Christi's Creative Crew: Auntie Cake!

I just couldn't wait to post this cake until the end of the month! Last week we had two of my former day care families over for dinner and it was a surprise celebration because Kelly and Riana are both turning 16 years old. Kelly's birthday is today - this is the card I made for her...

and Riana's is in four weeks. (I will have to show you that later) These two girls lived right next door to each other until a couple years ago when Riana's family moved. It was so much fun having them all together again with all the giggles and memories.

Lake is Kelly's brother. I would say "little" brother, but he is football player size and therefore I can only say "younger" brother. They both started at Auntie's as infants.

One of the favorite foods that I served the kids was Black Olives. I would give each of the kids 10 olives and they would put the olives on each of their fingers before they would eat them. This was a full night of reminiscing so they couldn't resist doing it again, but now that they are big the olives would split, but they managed to give me a good picture.

Here's a fun story about the cake... While I cared for the kids all those years they LOVED it when they had "Auntie Cake". And one of their favorite after school snacks was graham crackers and my frosting. So after we finished eating our dinner I went down stairs (to hide the cake I made) and while I was gone the kids are whispering to each other "I bet she's going to get the Auntie Cake" and when I came up with nothing they were quite disappointed. While Dale cleared the table I took everyone around to show them the progress on the condo. We went downstairs and as I am showing them the new kitchen the kids say "what do you keep in this refrigerator?" (because I have three refrigerators) I open it up - more disappointment because they did not see a cake. Oh, and then one of the mom's said "they were hoping to find an Auntie Cake." Oh, sorry - tehehehehe. I can't believe I could keep it from them. Dale lead the way upstairs while I shut off the lights and on my way up I grabbed the cake! Oh the squeals of delight when I came upstairs with the cake!! What fun for me to know beyond a shadow of doubt how much this all meant to them all these years.

Even licking off the frosting from the 16 candles was a time of giggles

The girls made quite a production out of eating their faces (from the edible image on the cake)

Over the course of the 15 years that I did child care I probably put together at least 25 photo albums of the kids. We really had so much fun back then! Now that the kids are getting grown up I am gifting them with the albums. They had a blast pouring over the albums that they each were able to take home that night.

We played a rousing game of BINGO

Each time they won a game they got to choose a goodie from my basket.

Then we had grand prize winners...
Carol, Riana's mom, was the big winner for the ladies - she took home a scented diffuser, and the winner for the guys was Kelly and Lake's dad who took home a bag of yummy deluxe mixed nuts.

Visiting with my girls

Kelly's family brought me this amazing gift and a super special card

I can't wait to find a special spot to hang it. This is Kelly's favorite verse so of course it makes it even that much more special for me to have it hanging in my home.

And before everyone left for home we took a group picture