A hawk got itself trapped in the chicken coop this weekend.  The girls were out eating bugs in the yard, so there was no harm done really. And I got some close up shots of a hawk.

Edie’s birthday meant a dinner/slumber party for more girls than our house can reasonably hold. And there were still some friends she wanted to invite that I put the kibosh on because well, our house is only so big. 

Our dining room is almost the exact same length as our table with 2 leaves in it. The chair at the head of the table is actually in the hallway. And you can’t pull out the chair at the foot.

When inviting 8 girls, it helps to include your daughter in the final head count, which is actually 9.

There is a high pitched roar when you have 9 girls in your house.  It stops for exactly 10 seconds when they eat.

How can they eat and talk at the same time?

When a cake recipe says it’s perfect served with milk, that means 9 eleven year old girls will drink an entire gallon of milk with the cake.

9 girls at a slumber party don’t sleep.  Neither do you really.

11 year old girls are more than happy to have Martha’s Moist Devil’s Food Cake for breakfast too.  I used some strawberry jam as filler in between the layers, so therefore, it counted as a fruit serving.  Or so I told them. I also told them they had to eat that entire cake so that I could bake another one for Pat’s birthday the next day. 

One can only have so much cake lying around.

I love how good Pat looks in his sweater.

Peach Pound Cake also makes an excellent breakfast.

Edie managed to find a way to upstage Pat on his birthday, two days after hers, yet again. It’s always something, starting with when she was born and came home from the hospital on his birthday.  This year it was strep throat.  So while we didn’t get a date night like I’d hoped, we still managed to find some time to celebrate.  And I made him a fantastic dinner – Lamb Curry from my More with Less cookbook and a peach pound cake, with the lamb coming from our friends the Roystons, no doubt some lamb that a member of our family helped bottle feed at some point, or at least we imagine so.  We’ve bottle fed a number of lambs at their farm over the years.  And enjoyed eating them.

And with that, our holiday season that started with my birthday in October just before Halloween, is over.  I am not baking another cake until at least March, so help me.