Lydia Baking for her Birthday Party

Lydia has been doing a lot of baking the last few months-- cookies, brownies, cakes, you name it. Her most recent culinary achievement was her birthday cake, from a tricky recipe in the Gourmet Today book. Here is a picture:

This photo doesn't really do it justice-- the flourescent lighting makes it looks a little garish, but it was really quite a feat of cookery. Devils-food chocolate layers, butter cream frosting, then elaborately decorated mini-cupcakes piled on top. It was very well-received at her birthday party.

We had the party at the Boston Sports Club; Lydia wanted to invite her friends to play dodge ball:

It was an all-girls event, with the exception of Ethan. They played a bunch of different dodgeball games, including "Crackabout" and "Doctor Dodge". Lydia's descriptions of the game strategies for the second game sounded almost like a cold-war thriller (including the use of decoys to hide the identity of the team "doctor").

It was a good party.