Happy 3rd Birthday Preston!

The morning of his birthday I watched a little girl from church, so of course I had to turn that into a tiny little party for Preston. Here, Preston and Emily are enjoying a Lightening McQueen cake.

This cake is homemade. yet somewhat lame. I offered to make a cool Lightning cake, but Preston insisted on using these little candy cake toppers.

He received a lot of presents, but I'm only posting one. I'll try to put the rest of them on Facebook. He really wanted a green snake, you can see how happy he is about it.

We gave him some Lightning jammies. Pretty much every present was centered around Mr. McQueen!

Kari's 6th Birthday

Here is Kari with her pile of presents. She was quite disturbed that we weren't having a party so I thought if I wrapped eveything separate it would be a bit more fun.


Here are a few things she got from us: skirt, journal with keys, princess hand bag, and new pink crocs.

And of course, a whole bunch of art supplies. I got tired of her taking all my white paper, so I thought I would just give her her own pack! I didn't know little girls could get so excited over white paper.

Yes, it's a store bought cake, but she was still happy with it. (And please pay no attention to the little boy in skivies in the background.)

Ice Skating

For Kari's birthday she wanted to go ice skating. Even though it's not quite her birthday we attempted this activity last Saturday. A few months ago she went with Steve to Disney Princesses on Ice and assumed that she too would be able to gracefully glide along the ice. Right before we left Steve informed her that skating is very difficult and that she would probably fall down numerous times. She looked a bit taken aback, but smiled and said that's okay. Luckily for both of us the ice rink had these cool little "walkers" to hang on to. She used a walker for the first half and was able to "skate" by herself for the last half hour. Even though she did indeed fall numerous times (and also wipe out innocent skaters) she loved every minute of it and never once complained about how hard it was.

Ants on a Log

So after I've had children for almost 8 years now I finally introduced them to raisons on peanut butter on celery; aka-ants on a log. They LOVED it. They ate an entire bag of celery (which usually lasts weeks) in less than a day. Actually, Saturday morning at 8:00am when Steve and I were still sleeping Kari came in and asked if she could have celery. What's up with that?

Today I made granola, which called for raisons. After I gave Preston some he said, "Hey, I want more ants!" It took me a moment to figure out that he wanted more raisons in his granola. I guess he pays more attention then I think he does.

Comfortable?

Can someone please explain to me WHY my daughter finds it more comfortable to sleep dangling between two couches instead of on her nice bed!

Caramel Rolls

For New Years Eve I was going to make some Caramels from my mother's caramel recipe. I carefully and lovingly cooked it and stirred it for a long time. Then chilled it like the recipe says. However, when it came time to cutting the caramels I discovered that I hadn't actually cooked it as long as it needed and it was just a pile of ooey gooey caramel. So instead of caramels it became caramel rolls. I've made caramel rolls a few times and have tweeked the caramel recipe everytime and I thought that I had it right. But THIS caramel recipe is amazing for the rolls. Just don't cook the caramel as long as needed and it's beautiful to add rolls to.

I got so excited at how well my dough turned out that I needed to take a picture. I just realized however, that I never took the "After" picture when the rolls were done. Probably because I ate them too fast. Anyways, if you need a good caramel recipe for caramel rolls, this one is great! It's a good thing I don't know how to cook right.

Pump-It-Up

So for Steve's birthday this year he wanted a home gym where he can work-out at instead of going to the YMCA every day. He found this "little" beauty on Craigslist and now it is taking up half my family room. You can do benchpress, pull-ups, leg curls, lats, blah, blah, blah, I don't even know what else. And it's all on a pulley system (which isn't attached yet) so that when I can't benchpress that 135 lbs. anymore my Safety Spotter will kick in. And of coure there are numerous weights to add onto that extremely heavy bar. Now instead of sitting on my rear all day long I can go downstairs and benchpress!