Happy Birthday Lil' Ry!

June 8th was Ryan's 7th birthday. We celebrated by going bowling at Tech City Bowl and eating strawberry shortcake. Now... the history of Ry's strawberry shortcake is this... his first birthday cake was a simple white cake with whipped cream and strawberries on top. He didn't eat it. Everyone else did. So since then he has had white cake with plain frosting... nothing big.

Well sometime throughout the years he has had my strawberry shortcake. I make mine the southern style with biscuits, fresh cream and rendered strawberries. He declares it the best desert in the world every time he eats it. So when his 5th birthday was coming around...he surprised me by asking for strawberry shortcake for his birthday. Kind of a different request, but we did it. So I made up the biscuits, whipped up the cream and rendered the strawberries. We put a candle in his own serving and that was it. Since then he has asked for it for his birthday cake.

For this particular birthday... having the party at a bowling alley proved a little challenging because they don't allow outside food with the exception of a celebratory cake. So I had to figure out how to do the shortcakes as one cake. I thought about a casserole but opted to treat the biscuit like normal cake rounds and made a big parfait type cake. Since whipped cream isn't the most structured frosting... I put the whole thing in a bowl and WALA...Celebratory Cake!



Let's eat!!

Time to bowl... Casey and Little Keegs discussing strategy??

Jodee holding down Judah... he couldn't bowl :-(

Quinny and Chloe couldn't bowl at first either because the minimum age was 4... but the management let us get them shoes since they are almost 4 years old... (in 6 months) hey now don't laugh... for Quin on that exact day he is closer to being 4 than 3.

Our friend from church Conner Anderson came with his "A" game! He and Keegs tied for 1st place that day.

Josiah sized up his attempt for a strike... not this time :-(
Little Ry did good... He got one strike that day.

I even got in the action a bit... I think I bowled the first 5 rounds and then little Ry took over for me. 9 month pregnant isn't the best time to be bowling I found... I paid the price in cramping later! Not that great of a shot Shelly!!

Neighbor Keegan was all smiles...

It was really nice having Jodee out. She's healing up and God is doing great things with her! Terry and Keegan Sr. joining in the picture too.
The whole party was less than 2 hours... Ryan received great gifts from his family and friends! Big Ry and I got him swim lessons and Aunt Shell and Casey got him City Kids Camp. Both will have pictures coming soon!

Till later... Nic