Olesya's 17th Birthday

January 27th, 2010, and Olesya turned 17 ... again.
Наступило 27 января и Олесе исполнилось 17 ... снова.

So, I had been wrestling around in my mind what to do for Olesya's birthday. Most of that inner dialog sounded like this: "What about a surprise birthday party with a lot of guests? No. She really isn't that close to a lot of people yet. Should I buy her some awesome surprise present? No. We just started managing our finances together, so there's no way it would be a surprise." This went on for days ... even weeks. I had no clue what to do. Eventually, it was too late to do anything big like that anyway. I was out of options. Fortunately, I had a little help from her on the night before her birthday:

"Not all presents cost money," she told me, as we drifted off to sleep.

What did we already have at home? Candles, a cake stand that we got for our wedding, and some materials left over from making our wedding announcements. So, after work, I went to the grocery store and bought a chocolate cake mix, a carton of whipped cream, some strawberries, and some modest flowers.

I came home from work and banned Olesya from the kitchen, put on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and set to work.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Message, Spock?"
"None that I am conscious of, except of course, Happy Birthday, surely .. the best of times."

I made the cake mix and poured it into this awesome ginormous cookie sheet that someone gave us for our wedding. While the cake was baking, I whipped up the cream. I hate using real frosting because it is so sweet. Whipped cream is just enough to lighten up the cake and dress it up all perrty and all, but not enough to overpower the cake.

The cake cooled. I cut it into 6 square/rectangular pieces, 5 of which I used to make a layered cake. By layer 5, the cake was already too high. A sixth layer wouldn't have fit under our glass cake cover.

On went the cream. Then went the strawberries. And to make a long story short, I made chicken with pasta and had written a poem for her earlier in the day, which I printed in the card I made for her. I did all this by the time Spock managed to sacrifice himself for the Enterprise and get shot down to the Genesis planet.

The end result looked like this:


Here's her reaction when she came down the stairs and saw this sweetness waiting for her:


We ate dinner. It came time to light the cake, which we did. I sang, she blew out the candles, and all that jazz. I stopped the camera from recording only to realize that I had never started it. Let's just say it was the best of times.

Happy Birthday, Olesya!!!