Visitors!

My parents are friends with a couple who are, no doubt, the happiest people I know. The wife always has a huge smile and a kind word. The husband is always quick to respond in conversation with a “That’s terrific!” or “It doesn’t get any better than this!” My parents and I have known them for over a decade now, and they have become like family to me. Plus, the wife, whose nickname is “Kodak” because she’s always taking pictures, took some impromptu pictures after our wedding reception, which turned out to be the best of our wedding and rank among the greatest gifts I’ve ever received. Anyway, I was so excited to hear that they would be passing through our town this weekend on their road trip to see family. Maybe it’s because they are such great people (or maybe we haven’t had visitors in a while), but I think I went a little overboard with the planning. I made them a welcome bag with some goodies and postcards of the area. We took them on a little tour of our town and then out to dinner. And because it’s her birthday soon, I made a special cake for her that we had at our house for dessert. I wanted to do something different for the cake, so I decided on key lime cake, based off of the recipe for my absolute favorite cupcakes. The recipe is from Tasty Kitchen. I followed it pretty much as is, except I added 3 drops of green food coloring to give it a light green color. Since it's a cake, I baked it at 375 for about 24 minutes. And don’t tell – but I used store-bought icing. I topped it with a few candy lime slices I found in the candy aisle. The cake was a big hit, and the visit was wonderful. It also made me smile when my usually-quiet Husband stopped our friend before he was leaving and said, “I can’t let you leave without hearing your signature phrase.” Our friend smiled and said, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” Indeed, it doesn’t.