Luke is 3!!!

We wanted Luke to feel extra special on his birthday. After all, as anyone who's ever heard the Jason Deutsch Birthday Philosophy knows - on your birthday, it's YOUR DAY! Luke's already got this sort of figured out. He even tried to finagle a felucca ride on his birthday, saying, "Mommy, can we go on a felucca tomorrow since it's my birthday?!?" Crafty already. We had other plans for him, though. We planned a fun but low-key day from start to finish for our sweet three-year old.

Luke has recently declared Jared's Bagels his favorite restaurant. It's a really nice little bagel shop near our house. We eat bagels there just about every weekend. When the weather's nice we sit outside, and when it's hot, we relish their air conditioning. Anyway, Luke LOVES bagels, so he and I started off the day with his new favorite: chocolate bagels. As he was eating his bagels, he was singing "B is for Bagels, that's good enough for me! B is for Bagels, that's good enough for me! Be is for Bagels, that's good enough for me--OOh, Bagels bagels bagels starts with B!"
After our breakfast, we played at home together and watched a bunch of Sesame Street podcasts together on the computer (he LOVES these). We had Luke's favorite lunch (peanut butter and jelly--that hasn't changed) and played some more. He was extra sweet yesterday, and I indulged every request to sit down and play with him. I put him down for his nap at about 2:00, knowing he'd need a good rest before the little family party we had planned when Jason got home from school. Luke had other ideas, though, and didn't sleep a wink! He was good and stayed on his bed and just talked and sang to himself while I got his cake ready.

His cake was a special challenge this year. I didn't bring any of my cake decorating supplies with me, and even if I had, I don't have a mixer to make icing with. They cost $35 for the cheapest model that would cost $12-15 at home, so I can't bring myself to buy one. I still insisted on making his cake, though. Desserts ordered out here just aren't the same, and I always want to make his birthday cakes. So I had to be creative. Luckily, I could find Betty Crocker cake mix and pre-made chocolate icing, so that part was easy. I just had to figure out how to turn a chocolate cake with chocolate icing into a fire truck cake, which is what Luke had asked for. I hunted for just the right toy fire truck to go on top to make life easier, but couldn't find the right one. This week I had the idea to color sugar and use it in place of icing. Also, another teacher at school brought Luke some candy this week, and I was able to use that, too. So his cake has Fruit By the Foot underneath all the red sugar so that the red sugar didn't sink into the icing...there's sugar on top of that...I used black licorice to outline the fire truck...yellow twizzlers for the stripe...gummi worms for the siren and head/tail lights...and that's a black licorice roll that was perfect for the fire hose. I used the ladder and the little fire man from the Little People fire truck we found him in Greece. I was very proud of my idea to have the fire man hold the hose like he was putting out the fire from the candles! :)


When Jason got home, Luke got out of the bed and we gave him his big present, a bright shiny new bicycle! We bought it in Greece and brought it home on the plane. It's the perfect size for him. He was thrilled with it. He needs some practice pedaling his feet all the way around in a circle, but I think he'll have it down pretty soon. Here are some pics and video from the hour he got his bicycle.







At about 6 PM, we ate homemade pizza for dinner (Luke's choice). I am still figuring out my oven and experimenting with different ingredients available in Egypt, so the sauce was a little soupy, but it was still Very Delicious Pizza. Luke enjoyed it, anyway, and Jason ate at least one more slice than he normally does!

Noel & Rachella came upstairs to join us for cake. They brought flowers for Jason & me, since they said that Luke's birthday is a celebration for us as well. It's true--I felt like it was Mother's Day all day long.

Anyway, we got the cake and set it on the table. Luke, who had not seen it, said, "My fire truck!" (Did I mention he's currently obsessed with fire trucks?) I sat Luke near it and instructed him not to touch it while I got the matches. I came back into the room to hear Jason say, "Nothing to see here, folks..." Luke had accidentally put his fingers in the icing while I was out of the room. Here's the video. It's pretty funny!




So we sang to him, he blew out the candles, and then (if you watched the video you heard me chastise Jason for not taking actual pictures for the scrapbook) we reenacted blowing out the candles so I could have pictures. We ate the cake and then gave Luke his toy fire truck. He sat and played with it at the table for about an hour, even after we had cleaned up all the plates and moved to the living area to visit. He was so happy to have that fire truck!


Oh, some other funny things to tell: When Luke and I were shopping for cake ingredients I began looking for party plates and napkins. When he saw the party supplies, he said, "We are going to have party hats, right?" I looked at him in a funny way and said, "What?" He said, "You can't go to a birthday party without a party hat." I have no idea where he got that notion. He has never been to a birthday party with hats to my knowledge! I never buy them because I have always hated those elastic cords and no one ever really wears them, but you can bet we bought them and wore them at this party!


We all had a great time. I think Luke had the perfect birthday--almost. The only thing I would've changed would be to have family here with us for it. It was hard not to have them to share in it, and I know they missed being with him on his big day.

He fell asleep right away at 8:00 with no arguments! This is a picture of him at 10:41--which would have been 3:41 Texas time--the actual time of his birth. Zonked out!