And the peanut turned three!

Well, it's nothing like taking Christmas card photos to motivate me and catch me up on some photo editing.  I'm here today to share (and not too terribly late, I might add) some photos from Havi's birthday celebration.  We figured that we would eat out and have cake on her actual birthday, which was a week ago Sunday.  Unfortunately, Caleb's tennis tournament was pushed to Sunday from Saturday because of all the rain we had. I ended up baking her birthday cake on Saturday and then made the frosting and decorated it Sunday morning.  We were able to eat lunch, sing Happy Birthday, and open presents before heading out of town for the tournament.

I originally was going to use the same swirl decorating technique that I used on her cake last year but using pink and white this time.  Due to not knowing our actual departure time for the tournament, though, I ended up tinting the whole batch of frosting pink and just doing a simple ripple effect along the sides of the cake.  I did a small ripple effect on top too but ended up covering it up when I decided to add the sprinkles.  I used traditional American buttercream, which I do not like but my family does.  They say my Swiss Meringue buttercream isn't sweet enough, and compared to American buttercream, it isn't.  But I am going to try modifying the recipe to make it a tad sweeter for them.  It's just so much nicer to frost a cake with, in my opinion.  Oh, and I made a mini 6 inch cake so we didn't have too much uneaten cake sitting around, which worked out pretty well for our little family. 

 Well, we eventually made it over to the tennis tournament.  Caleb was half way through his first match when my sister and her family showed up.  He won that match handedly.  We are so proud of him.  Because of the weather, the rest between matches was shorter.  Consequently, we chose to hang out at the facility rather than head over to my sister's house, which we often do when he plays at that particular site. The cousins had so much fun playing together.  Caleb also hung out with a few of this tennis buddies.

 I wanted a portrait of the birthday girl on her actual birthday, but she wasn't too interested in posing for me, unless you consider acorns on your head a pose.

 After snapping a photo of the birthday girl with her brother and sister, I asked my sister to snap one of me with her.  First I stole a kiss while my nephew photo bombed us, and then she gave me a gigantic bear hug.  Oh, my heart melted.

 I had to get a photo of Baba with his little girl too.

The sun was setting when Caleb got around to playing his last match.  And so I had to snap a quick photo to show proof that it really did try to shine, even if it was ever so brief.  Caleb ended up losing his second match to the highest ranked player he's played to date.  And although he lost, he played pretty well.  We are just so proud of him. 

Anyway, fortunately for Havi next year, her birthday falls on a Monday.  So she shouldn't have to celebrate her birthday on a tennis court three years in a row. lol  We love you little Hav Hav!  

Happy 3rd Birthday!!!