The Rosas-Standring Family

Today Akilean turned 4!!! He is growing up so fast. He is such a little gentleman. We woke up this morning and the kids ate the rest of the corn bread muffins. They had wanted to eat more yesterday but since they did not eat as many of the veggies from their veggies and rice dinner as I wanted... alas, they had to wait till this morning. But they wasted no time at all in getting to asking me to eat them. Lena has developed a new word. Tomorning. I used to think she said it because she was meaning to say tomorrow but then I discovered... no... this is what she means when she is talking about tomorrow morning. So first thing this morning the kids woke up, charged into my room and requested the mini corn bread muffins that they had been promised.

Our original plan was to head off to a cenote or to the beach for the day before Ruben had to go to work. But as Ruben's work days take him well into the night, waking up early is not a steadily happening thing. We decided instead to let Akilean tell us what he wanted to eat for lunch. With a 4 year old's confidence he stated...HOTDOGS!!!! ---Who are we to tell him no? But we did make good Mexican hot dogs-- not just boring old hot dogs. We would have wrapped them in bacon if we had it but we did not have any. We did however steam the buns, used mayo, mustard, catsup (although not Heinz so in my opinion not really catsup at all) chopped onion and chopped tomato and a little salsa. They were very good!!!! And as you can see from these pictures... so did the kids.

Then it was time for cake and Akilean's present. I bought a train baking pan many, many months ago at the goodwill in the USA and have been wanting so much to use it. I was lucky enough that it was in the box of stuff that Barb and Shannon brought down. So I used that to cook Akilean a cake.
I must say that it turned out a lot better then I thought it would. I was worried because while I love to bake, when it comes to decorating I am afraid that my hands just do not have the energy to do it with any great amount of detail. But it did look very cute. Fair Akilean's birthday we gave him a collection of little plastic tools. As with true Mexican toy fashion many of them have already broken. Oh well. luckily Akilean is so easy going that he is happy to play with them anyway. We once gave him a toy car that lost all it's wheels in a matter of days. And he just happily pushed the body of the car along the floor. No use crying over spilt milk.

We finished the night with a great dinner. (Roasted potatoes and baked chicken- the recipe and pics are on my goddess blog.) And some great ice cream sundays. The only ice creams we can find in the super down here are Hagan Daz (the small pints for almost $10 US and the old school Nestle. The flavor in store right now was napoleon. You know... that strawberry, vanilla and chocolate mix. It tastes like the sort of ice cream that the milk shakes from Burger King are made with. You know... that super strong strawberry flavoring. And we topped it with the crumbs from the cake that the kids have been picking it all day. All in all a good way to end the birthday.