Celebrate Good Times...C'mon...

I have this memory of myself as a teenager making a chocolate cake out of an ancient cookbook I still use to this day for my mum's birthday. It might be good to mention here that, until I met the Captain, cooking of any kind was limited to heating up something in the microwave. My mum wasn't big on it. Having been forced at a horrifically early age to cook for her family, then going on to have a husband and seven children of her own to feed, cooking never felt like much fun. So the first time I went over to the Captain's place and watched him make me french onion soup, my jaw dropped. He never even picked up a can opener!
You can imagine what this cake ended up looking (and tasting) like. The icing was too runny, so when I tried to spell out "Happy Birthday" in red, on a sheet of green icing, what I ended up with was a drippy brownish blur. Between that and the fact that the cake had the consistency of a brick, by today's standards, I'd have considered it a disaster. But my mum at least acted thrilled (it may have been the sugar rush), saying no one had ever made her a birthday cake before. I like to think that my skills both in the kitchen and in the area of homemade gifts have vastly improved since that time.
And, in a completely unrelated story, today the Captain makes his victorious return home! The kids are beyond excited and I'm going to have to find a way to keep them occupied until after dinner, when we can finally go pick him up. I guess it'll be good practice for Christmas Eve. Groan...
So, today we have two reasons to celebrate. Happy Birthday, Mum! I hope you like the knitted nativity scene. And welcome home, Captain! Please don't dump your crap everywhere and drive me crazy for the next 3 weeks.

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