Mike's 60th

Saturday was my father in laws 60th birthday. Since it was such a significant birthday, my mother in law, Rachel, thought it would be fun to throw him a surprise party. She spent the last three months planning. Since Mike is such a big Hokie fan she thought it would be fun to have it at the football stadium in one of the boxes. My sister in law, Kimmie, is in medical school here at tech and told him that they were having a fund raiser at the stadium for her school. He totally fell for it. In fact he were a VCOM shirt to show his support that night. We thought she got caught about a week before the party, but when he walked through the door he was so surprised he turned beet red and almost fell over. It was so funny. The party turned out awesome. Great turnout, great food and of course a great cake. Here are some pictures of the event. 

This is the view from the box that we were in. This is the field at Virginia Tech. When we walked in the room that night everyone was crowded around the big windows. I thought it was kind of weird that people kept staring at the field, but when I walked over and look I saw the tech football team practicing. Not only did these people come for a party, free food and drinks, but they got a show too. 

This would be Rachel and Kimmie after we had set up. If you know Kimmie, you will understand that this is very typical of her. She cracks me up. As you see she was very tired from holding all the balloons (She was in charge of holding the balloons and separating them into threes so we could tie them to things. 

Here is the cake. Mike loves to golf so of course he gets a golf themed cake.  

On the second tier there are flags that say 60 and aren't the pine trees and boulders cute. I just loved them. 

When I went to work the day before I made this cake I still hadn't come up with the design for the bottom part of the cake. I saw the golf pro that morning (if you didn't know besides doing cakes from home, my real job is a pastry chef at the Blacksburg Country Club) and he was wearing a sweater with an argyle print on it which became the inspiration for the bottom tier. 

This is Mike getting ready to cut the cake. His favorite flavor of cake I make is a blackberry wine cake, so of course the majority of the cake was that, but I threw in some awesome chocolate cake too. Now there were only seventy people at this party, but twenty minutes after cutting the cake it was gone. I mean, people were even eating the crumbs off the cake board. That makes me so happy. All in all it was a great night. Way to go Rachel and Happy Birthday Mike.