 3. Courtney has already grown sick of my flying couch dives and my back-on-the-floor killer solos.

Riles will be 1 year old next week on Halloween. Courtney and I have spent the last week reminiscing about last year at this time. The nerves, the excitement, and the fateful night two weeks before. Riley never really made many “shifts” during the pregnancy to indicate that he was going to pop out. It began quite nerve racking, actually. But one evening in mid October Courtney got up and paced around for most of night. Looking back on it, it was Riles only sign that he wanted out.

As we get closer to his birthday he’s starting the “new trick” phase again. Right before major milestones he seems to pull out some new trick. Within the last week he’s been saying “uh-oh!”, which sometimes comes out as a painful “oh-uh!” Try to say it backwards, it’s not easy or graceful to do.

On top of that he’s finally waving. We’ve been waving at him for 6 months now. Just this week he seems to have finally gotten the point. When Courtney and I pass him back and forth between us he immediately spins around and waves to the person he just left.

The best new trick, though, has been the hugs. He just started hugging us all of the sudden. It was like one day he just really, really missed us. And ever since he’s been throwing his arms around us.

So, his birthday will be fun. I look forward to it. Pictures next week.

P.S. – I taught Riley the “Pile-Driver” this week too. I told Courtney that he’ll need to know that sort of stuff for when he has a younger sibling.

I decided this year I wanted to make my own birthday cake. I didn’t have anything particular in mind, but I knew I wanted it to include strawberry Jell-o. I did a quick Google search for “jello strawberry cake” and found this recipe from Cooks.com.

The first sign of trouble happened at the grocery store. The recipe calls for 1 box of strawberry Jell-o. The store had two sizes, small and large. I picked up one of each. I would consult Courtney later on the topic.

At home Courtney and I concurred that the more strawberry flavor the better, so I used the larger of the two boxes. The last step before baking is adding frozen 1/2 cup of strawberries to the batter, which amounted to 3 – 5 whole frozen strawberries. Something looked wrong but I wasn’t about to deviate from the recipe. I threw in the 3-5 whole strawberries into the mix and added half a dozen more for good measure. I now had a bowl full of cake batter with 12 lumpy frozen strawberries in it. I put the batter into cake pans and threw it in the oven.

While the cake baked I made the frosting, which was your run of the mill powdered sugar frosting with a few frozen strawberries thrown in. My mom used to make this type of frosting all the time and I consider myself a connoisseur of confectionate frosting. It is my all-time favorite thing. I love it with graham crackers. Although I have a deep love for it, I never paid particular attention to how my mom made it.

I melted the butter and poured it on top of a pound of powdered sugar. I mixed it for a few minutes but nothing was “creaming”. In fact, all I had now was lumpy sugar. Assuming the frozen whole strawberries might help the issue I threw them in too. Now all I had was lumpier sugar with whole frozen strawberries in it. Feeling desparate and confused I started chopping the strawberries up, shredding them with the mixer. Surprisingly the frosting started turning red and the strawberries pieces started mixing in quite well. In hopes that this wasn’t just a fluke I realized that the recipe needed a little creative influence. Remembering back to how mom makes frosting I noticed no milk ingredient. I tossed a splash of milk in. I also melted a bit more butter. Soon I had near perfect frosting, the likes that would make a mother proud.

After my triumph against poor frosting directions I realized that I had made the same frozen strawberry mistake with the baking cake; I hadn’t chopped up the strawberries. After letting the cake layers cool I flipped them over to see what the damage was. The whole frozen strawberries had became some sort of weird, moldy-ish, disgusting blobs at the bottom of the cake. I was devistated. I couldn’t serve this to my family! They would think I was crazy. I dug out the rotten parts of the cake and hoped to solve it with frosting.

The strawberries had left gaping holes behind which would hinder the structural stability of the cake. I questioned the ability of the cake layers to stay on top of each other. The frosting seemed to do its job, gluing the two layers together.

Once at my folks house I filled them in on the cake situation. I told them that I would be the sacrificial guinea pig, I would eat my own dog food before making anyone else eat it. I wasn’t about to put any of them through the hell that might be my own cake. Surpringly the cake turned out real good. I was amazed that it actually turned out. As we enjoyed the cake the layers started falling apart. As I looked at my cake with a half prideful, half disappointing look my mom said, “Toothpicks. Next time use toothpicks.”

That tip is going in my life lessons book.

I turn 28 today. A birthday greeting from my mom:

Updated

And the card from my dad:

Also, props to Drew and Michelle for the Hallmark flash card. I can’t post it since it’s on a 3rd party site but thanks for the well wishes.

Update 2

Not to be outdone, my cousin Katie sent along the following:

If you’re curious what I did this weekend, here’s the Late-Monday afternoon recap:

Friday – After enjoying one-too-many beers at BW3s, Courtney and I invited ourselves over to Chad and Tina’s where we continued to drink the evening away. We played the perfect drinking game called Apples to Apples. It is a simple game, perfect for tom-foolery. After kicking everyone’s ass (okay, I lost big time) we went home.

Saturday – Saw The Incredibles. I was very happy it was more of an adult-ish movie. In between all the laughing, I did take notice of the beautiful new lighting techniques used. Everything looked very three dimensional. Brad Bird did a great job on the movie. And don’t think I didn’t notice Jason Lee as the bad guy.

Sunday – Dad’s birthday celebration. Hung out with the fam, did fam things. I even pelted Drew with a roll at the dinner table. That’ll teach ‘em to invite me to dinner!

After spending every waking moment doing yard work over the last month or so it was nice to have an entire weekend to myself to just relax and turn the brain off for a few hours.