Cake walk

We’ve just concluded another successful crazy-April birthday month. The theme for Archer’s party was “ninja monkeys,” and so he had two birthday parties in one — the first at Expedition Island, where climbing walls, zip lines, rope bridges and more helped him and his guests to get their monkey on, and the second at his karate dojo for some hilarious ninja training courtesy of his multi-talented sensei Mr. Lavin. The theme for Jonah’s party was Avatar: The Last Airbender, so his was four parties in one — one for the Earth kingdom (a hike through a local park), one for the Water tribes (swimming), one for the Air nomads (jumping on trampolines at House of Air), and one for the Fire nation (practicing tai-chi-like moves with lit sparklers) — all of which prepared Jonah, the “avatar,” to “defeat” the “Fire nation” with his “airbending” skills (i.e., blowing out the candles on his cake).

Apart from putting on elaborate parties, we usually create interesting cakes to go with them. Herewith, a retrospective.

It started simply, with your basic store-bought cake with a few toys stuck on top:

But that didn’t seem quite enough, so next time we took a store-bought cake and plopped a homemade cake on top of it! (That duck is all cake. Mmm.)

I wasn’t too happy with the next effort:

…so we supplemented it with another store-bought cake, though you can see our decorations becoming more elaborate (those “rocks” are chocolate, mmm):

Our first proper theme was for Archer’s “Mr. Sunshine” party. Here’s the cake:

Jonah chose a “peace” theme for his third birthday — we were so proud! This cake is in the shape of a peace symbol, with berries filling the voids in the shape.

Archer’s next party was all about superheroes. We made a cake to look like the yellow A on his notional red “Archer-man” costume.

Next Jonah had a Peter Pan party. (The candles are supposed to make the shape of a teepee.)

For Archer’s next birthday he wanted a “monkey in the jungle” party.

Then Jonah had his Yellow Submarine party. (The cake’s in the background of this photo, with the yellow submarine on top.)

Archer then had a “put on a happy face” party.

And Jonah had his Scooby-Doo party. It was back to a store-bought cake (with our own decorations) for this one.

Another store-bought cake for Jonah’s Star Trek party.

…and also for Archer’s vaguely sea-themed party:

Archer’s ninja-monkey cake was a joint venture between us and Expedition Island:

…but Jonah’s four Avatar: The Last Airbender cakes (air, water, fire, earth) were all us: