the three amigos

I wanted to share some pictures from our family birthday celebration that we hosted on Sunday. Andrew's family came over to celebrate Nathaniel, Helmut and Andrew's birthdays. The last time we were all together was at Christmas so it was really nice for everyone, especially the cousins, to have lots of playtime. We usually don't go this long between visits, but winter is usually the exception with the busyness of exams.

When everyone arrived, the kids and adults headed to the backyard to enjoy the glorious day outside. There was lots of playing, craft making and swinging.

Here is Karis enjoying the swings.

Miranda was warming up her pitching arm with Andrew. He made the comment that "Boy does she have a good arm." Here is Andrew playing catcher.

After our Mexican themed supper (we had bbq chicken and shrimp fajitas), the gifts and cards were opened.

Nathaniel had been browsing the Playmobil catalogue and picked out this crane after I gave the go ahead to purchase it for him. He was thrilled and commented "It's what I always wanted!"

And here are the birthday boys. Check out Nathaniel's anticipation!

And some of the cupcakes that I made for the celebration. I made sooo many! I headed to Andrew's work and dropped off 2 dozen yesterday. There is just something about cupcakes that make life happier. The pretty pink icing is just a straight forward buttercream icing thinned with thawed, strained raspberries. I really liked the chocolate cupcake recipe and found it here.
The recipe is called super soft chocolate cupcakes...and they were...so soft! I halved the recipe.