Herzlich Willkommen!

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag to Ryan!  Or, something like that.  Ryan's birthday was Saturday so we wanted to do something fun and it turned out that a neighboring city was having a German Fest the exact same weekend!  We went with medicore expectations and our expectations were completely met and not exceeded.  
Translation = we had a great time and are glad that we didn't expect much.
This was the type of German festival where the German food and wares are there, but you have to search for them and during your search you might give up or get distracted by the delicious funnel cakes instead.


Here is Ryan with Willa, you can see a distant German flag in the background:

Ryan brought his own stein to drink out of (someone came up and asked him about it!) and also a flag representing southern Germany or a province or something, which we hung on the stroller.  We were all decked out!  Ryan's breakdown of the festival dressing up was this: 1) If you have it, wear traditional German costume, 2) If you don't have it, wear t-shirt with something written in German, or that says Germany, or that says beer and Germany together, 3) If you don't have that, any t-shirt that says beer on it will do.

The highlight of the festival was actually watching this old-time band perform on one of the stages.  It was a three-man band, the members were probably 70+ years old, and it had a very Americana feel.  They sang mainly about how much they loved Texas.  The fiddler was a very skinny man with a long, gray ponytail and while he fiddled he was able to sit on a chair and put both legs behind his head at the same time!  Then, he got on the ground and did the splits while fiddling.  It was extremely entertaining and unfortunately the  camera was at the bottom of the stroller.
Willa was a little scared of the German music, but overall was a good baby.  She fell asleep in her stroller during the band.  The applause startled her a little and so her hands ended up by her head like this:

I like to imagine her thinking, "Please, get me out of here!  I can't take it anymore!"
On Sunday, we celebrated Ryan's birthday by having Carol and Jimmy over for ice cream cake.  Ryan's not overly fond of ice cream cake, but I wanted to make it because it was more special :).  I looked up several different ways to do it, then kind of came up with my own thing.


As per tradition (not on purpose, but it just kind of happens), the outside looked like a mess.  I'm reminded of a birthday when the cake Ryan was making for me collapsed on itself.  It tasted great, with all the frosting mixed in over the collapse, but it didn't look the prettiest.

I baked a chocolate cake from a box in to 9x9 square pans (since I don't have cake rounds), then I cut open a carton of mint chocolate chip and used a knife to cut slabs of it to put between the two cake layers.  Then, I got vanilla ice cream and whipped it in the blender so that I could spread it like frosting.  Finally, I got a bottle of Magic Shell and squeezed it on top.  It was actually really good, I was surprised!  The biggest lesson I learned was that when you are frosting a cake and both the cake and the frosting are made out of ice cream, then you better frost in a hurry!  I was so excited with how smooth and creamy the ice cream was going on, that I took my time and didn't realize that it started to melt and drip and not look so good anymore.  Maybe frost it in sections so it has time to refreeze between?  I've been thinking of also making a ganache frosting instead of using ice cream next time.  We'll see.  Who knows if there will ever be a next time.  Ryan will never turn 30 again, so maybe I should never make this cake again out of respect.


Also tricky: finding enough room in the freezer to fit the cake.  That took some thinking and rearranging.  Overall, it was a fun weekend.  It was nothing exciting, but it's always nice to get out and do something different.