Happy Birthday, Dad!!

Last weekend I got to take a break from working on one house or the other and instead go visit my family for my Dad's birthday party. His birthday was actually in late October, and we'd planned on having the festivities the week before, but then I found out I was having Revenge of the Knee Surgery and the party was put on hold for a few weeks.

I got in pretty late on Friday night, but when I got there I found a beautifully made bed and chocolates by my pillows. :)

We almost always have a bonfire for Dad's birthday, and luckily the weather cooperated and it didn't rain and wasn't too cool or too warm that night. It's always a busy morning and afternoon beforehand, though! Dad is chief bonfire builder and tender, and the fire has to be started fairly early in the morning in order to burn down enough to be comfortable to sit by in the evenings.

He did take a break from that, though, to attempt to decipher the ingredients list on the back of a truly cheap can of store-brand orange soda. Darren and Jon really enjoy their cheap store-brand orange sodas. :)

I didn't get to see Dad nearly as much as I would have liked during the day because I was busy making cupcakes and decorating for the party. Plus there were a couple of trips to run errands in there, too!

Since we ate outside, there weren't any decoration in the house, but I did dress up a tiered cake stand, and I'd cut lots and lots of cupcake wrappers with my Wishblade the day before.

Please excuse me if I'm including too many photos of this, but I'm rather proud of how it turned out! I made all the cupcake toppers, too, and taped them to lollipop sticks before sticking them into the tops of the cupcakes.

It's really hard to take pictures of people sitting around the actual bonfire- I have to use the flash and they get kind of annoyed. :) Tina said she was holding up her hand to block the heat from the fire- not to keep me from taking her picture. I think Avery actually was blocking me, though. :)

Dad does good bonfires, doesn't he?

The next day Dad and I were able to fit in some time to take the cameras out and shoot photos of the fall leaves. We had a lot of fun arranging them in the creek. I haven't gone through them all yet, but I've seen several that I really like already.

Dad also tried to help me cut some books apart to scan in (I'd already confiscated the bindings from them to use for a scrapping project), but we broke his bandsaw in the process :( and the jigsaw was just too difficult and slow.

And I caught this shot of my brother and one of his cats out on the deck. J found Azzy while he was in college (J was in college, not Azzy :) ) and the cat now lives full-time with Mom and Dad and is spoooooooiiiled!

It was a such a fun family weekend. :) And I get to go back to see them again the day after Thanksgiving. Dad and I will shop black Friday sales from the comfort of their living room. :)