Birthday Celebration

Kristi celebrated turning the big 2-8 on Friday. She was thrilled to hear from so many family members and friends throughout the day, and was very excited about the surprise birthday cake Josh brought home! He had quite the time finding her favorite cake (German chocolate apparently isn't common in Australia), but he was able to find one place that made them. As you can see by the picture, it's not your typical German chocolate - much fancier and richer - but boy was it good!

Cake here in Australia is not the same as it is back in the States. Most of the prepared cakes you can buy look like the one in the picture. You don't really see any fluffy white frosting with pink and yellow roses. Also at home the grocery stores dedicate almost half an isle to cake mixes, frosting, and decorations. Not so here - you may have a choice of two or three brands, but there are only about 8 or 10 kinds. It seems like chocolate and butter cake are the standards, and then there were a few others like carrot cake, lemon poppyseed, and mud cake. And to top it off they do not sell any frosting! After thorough review of the cake mix boxes we determined that if the picture of the cake on the boxed showed it with frosting, then the cake mix also included a mix for frosting (which was usually prepared using margarine). We're sad to report that there will be no nights binging on frosting and graham crackers (probably a good thing!)

The rest of the weekend we laid low - cycling on Saturday and a trip to the market on Sunday. The weather is starting to turn to fall, bringing pleasant temperatures for us to enjoy!