Robot cake (H is 4)

As promised, I'm posting pictures of H4's robot cake. It was meant to be a pink robot cake, but I was using the all-natural food color I had bought at the health food store and the red color turned the icing brown. Not even reddish brown, mind you. It was supposed to be from beet juice, so I wonder if the package was just really old - it seems like fresh beet juice can't fail to redden whatever it touches. Next time, I'm buying the bad stuff, or using a beetroot. Fortunately, H4 was right there, and I immediately suggested adding cocoa powder to the icing to make it more brown. He likes chocolate (discerning lad), so the disappointment turned to joy fairly quickly. Apart from the failure to achieve the desired color, I'm pleased with the result.

So was he, which is always the goal. (But, as I said to a friend, if it looks like you tried and it contains sugar, it rarely disappoints).

Ari had been away from home since Tuesday morning - he had to observe remotely on Tuesday night and then travel to Mauna Loa to work on another telescope - but he got back around 6pm on H4's birthday. So he was able to be around while H4 opened presents, which means we have a few nice pictures of the festivities.

Ari's parents gave H4 a "crocodile dentist" game - you press down the croc's teeth until the mouth snaps shut on your fingers after a random number of teeth has been pressed.

Given B6's Lego obsession, it's not surprising H4 was pleased to be able to join the ranks of those able to play with "big kid Legos".

We gave him a flashlight which not only shines out the front, but can light up along the length of its body with a blue glow. He was thrilled. I'll have to haul out our "shine-a-light" book sometime...