I made an ice cream cake for Aaron's birthday.  I asked him what kind of cake he wanted.  (Usually he'd ask for a Carvel Fudgie the Whale cake.  But our "local" (about 25 minutes away) Carvel closed. Now the only one in NorCal is in Placerville, 2.5 hours away.  For my birthday we bought a Baskin Robbins cake, but it was small, and $30+.  I read a couple recipes online and decided I could make my own ice cream cake.  I was actually a bit dubious that I would be able to pull it off.

First I gathered my supplies.  I went to Target and bought 2 boxes of chocolate cake mix, two cartons of cookies and cream ice cream, one carton of vanilla, a tub of cool-whip, and two decorating icings.  I wanted extras, in case I made a mistake.  I baked 2 9x9 squares and 1 loaf cake.  I leveled the squares and cut the loaf in half, long-ways. The recipes I read said to slice the ice cream and then cut the cake to fit the slices.  I found that to be stupid.  So I cut the ice cream into 1" slices, and assembled them on the cakes.  I put the big (whole) slices on first, and then cut smaller pieces to fit.  The ice cream was getting melty, so I put the cakes in the freezer.
The recipe said to frost the cake with vanilla ice cream, but I thought cool-whip would be easier.  And it was pretty easy.  No melting, and it filled in the gaps on the side really well.  The downside with cool-whip is that it doesn't freeze super firm, and while that makes for a nice cake, it makes decorating a little tricky, as the icing didn't stick to it well.  I ran out of cool-whip for the loaf, so I used chocolate cream cheese frosting.  That turned out fine, but was a little overly sweet.
It turned out really well, and got a lot of compliments.  I am going to experiment with icing with vanilla.  But it is now my go to birthday cake.  It's easy, but a little labour intensive, but it looks and tastes great.  And the total cost was under $10.

Aaron took the Friday before him birthday off.  We went to the Jelly Belly factory, and my dad came too.  Bertie was really enthralled with some of the robots on the factory floor, but not too interested in the actual candy making process.  It was a nice trip.

I've been having weird insomnia lately.  Either I can't sleep, or I wake up at 2 or 3 and can't go back to sleep (like tonight).  I took half of a Midnite (dissolving melatonin) and fell asleep at 10.  I've been up since about 2 (it's 4 now).  I may talk to my shrink about it, maybe not.  There isn't a whole lot I can do.  I get up at the same time most days, I don't nap, I don't drink too much caffeine, I relax a bedtime.  I suppose I could get Ambien again, but it's kind of a stop-gap.

My tooth has been feeling about the same.  I got my Novamin tooth paste about 5 days ago.  So far it doesn't feel too different.  But I go back to the dentist on Thursday.

Potty training has been going ok.  More of the same, really.  Still not really pooping in the potty, but he's pretty good about peeing.  He doesn't wear diapers or pull ups in the day time.