Loose Ends

FINISHED: The birthday girl loves space. And Godzilla. If that doesn't scream, "Bake me a cake!" what does? :)

An astronaut Godzilla cake was Annabelle and CJ's latest Birthday Dreams donation. The work-in-progress lived on our dining room table for about five days.

Annabelle made modeling chocolate, sculpted a Godzilla skeleton, and covered that in a homemade marshmallow fondant spacesuit. We also made dozens of gelatin bubbles for potential helmets, but weren't 100 percent thrilled with any of them, so in the end opted for a plastic orb. Other than that, Godzilla's all edible, as is the UFO he's hitching a ride on.

What's under all the fun? CJ whipped up the four-layer chocolate brownie cake with mini chocolate chip filling. Annabelle airbrushed vanilla buttercream over it all to give it a galactic look, and arranged stars in a "12," the birthday girl's age (her name was on the gumpaste sign, in a Godzilla font).

This was a fun one, and we learned a lot. We hope the birthday girl liked it!

FRAMED: Right after dropping off the cake at Birthday Dreams headquarters yesterday, Annabelle and I stopped at a Dollar Tree store nearby. We were looking for some camouflage or other Army-like costume or material that CJ needs for his upcoming Museum of Flight display.

We perused the oddly hybrid craft/toy aisle, and at one point my eyes landed on this. ...

I was gobsmacked. "That's a photo of you!" I said to Annabelle, pointing at the frame. Oddly enough, the picture is more than 10 years old. CJ is missing a front tooth, and Annabelle still has all of her baby teeth. I remember taking the photo. I shot it through a sliding glass patio door during an anniversary party for my aunt Sally and uncle Mickey in Vancouver, WA. I was surprised the photo turned out at all, given the kids were standing in a light rain and it was shot through the double glass.

Seeing that photo there and then was kind of a surreal experience. So unexpected. Never in a million years did I expect to walk into a dollar store and find a photo of my kids hanging on the rack. I suspect the photo is from Morguefile, a site where I used to park photos for people to use (with conditions). I haven't contributed there in years, and I'm guessing they changed their user policies. 

I told the kids that they can add "stock photo picture frame person" to their resume. 

QUARTERED: Monday night, after we dropped CJ off at his Japanese class, I happened to glance up at the school's reader board as we left the parking lot. "REGISTER NOW FOR SPRING QUARTER" it read.

"What?!" I likely screeched.

I had no idea that registration was underway.

I do recall CJ calling down the hallway to me about a week ago about a Running Start (high school for college credit) pizza party. CJ's been in Running Start since fall and went to a pizza party months ago. During that, he received registration information, but I guess what stuck with him was the pizza was less than stellar, so he didn't want to go to this round's pizza party. What didn't stick with him was that it was also about registration. 

Keep in mind, since he's a college student, all of the communication from the college goes straight and only to him, so we're out of the loop.

Anyway, once we found out it was registration time, I wrote to our local school district, whom we have to have sign for his tuition $$ to be released to the college. Mercifully, I was able to get an appointment the next morning to get that paperwork, then we were off to South Seattle for CJ to sign up for spring quarter classes. We met with a counselor, filled our forms out, and got them approved and headed down to the registrar and cashier.

In the end, we went from not knowing he was supposed to register to getting him registered in about 18 hours. Not bad - but also not a situation I expect to happen again, as I told CJ.