A little overdue

...but here's how Alex's birthday turned out. Every year Alex insists he doesn't care about his birthday and that I shouldn't make a big deal out of it. And every year that makes me want to make even more of a big deal out of it, because I believe that secretly people like to have birthday celebrations no matter how much they insist it doesn't matter to them. And I also believe everyone should always have a birthday cake.

As you know, the long-standing (and by long I mean four years) tradition for Alex's birthday is to make a cake that is something. See this entry from a year ago. (On a side note, how weird is it that our blog is over a year old??) This year I went with a little bit more of an abstract idea and chose a runner. It turned out like this:
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Incidentally, I think you could do some rather interesting art projects with turquoise frosting. It's got a great consistency.
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I also spent a significant amount of money and a lot of time making this a personalized map using a geological survey of Colorado from 1877. (I will photograph it eventually). Moral of the story: use the the Library of Congress -- it's free and the resources are amazing -- but remember that the government isn't exactly known for its customer service or for it's useful technology and expect your project to take six times longer than you expected. (It was still worth it).
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One of these days I will organize and post the photos from my cliche 'day in the life' post...