A very Merry Unbirthday party!!

This will be the first year that Matthew is in Utah for his birthday, so we decided to have a birthday party for him before he left. Last year's Adventure Landing party was such a success that we decided to do it there again this year. I have to say that they do a great job and I love that I don't have to worry about cleaning and decorating my house, buying and preparing food, getting plates, cups, napkins, etc and trying to figure out what they are going to do for an hour and a half. Like every birthday, I get this crazy notion that I should pretend to be a cake decorator (which I am not, but I would love to take a class) and decide to try to make some cake that is far out of my league, stress about it for days, make the attempt, and fail miserably. This year, I made the mistake of showing Matthew a picture of the Millennium Falcon cake made on Ace of Cakes. Of course, as any red blooded male would, he wanted it for his birthday. So, I looked for pictures of cakes that would be more my speed and found some really dumpy looking Millennium Falcon cakes and tried to convince Matthew that it would be ok if his cake looked more like those than the Amazing true to life cake made by a professional. He assured me that he didn't want a dumpy looking cake and that I could make the professional looking cake. So, after stressing about it for about a week, I found a great tutorial online for one that didn't look too dumpy, but that I felt like I could accomplish and spent the entire afternoon putting it together. I have to say, that I was pretty impressed with how it turned out. I think this is the first time that I haven't wanted to throw one of my cakes in the trash and run out to Publix to pick one up at the bakery. The best part, though, was that Matthew LOVED it!! When I first showed it to him, he just said WOW, MOM! It's AWESOME!! And he kept wanting me to pull it out of the fridge so he could look at it again. That really made all my stressing worthwhile. And then, I remembered why I do this every year. Because I loved it when my mom made cakes for my birthdays. I saw much work she put into them and I knew she did it because she wanted me to know that she loved me and wanted my birthday to be special. I think Matthew had a very special unbirthday this year. After playing at the arcade, they ate pizza and cake, then did lazor tag and mini golf and then more arcade. Here are some pictures of the highlights.