Playing with Fondue

One of the things that I love playing at is birthday cakes. CJ's birthdays have been a real journey for me and I have learned a lot. From his first birthday, a monkey theme, I learned that trying to be Martha as a beginner will only lead to disappointments and tears.

In the end it was only Keith who though is was the head of a bear, everyone else guessed it was a monkey. I learned never to make the cake the morning of the party.

So then came CJ's second birthday and the train theme. It has been my favorite masterpiece so far, beautiful to look at and remember. But I was late to the party because of the cake! Even when I made all the cakes just days before. I learned that the icing can be made ahead of time as well as the cake.

 Then for his third birthday I was eight months pregnant with Liz and didn't want any stressful mishaps. So I made the cake and frosting ahead of time. I learned that it takes longer than an hour to assemble and decorate a cup cake creation. (For me anyway)

Now we come to CJ's fourth birthday in a few weeks, I can't believe my little man is going to be four!!!! He's all about flying so we're going to have an Up In the Air party (btw anyone who reads this is invited) the morning of his birthday. Once again I want to try something ambitious but this time I want to use all I have learned as well as some fore thinking. 

 

So I talked to Stevie who was familiar with marshmallow fondant and we spent a Monday afternoon and Tuesday night making a marshmallow rice crispy bee covered in marshmallow fondant. 

I love the way it turned out! From this I learned that a birthday cake can be made the day before, in its entirety, and that's what I plan to do. Stay tuned for how birthday cake #4 turns out!

CJ's First Trip to the Dentist

We we all excited for CJ's first time to the dentist. We found this great kid friendly place with an indoor play place and movie area, and when you go to each room when being seen you are given coins to redeem for a prize at the end, sort of like a cross between Chuckie Cheese's and the Dentist.

 

We went in with high hopes and lots of confidence of clean teeth, and then found out that CJ's teeth had a lot of plaque and needed a crown and a cavity filled. Yikes! But CJ was brave and we had the work done that day.

Since then I have wondered if the work was justified, but I saw the yellow tooth before it was caped, and the dentists were very thorough and explained everything. Still, it was quite traumatic, mostly for CJ but for me too.

But he's proud of his silver tooth and loves to pretend that he's Daddy because they both have silver in their mouths.

The Easter Bunny Came!

The crummy-est time to lose your camera or leave it in Utah is when the holidays are here. Well I didn't have the video camera to capture CJ finding all the Easter Bunny's hidden eggs Saturday morning, but as soon as he was done I found it. Nuts! I contemplated doing it all over again Sunday morning, but nah, it was off to the Bird house (no pun intended) for conference anyway.

I really wanted the focus of Easter not to be confused with Bunnies who bring candy and hide eggs so this year we have tried the Bunny on Saturday and the Savior on Sunday. There's a big spread both mornings, and I think it went well, we'll see if we do the same next year. It being conference weekend already there was a lot of talk about Jesus and listening to the words of the prophets so the Spirit was a big part of the Holiday regardless.

We had a wonderful Easter dinner with the De La Portilla family, and the best ham I have ever eaten (and I really would prefer to never eat ham so me eating all the leftovers we took home and wanting more is really saying something, great job Jose!)

Hope You Had a Hoppy Easter Every Bunny!

New Baby Ethan

At the end of March the kids and I flew (and by the way Jeremy is so jealous that we can fly and can't wait till he can come with us) to Utah to visit Keith and Amber and their kids Darrin, Jakob, Alyssa, and new baby Ethan, who I lovingly christened Short Stack.

Ethan has been giving mama Amber a lot of grief since coming into this world and I was on kid duty most of the time while Amber recouped from endless nights.

I had a lot of fun while I visited and we spent a lot of time in the house playing games and running around. When it wasn't snowing we played outside, but it snowed a lot, and it was beautiful.

It's amazing, I've heard it before, that the tiny size of a new born really makes all the other children you have seem like giants. So that was my Lizzie, the giant baby, who kept wanting Ethan's paci.

We stayed as long as we could and then headed home to Texas for Easter with Daddy.

Fail Blog

If any of you are familiar with fail blog, it's not really a blog but a submission site where if you find "fails" in the world around you you can submit them to the site to give the world a chance to laugh at itself. Twice I have tried to submit and can't seem to figure out how, so here's my fail blog:

Coming home one night Jeremy and I passed one of those new fancy bilboards that are all digital and showy and make you almost wreck your car for wanting to look at them. This one made us get of the freeway, do a U-turn, pull off the hwy and take a picture. I still laugh every time I look at it, someone must be asleep at the computer!

The next one I think I put in an older post but beggs to be repeated, and has a lot more meaning to me now that we're buying a house. I found this when I visited Brandi and the kids in Del Rio last year and we took a driving tour of the city. They must have really loved that tree . . .