Love for Dan

Friday was the Benefit Concert/Silent Auction for my cousin Dan Sloan, who recently had to have a large brain tumor removed. At the last minute--Wednesday afternoon to be exact--I decided that Pete should make one of his fancy cakes for the auction,and because he is Peter and quite possibly the most wonderful man in the modern world, he agreed to take on the project. That's the kind of guy he is.

We decided on a topsy turvy Valentine's Day cake, mainly because we had never done one before and wanted to try the technique. We should have planned more time for our learning curve; two days really wasn't enough. This was the most frustrating cake we've ever made; we had to re-do nearly every single step at least once. We had a couple very late nights working and reworking this cake. But in the end it was all worth it; we couldn't have asked for a better result.

Here are the pics:

Oh, and the cake did pretty well at the auction. We started the bidding at a very generous $75, and it ended up going for $300. Not too shabby. We were ecstatic to be able to bring in that much money for such a good cause.

The concert was great too; my cousin Joel Aldrich performed as well as a second cousin Rachael Cutler, as the lead singer for the band No Limits. (Incidentally, Rachael went to elementary school with Pete and had a monster crush on him for years. I haven't seen her for a very long time, so when Pete and I showed up together she was shocked to learn we were married. Ha! I win, I win!)

Anyway, the concert headliner was Jason Hewlett. I had never heard of him before so I didn't know what we were in for, but he put on a great show, better than I expected. He performed several celebrity musician impersonations, ranging from Elton John to Michael Jackson, and Bon Jovi to Jonny Cash. Hi-larious really. And my little girl L-O-V-E-D it. I think becoming a concert groupie is in her future. She danced the night away and never got tired even though we kept her out waaay past her bedtime.

I took this during the only ten seconds of the night she held still the whole night.

So, thanks, to my cousin Cassi for organizing the whole night, to Pete for being willing to work so hard on the cake, to the strangers who paid so much money for the cake, and to my Auntie Iris (Dan's Mom) for taking me shopping for new school shoes and clothes when I was ten. Lots of love to you all.