The Big 4-0 for Scott!
Today is my husband’s 40th birthday!
Scott hates having a fuss made of him, but I think 40 deserves a little attention! However, this does mean I’m not allowed to organise much in the way of parties. He also prefers small groups of people thanks to his introverted personality.. perhaps once Lockdown is over, I’ll plot and plan numerous small birthday parties to last him for the rest of the year!
Scott works really hard to provide for our family. He is a teacher at a small Christian school, and by all accounts a pretty great one! He really pours so much of himself into that role, and is so committed to the big picture of Christian education. Because of this, he was the driving force behind setting up a high school. Throughout all the ups and downs of that, he stayed focused and committed to his vision.
More than that, he is a wonderful father and husband. He takes his role as leader of our family seriously and invests heaps of time and energy into teaching our kids. Not a day goes by that he doesn’t read aloud to them!
We are doing our best to celebrate once again (Sophia’s birthday was only three days ago). In honour of the occasion, the kids have produced various offerings of the paper kind and chosen some food-related goodies.
We’ll be enjoying the obligatory ice cream cake tonight – Scott has had one for every birthday since he turned two! When this tradition transferred to me to arrange (before our marriage it was Scott’s mum who did the honours), I initially purchased the bubblegum flavoured kids’ ones from Pak’n Save. They were adequate, but nothing to write home about. Since Scott’s favourite ice cream flavour is plain vanilla, I decided to unleash my creative powers on him.
The first deviation was an echidna cake from the Woman’s Weekly Cake book. It was pretty cute, but took a bit of effort and didn’t seem very.. well, manly.
Next, I adapted some other cake designs to turn them into ice cream versions. One of them was a periodic table (he used to teach chemistry).
However, a couple of years ago I struck gold. I thought, why waste heaps of time and energy when really all Scott cares about is the ice cream and the overall flavour? (I have to be careful not to ‘taint’ the ice cream too much with toppings because he’s an ice cream snob who once worked at Tip Top).
So I upended a tub of vanilla ice cream on a platter (I ran the base under hot water first) and coated it with Hershey’s Chocolate Shell. Following that, I coated it with both grated and broken up Whittakers Creamy Milk chocolate. Delicious!
Last year I went one step further, and instead of a tub of ice cream I used stacked ice cream sandwiches (thanks Pinterest). They were ‘glued’ together and coated with Hershey’s chocolate shell then doused in Barkers Caramel Sauce (sooo good). To top it off, I decorated it by scattering broken Kit Kats and RJ’s chocolate coated licorice balls on top.
Needless to say, it was a hit. Tonight’s version will be a medley of the last two years, with the Hershey’s shell, caramel sauce, Whittakers chocolate and vanilla ice cream (unfortunately I forgot about the ice cream sandwich part!)
Anyway, I’m not one for sentiment, but I am really thankful to God for Scott and his faithful care and love for our family. We enjoy lots of fun times together and make a great team! Happy 40th Scott! We love you!
