A pink dinosaur cake with jelly beans

Meg had a birthday on the 30th (as she does every year), and this was definitely a year of prioritizing. In a perfect world, we'd have invited friends, the presents would have been wrapped ahead of time (with ribbons too and actual bows), we'd have fixed a special dinner of foods she likes best, and I'd have been able to find and hang streamers.

However. This year I had to choose whether to fix a cake or dinner, and the cake won. We had a makeshift dinner of fish sticks and acorn squash which is weird but nobody cared, because it was a pretty epic cake. Ever since she turned three, a whole year, she's been requesting a pink cake - a DINOSAUR cake - with jelly beans. How did that work, you may ask? We baked chocolate cake in regular round cake pans, spread cream cheese between the layers, and made a really excellent strawberry buttercream frosting. It was all cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and pureed fresh strawberries. Next time I'll chill the frosting to thicken it before I put it on, but it was so good. Then Meg washed her hands and decorated her pink cake with toy dinosaurs, run-through-the-dishwasher-first-thank-you-very-much, and filled in the gaps with jelly beans.

I also prioritized wrapping all her presents without bows over getting half the presents wrapped with bows. I only had her "naptime" to wrap in, and Meg didn't care about ribbon. She cared about ripping paper off, and did so with aplomb. It was an excellent birthday. Meg even got to skype with both sets of grandparents and an aunt and an uncle and her cousin, who JUST started walking (yay James)! So that was pretty fun.

We found out later that the washing of the dinosaurs kind of went badly, though. Meg helped arrange dinosaurs in the top rack and I didn't realize she had included the grows-in-water parasaurolophus. She thought he needed a bath.

Never, ever, ever, put a grows-in-water toy though your dishwasher. Never.

Jonathan recovered the body, looking very much like a drowned victim who'd been underwater too long, and we've been picking styrofoam dinosaur bits off all our dishes for two loads now. It's pretty disgusting. I actually resorted to hand-washing things until we get the dishwasher grate cleaned out, which tells you the situation is serious.

But for all that, we have a delightful four-year-old and you've never had such a wonderful pink dinosaur cake with jelly beans. I think that cake will go down in family history.