Houston, we have a teenager!

On Thursday, Jessica turned 13. She immediately started slamming doors, being alternately flippant and sullen, and listening to loud music. We immediately locked her in her room. She will be released on her 20th birthday. You can tell by the picture the extreme personality change that has come over her. We just don't know what else to do.

A few months ago, Jessica asked if we would still be in California for her birthday, and was disappointed to hear that we wouldn't. But when I told her we would be in Utah, the wheels in her brain started turning, and she exclaimed, "That means HOLLY can make my birthday cake!"

Now, for those of you who don't know my friend Holly, she is pretty great. We met in 7th grade English in 1985, and we still like each other. We attribute the longevity of our friendship to many things--shared likes, dislikes, and shoe size, to name a few--but truly, it all boils down to a shared love: baked goods. When we were freshmen, we would walk everyday from school to downtown Salt Lake and go to the basement of ZCMI where we would buy 33 cent giant donuts (seriously, those puppers were HUGE! and 33 cents!) and eat them on the way to catch the bus home. (Oh to have my teenage metabolism back.) Well, several years ago, Holly took this love of all things pastry beyond merely appreciation and consumption and into the realm I like to call "Show Off." Oh, I kid. She took up cake decorating, and the girl is seriously awesome. Over the years she's made a few cakes for some of my kids if our visits to Utah or her visits to us have coincided with their birthdays, and a couple of years ago she mailed me a cake for my birthday (told you--awesome!), but she's never made one for Jess. So you can see why the thought of getting a Holly Cake was enough to take away the sting of not being with her friends on her entrance to teenage-dom. Boy howdy did Holly come through.

Behold:
And it tasted even better than it looks!