My baby is most definitely not a baby...

because his fourth birthday was yesterday. *sniffle* He's so big! And he was so happy about his birthday. He saw this owl-shaped cupcake cake in a magazine, and from that point on he was adamant that he must have that cake. So, we had to make a supermarket trip to pick up all those candies. I still have a few boxes of cake mix (from the fabled October GM catalina deal at Acme), and about a million cake frostings (what on earth am I going to do with all that frosting? it's not even that tasty), but I needed to buy pretty much all the candy.

I was so pleased with myself because I went to Acme and used my $10 OYNO from ConAgra, along with a few other coupons, to get pretzel rods, pretzel sticks, chocolate sprinkles, coconut flakes, Grasshopper cookies, Junior Mints, a bottle of root beer, and two dozen eggs -- for 32c. Thirty two cents! My husband informs me that when I saw the total on the register, I did my money saving dance and sang a song. I didn't know I had one. He says I do. When I scanned the first bag of pretzels, the catalina machine popped out a coupon for a free soda when you buy two bags of snacks. Oh, look, it just so happens that I *have* two bags of snacks, how about that? Hey Hubs, run back there and grab a soda as fast as you can! Then when I scanned the soda, it popped out another coupon for free soda. Woo.

Then we headed across the street to Rite Aid, to pick up some circus peanuts and caramel creams for the eyes. I was looking for jelly roll candies, and unstale circus peanuts. Er. Every circus peanut in the four different stores I shopped was hard as a rock, and no one had anything but peach jelly candies. I made an executive decisions and switched out eyeball ingredients. Anyway, my total cost for the ingredients for this awesome cake was $2.24, and I still have enough candy left over to sustain a sugar high for days or possibly weeks.

So look, here's the cake:

Best. Cake. Ever.

The kid loved his birthday party; you should have seen the look of joy on his face when everyone was singing to him. And we didn't go too overboard with the presents, so he seemed to appreciate and enjoy every single one of them. You know how that goes -- they get so many presents that it's totally overwhelming and half the stuff gets tossed into a pile and never seen again. I can't stand that. I'd much rather have a limit on the amount of gifts, and have him love every single one, than have him get a hundred gifts that he doesn't even play with.

I got a couple of different kinds of J&J soaps, shampoos, lotions, and bubble baths at RA yesterday.  Not anything excessive. Maybe one bottle of bubble bath, two bottles of lotion, three shampoos and two body washes? I dunno, something like that. The point is, there was enough baby shampoo to choose the yummiest smelling kind. So, my husband gave the kid a bubble bath, and then washed his hair, and I ask you, what did the child's hair smell like after the bath? Lavender? Apples? Anything at all from J&J? No, he smelled like my husband's Gillette 2 in 1 Shampoo & Body Wash. Ha ha ha ha ha! He's a manly little four year old.