First I have to start off by saying that today was my grandma’s 80th birthday!! She’s my last grandparent who is still living, and she’s still going strong! She has three children (six if you count spouses), seven grandchildren (eleven including spouses), and six great-grandchildren so far. We will be celebrating with the entire gang during Labor Day weekend, and I’ve been asked to make her birthday cake. I’ve done a few cakes before, but none of this magnitude, so I asked my mother-in-law, who is an expert at this, for some tips. She was extremely helpful, and even let me borrow some of her supplies!

About the weekend: it was crazy! My husband turned 40 on Saturday, and our 12th anniversary was on Sunday. I had asked my hubby how he wanted to celebrate his milestone event, and he chose a trip to Columbia, Missouri, where his parents live. He redeemed some of his hotel points that he accumulated while he was still traveling for Caterpillar, and got (what we thought) would be a nice room at the Hilton Garden Inn. You already see where this is going, don’t you? The plan was to leave the girls with Grammie and Papa so we could have some time to ourselves, and still have a nice family party at noon on Saturday.

It’s about a two and a half hour drive to Columbia, so we pulled the girls out of school a little bit early Friday afternoon, and were on our way. Not more than a few minutes into the drive, the rain started coming down. We went through at least three heavy downpours, and about 20 miles outside of Columbia the traffic slowed WAY down – even though it didn’t seem to be raining that hard anymore. Fortunately, my in-laws live right off the first exit, so we got off I-70 and dropped the girls’ things at their house, then went back out to find some dinner since my in-law’s were otherwise occupied for the evening.

On the way to dinner, we discovered why the traffic had been so slow outside of Columbia – an enormous pile-up in the middle of the city! There was a whole line of cars, followed by a semi-trailer jackknifed across the entire westbound lane of I-70, and a motor home smashed into the semi (22 vehicles total). We had been heading east, but it was obviously a sight to behold from our side! We read in the newspaper the next day that no one had been killed – which was miraculous – and only nine people were injured.

After dinner and a stroll around Bass Pro Shop, we dropped the girls off at my in-laws and THOUGHT we were going to have a nice quiet night at the hotel. First problem: the phone rang one time around 12:20 – right after we had gone to sleep. We thought it was strange, but we went back to sleep. At 1:20 – the phone rang again just once. My husband got out of bed and unplugged the phone. At 2:20, it happened again. Because there were two phones in the room, and he only unplugged one of them! Needless to say, the second phone was unplugged at this time, and the Hilton is just lucky there isn’t a phone-shaped hole in the wall of our room!

Second problem: the bed. I’ve slept in nice hotel beds before. They are nice and pillow-y soft, and this one was no exception. However, it also had an adjustable air bladder on each side of the bed, and both sides were set on “medium”. We both felt like we were sleeping on a partially deflated air mattress – even after setting the dial to “firm”.

Saturday morning we got up and had a nice breakfast in the lobby. Usually this is free. Only my husband forgot that his status has changed since he used to be a frequent traveler. So we paid $9 each. Hubby had some coffee plus a plate full of piping hot food, but I had one small bowl of fruit, and one cup of coffee – for NINE dollars.

After breakfast, we talked to the front desk about our little fiascoes. They apologized about the phone and said they would look into it, sent a housekeeper with us to look at the bed, and assured us that if we changed the dial to “firm” while we weren’t actually IN the bed, it would inflate and actually stay firm. They also explained that if we want breakfast, we can get it for $5 instead of $9 if we mention it when we check in. Oops, we were too late.

The next part of our morning was actually rather fun! We had planned to take the girls to Shelter Gardens so my husband could take their pictures. It was actually the perfect time to go. The weather was decent – even mostly cloudy so there weren’t a lot of shadows. Here are some of my favorites:

We had our party as planned at lunchtime. Here’s the 40-year-old birthday boy blowing out the candles on his cake:

My mother-in-law made the cake, of course. She also made two smaller cakes for the girls to decorate themselves. They had so much fun!!

Saturday night we were looking forward to a better night’s sleep. We unplugged the phones again – because the hotel staff had plugged them back in and it did the one ring thing again around 8:30. I slept pretty well, but my husband felt like he was sinking into the bed again. He finally checked his dial near morning and discovered that housekeeping apparently sets them back to “medium” every time they make the bed!!!

After breakfast (at Denny’s, this time – where we discovered that you can get a FREE Grand Slam breakfast on your birthday. Oops, too late once again!) and a leisurely walk around the mall, we went back to his parent’s house for some lunch. After lunch, hubby was feeling the effects of lack of sleep and knew he couldn’t drive home at this point, so he took a long nap. Meanwhile, my mother-in-law pulled out her cake decorating books and recipes so we could figure out my grandma’s cake. I practiced the basket weave on a piece of waxed paper, and copied down her recipe for an orange cream filling. Grandma’s cake is going to be yummy – and hopefully beautiful! I’ll be sure to post pictures after the event.

Now that we’re back home, I’ve been making more soap! Can’t wait to cut them and show them to you in a couple days…