Elijah's 6th birthday party

On Sunday, my family and Greg's family got together for a birthday party for Elijah.  Greg's parents hosted it at their house, and we all had so much fun!



I made a lemon cake with a lemony swiss-meringue-buttercream frosting, and filled it with raspberry jam and vanilla custard cream.  I pressed coconut into the frosting on one of the cakes, but everyone enjoyed that one so much that we ended up coco-nutting the other one as well.



This cake takes a while to make with all of the steps involved, but after one bite, I always remember why I even bother.  SO delicious!  This is quickly becoming our family's Official Birthday Cake.  Greg is the only one who doesn't like it, but...well, he doesn't actually like ANY cake, so there's not much I can do about that.  (The recipe for this cake is in Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home To Yours) (No surprise there!)



We invited lots of cousins and made it a pot-luck dinner.






Opening gifts...










As the sun began to set, we gathered around the campfire.



OK, so I only have just this one shot of my mom and I "around" the campfire, but you'll just have to believe me: it was great!  A lovely way to end a very special day.  Thank you to everyone who contributed to the party, and thank you especially to my in-laws Pete and Jill for making the party possible (and all of the hours of work you put into making your house and land ready for us to use!)

For more photos of this event....yes, you guessed it: go to the Flickr set!