Happy birthday, Andrew!!

Andrew turned 41 on Friday. He was at a conference for most of the day and Zoë and Alexander went to a church activity in the evening and didn't return until much later than we thought. A friend of mine gave them a ride since I had to get Benjamin to swim practice and couldn't be everywhere all at once. 

Phoebe was so excited when Daddy got home because she's had such limited time with him the last couple of months. She was really looking forward to him opening his presents (she loves birthdays) and was very upset when he decided to initiate bedtime before the kids come home.

"But Dad!" she wailed. "Mom said presents before bed!"

Lucky for Phoebe the kids arrived in time to rescue her from her having to wait one more day for Daddy to open his presents. 

As you can see, Alexander and Zoë were also rather excited that Daddy was home. He eventually stood up so that he couldn't be quite so violently loved upon.

It both worked...and didn't work...

He got a spare battery pack, an "impossible shape" fidget toy, and a new can opener.

Let me tell you the boring/sordid saga of our can opener.

Nearly twenty years ago when Andrew and I got married we had two can openers. One was a "SwingAway" can opener that I bought at Big Lots when I moved into my first apartment at BYU. It was always a little bit wonky—it was, like, missing a part or something. You had to physically line up the blades or it wouldn't cut. But if you remembered to line up the blades it cut like a dream. 

And then we were given another can opener for our wedding. And OXO brand can opener that we just...never really liked because it was just so big. So we always used our "Swing-A-Way."

When we returned from Cairo and moved in with Andrew's parents, they had a blue "Swing-A-Way" can opener in their drawer but...it was old and rusty and you really had to work to open cans. I didn't love it. And Karen had said that I could bring out some of my kitchen things if I wanted to and I decided that I did want to in this instance. So I found our box of kitchen stuff and got out our own (superior) "SwingAway" can opener.

Now, Andrew and I knew the trick to using the can opener...but Reid did not. 

He tried it once and then...chucked it into the garbage can. 

And that was the end of my can opener. 

When I went to use it again, it was no where to be found. And somehow it came out that Reid had done us the "favour" of throwing it out. And I was like, "Ummm...thanks...but I actually wanted that so..."

To make amends for the disappearance of my can opener, Karen gave us the old and rusty blue "Swing-A-Way" when we moved to Durham, telling me that she'd just buy a new one. And I was like, "Ummm...thanks?" Because I still kind of wanted my less-old and less-rusty can opener.

I was satisfied enough with the blue can opener that we used it the whole time we lived in Durham, the whole time we lived in Spanish Fork, and the whole time we've lived here...until just a few days ago. So it's not like it was a terrible can opener. But it was old and rusty when we got it and—let's be honest—it's just been getting older and rustier as time wore on. 

A few months ago the kids and I were opening some #10 cans, which can be rather tricky if you don't have a good can opener. Technically I was just struggling alone at first, crunching that old blue Swing-A-Way onto the can, and twisting it a few times to get through a few inches of metal before it simply gave up. Then I'd remove it, open and close it a few times, pop it back on and crank it a few more times before it would stop working again.

"Do you want some help?" Benjamin wanted to know. 

"Sure," I said, passing off the can and the opener. "Just make sure to squeeze really tight so it doesn't stop cutting...though it probably will eventually stop cutting anyway..."

So he started battling with that can and opener while I went to pull out our less-favoured OXO can opener. 

I snapped that opener onto another can and just flew around that can. I didn't have to re-grip the can a single time. It simply...worked. 

And that's when I started thinking that we should perhaps look into getting a new can opener.

So I bought Andrew a new Swing-A-Way can opener for his birthday, which sounds like a lame gift, but he was actually pretty excited about it. And we've used it to open several cans and it works like a charm.

And I threw away the old blue Swing-A-Way. And we gave the OXO can opener away on the Buy Nothing Group. 

Hopefully we really do end up liking this new can opener. So far it seems to chew the paper on the cans a little bit (which I don't love) but perhaps we can work through that.

Fun fact: my parents had a Swing-A-Way can opener as well. It had tan handles. And once upon a time someone left it too close to the burner of an electric stove and one of the handles got all melted. So it didn't feel very great to hold it clamped shut on a can. I imagine they still have it (though it would probably be alright it they got a new can opener...)

*****

Rachel isn't around to bake cakes for us anymore, so Benjamin volunteered to step into her shoes. Rather than bake from scratch, we encouraged him to use a cake mix (he can move on to from-scratch recipes later). Unfortunately, Betty Crocker has been shrinking the size of their cake mixes—from 18 to 15.25 to 13.25 ounces—and, honestly, we haven't used cake mix in a while...but the layers he managed to bake with the Betty Crocker cake mix were pathetically thin. So I told him that he might need two cake mixes after all. So he whipped up another cake mix—Duncan Hines this time (15.25 ounces) and the layers turned out nice and fluffy! Apparently those two lost ounces are important (about 3 cupcakes' worth of batter—now the boxes only make 21 cupcakes instead of 24). 

Anyway, the cake ended up being really tall because he decided to just use all those layers.

He put banana pudding in the middle and frosted it all nicely (making the icing was an adventure as well).

He based his idea off of one of Andrew's class "stickers" (Data Visualization, to be precise—Andrew prints out hex stickers to give to his students...and encourages them to collet them all by signing up for his other classes). 

We didn't have cake until Saturday when we went up to Grandpa and Darla's for dinner (and swimming and pickle ball). Benjamin held the cake on his lap the whole way!

Here's the cake in all its glory:

Should he have changed to a smaller tip to write on the cake? Perhaps. But it turned out just lovely!

Darla was surprised we had brought a cake (perhaps we should have communicated that) because she had also made a cake! So we had a lot of cake to go around!