Alexia's Birthday Cake

For Alexia's birthday Libbey asked me if I would be willing to make the birthday cake. The only parameters that she gave me were that it be chocolate and girly (I was a bit bummed with the chocolate requirement--I was hoping that I could do an ombre of pinks, you know the ultimate girly). I immediately started having ideas in my head of what I wanted to do. My original plan was to make chocolate flourishes that I could stand up and make 3D on top of the smash cake and when I went to search I found this other great idea instead. It's actually pretty simple (I would highly recommend having a second person to help press and wrap the chocolate cage around the cake---you can find my post on how it's made HERE) and can be quite pretty and add such a nice touch to the cake. 

I was a little disappointed with the butterfly, I had tried coping a rhinestone pattern (which was absolutely gorgeous!) but the pearls that I used were a lot larger than the design and they used 3 different sizes in the original so I ended up just doing the outline of the butterfly and then dropping pearls randomly. 

I was quite nervous driving to their house with the cake, I held the plate the whole time saying to the cake "Please be careful, please don't break" and other things of the like. 

So I didn't do complete chocolate, I had to get some kind of surprise in (I hadn't told them I was doing the pink cake and they didn't know about it until the cut into it!)

Welcome to Mexico!

(Lucky for us we have several Spanish speakers in the family, which made it easier to get a better deal...I think that, that guy in the purple looks like Erick's Dad from behind)

Day 3 and destination 2 brought us to Ensenada Mexico! When we got off the ship we walked through a building full of little shops (that were already tempting the shopping senses of the girls) and found that they had lots and lots of buses lined up to take us into downtown for $1 or $2. On the way there the guide told us all about the different tours that we could take and how they would charge us cheaper, blah, blah, blah! (though of course it was cheaper then the prices that the ship offered but we still could get it cheaper!) With lots of people (and different nap schedules) it is sometimes hard to decide on what to do, we had heard about a blowhole and decided that is what we would all do. We walked a couple of blocks away from where the bus dropped us off and we found a nice guy that was willing to drive us all out there with his buddy for a very reasonable price.

Shopping looking at the wares

Candy and other yummy treats everywhere!

In case you didn't know Jacob is a big fan of superheroes, when he saw these cool masks/capes I think that it was love at first sight :) He was so happy to get it and there was a bit of a panic when we were getting out of the vans and it could not be found at first.

See all of those red jackets? They were a school group from China and they were on the cruise with us, how cool is that!?

Look at all of that water!

That is some cute kids and an Auntie looking at the water coming up.

Jacob found the perfect spot to watch the water come up, and it came up really high and all landed on him! Everyone wanted to take his picture :D

So good!

One of our two buses that took us the whole way, someone had told us that it wasn't very far but I'm pretty sure that it took us 20-30 minutes to get there.

I do my own kind of planking :)

I knocked on the door but no one answered so I went down on the ground to see if I could see anyone in there and then they opened the door (at about the same time that their neighbor came out--yep I'm a dork!)

Libbey, Sonia, Kyle, and I (Mom's taking the picture)...after naps we went on a walk back into town to see what we could find.

That flag was HUGE!

Dang that's gorgeous!

Dinner time! I loved the fruit, I got some kind of fruit dish at every meal.

The waiters were dancing for us and Jacob wanted to join in so Libbey stood up and danced as well.

Dessert-- this is one reason why I want to go to culinary arts school to learn to make things pretty like this.

We walked in to the theater area to watch a show and they were teaching how to do a dance, immediately that's where Jacob and Libbey went (Libbey is in the white shorts on the right).

Jacob (front and center), he tried but we came in a little late so he was a little behind in learning the dance.

They did a version of minute to win-it this kid was probably 16/17 and he won! He was also from Utah, so it made us laugh when his prize was a bottle of champagne (I heard someone come up and suggest that he could trade it and get a shirt of something).

Our towel friend!