Happy Birthday to Olivia!

Catch up on birthdays past!!

We celebrated Olivia's birthday way back in June (the month of no blogging.)  In typical fashion, we had multiple celebrations.  First, a bunch of kids from the school/neighborhood came over after school and ran around the neighborhood like unsupervised teenagers are apt to do.  Then they took a pitstop at our house for caramel fudge brownies and ice cream.  Olivia did NOT want me to make a big deal of this as there were alot of boys there but I got one photo.

Then for the 2nd celebration I made the ever popular Betty Crocker box mix cake with coordinating tub of chocolate icing.  While not creative, always tasty.  Olivia decorated it herself.  I think it says "Olivia is cool" on there:

We went out to dinner at Olivia's favorite place in Almaty which is Gogol.  While it doesn't sound like it, it is Italian (named after Gogol Street where is it located.)  Frank met the Italian owner early in his stay in Almaty so if he is there we get treated well.  So, they brought Olivia a cake with sparklers:

We were already stuffed from dinner but we all ate some of the very tasty cake.  And then of course we had cake waiting for us at home as well.  Too much birthday!  We sang happy birthday, she blew out the candles, and then we covered the cake and ate it the next day! (And she got presents!)

Side note:  I always like to point out some the peculiarities of living in Almaty.  For dinner at Gogol all the girls ordered fancy fruit drinks.  Olivia got this one:

So nice looking with the cute, age appropriate stir stick.  All the other girls got this one:

Sexy woman stir stick?  Did they run out of heart ones?  Did they not pay attention?  More likely they thought nothing of it one way or the other!  Not a big deal really but just another thing that makes me say "Hmmmm..."