A Baby Cake

I was asked to make a cake for one of my dear friends Baby Shower. I was so excited to do this for her, but as it got closer to the day I started getting nervous. What if the cake wasn't cute? What if the icing didn't set up? What if it turned out to be a total disaster?

Even as I was making the cake, I was afraid it wouldn't turn out well. But M was able to quell my worries. He asked, "If one of your friends made a cake for you, would you scrutinize it and notice all the faults with the cake?" My response, "Of course not! I would be delighted that they took the time to make the cake for me." My husband is so smart and I love how he can keep me grounded when I start to spiral out into crazy land. Thanks honey for easing my nerves and thanks to Liz for letting me make her Baby Shower Cake. I love you, girl:)

Here is the cake I made for Liz. I made the little booties out of cupcakes.

Here is a close up of the booties.

Liz at her Baby Shower. Congratulations again. I am so excited for you and can't wait to meet your little girl. She is so lucky to be coming to your family. You and Jeff are wonderful parents and the boys will be wonderful, protective brothers for her.

The Evil Eye

K awoke on Tuesday morning with dried crusties in her eyes. I cleaned them off and thought nothing of it. Then around lunch time I noticed that she had some clearish white mucus stuff on the whites of her eyes around her bottom eyelid and in the corners of her eyes. I didn't know what it was so I used a warm damp wash clothe to remove it. In less than 5 minutes it was back only looking a little more yellow. So I called M to see if he thought I should take her to the doctor. He said I should call them and see what they thought.

So I called the phone nurse and explained what was going on and she said it sounded like Pink Eye. UGH! Not Pink Eye. I had heard of this and it was nothing good. So she scheduled an appointment for us with a doctor who wasn't ours, ours was booked solid. I am always leery about seeing new doctors. I have had my share of awful doctors and K hates to go to the doctor as it is. I wasn't sure how she would do for a total stranger. But things went relatively well. Unfortunately, she does have Pink Eye, but it is an easy and quick fix. The doctor prescribed an antibiotic eye drop that we administer every 2 hours. She has to miss school for one day but then can go back by Thursday, though she won't go back until Friday.

I must say that these drops are amazing. I was planning on taking a picture of what it looked like while the mucus was still in her eyes, but after one dose the mucus was gone. Now her eyes are just all puffy and red. But here is what she looked like this morning. She is doing better, although she HATES having the drops put into her eyes. But she is doing a pretty good job of trusting us to put in the drops. She is still pretty lethargic and sleeping a lot. I hope that is normal. I am sure that it isn't fun having your eyes hurt. I just hope that the rest of us don't get to find out what it feels like. We are being very cautious and keeping K quarantined to her bedroom. We will see if that works...I will keep you posted.

I'm Seeing Spots

So you can't really tell in this picture very well, but L had a rash recently. In the afternoon on Friday the 17th L had a fever of 101. After a couple of hours it was up to 102, she became pretty mood and lethargic. She had no other symptoms until Saturday when she woke up from her nap with a rash all over her neck and back. By the end of the day she had the rash over her face and torso too but her fever was back to 101.

On Sunday I called one of our friends who is a nurse and asked her if she thought we should take L into the doctor. She said that her little baby had the same thing the week before and when they took him to the doctor he said that it was going around and there was nothing to do for it. So we kept L home from church and did things to try and bring down the fever. By Monday the rash was much better and her fever was gone. Now she is doing just fine. It was scary at first but once I knew it wasn't a big deal, I felt much better. Thanks Lauri.

Garden Beds

We love the backyard at our new house! It is at least twice as big as the old one, so we are excited about being able to have more back there. We already have a swing set, a deck and a sandbox. Now we are putting in raised garden beds. M made some stainless steel beds at work. There are three of them and they are 4 feet by 8 feet. We think this will be a decent size for our garden this year.

Here is M putting the beds down. After that he used a wheel barrow borrowed from a friend and put in good gardening soil we got locally. The price was great and they even delivered it to our door free of charge!

After getting all the soil in, we planted some strawberries we got off of craigslist and a whole bunch of seeds. We planted corn, carrots, peppers, lettuce, zucchini, and cucumbers. We will also plant some tomatoes, pumpkins, and broccoli.

A Birthday and a Slumber Party

We went to Bahmah and Papa's house on the 16th to celebrate Papa's 59th birthday. Bahmah made yummy burritos for dinner and then we had a Lemon Cake. M's sister and family were still here so the kids got to play some more. Then they had a slumber party in the living room. They had so much fun!

Papa and Bahmah.

Papa's Lemon Cake.

Papa said the grand kids could blow out his candles. They were very excited about that.

The inside of the cake.

Uncle Luke took K and Q on several ATV rides and then they picked flowers in the meadow.

Here Uncle Luke is pushing the kids while telling them a Blazers Basketball story starring them as the main players on the team. I caught a few minutes of it and it was very entertaining.

Here he continues the story while pushing them on the bench swing.

The slumber party. Bahmah and the kids watched a Max and Ruby movie. After the movie they all curled up and slept right on that air mattress. Wonder if Bahmah got any elbows in the ribs.

The next morning there was a tearful goodbye. K didn't want to leave her cousin Q. She really enjoyed playing with him and can't wait to see him again. Hopefully it won't be so long next time.

Our New Deck

We have a very small square of patio in our backyard. M and I have been trying to decide what to do with it. I thought a deck would look really nice and give us a large space to lounge on. After thinking about it for a while and then getting a few quotes, we decided to go for it.

Our little patio.

The foundation of the deck.

Topping the deck. We used a composite called Timbertech. It looks like wood but lasts longer and you don't have to seal it or do any upkeep.

It started raining a few days in and got really windy, so Ben took a two days off until weather was more cooperative.

Here is the deck almost completed. Ben owns his company and works alone. It didn't take him very long to complete this project. He was done in a week.

Here is our beautiful new deck.

It is pretty big, about 14x26 feet. We really like it and are glad we had it done.

Family visit from Connecticut

M's sister and family came out from Connecticut for a couple of weeks. They came down to our house for the day to visit while they were here. We haven't seen them in a few years, so it was nice to see everyone again. The kids have grown up a lot. The cousins are all close in age, they range from 1-5 years old. They played well together. After delicious lunch and tour of our new home, we all headed down to the park to play. All the adults and kids played on the equipment. Here are some shots of the fun.

Uncle Tom pushing the merry-go-round.

Corina pushes N while Tom pushes Q.

Bahmah and K going down the slide, what fun.

L really enjoyed the bouncy bug.

Q and K climbing the net.

N so proud for climbing up so high!

The family together.

All the cousins.

Easter Baskets

Easter morning the girls awoke early. We took them downstairs and K found the baskets while L found some Easter eggs. We tried to get them to open their baskets first, but L wanted only to pick up and taste the hidden eggs. So we had our hunt first and then opened our baskets.

L did a great job finding eggs. She found quite a few and K found the rest. All eggs were accounted for when they were done. L squished one egg in her hand and another one she dropped and it hit the wall and rolled. It too was cracked pretty good. So after opening baskets we made tuna salad for lunch and used the eggs L cracked for us.

L's basket.


K's basket.

K opening her basket while L looks for eggs.

L finally interested in her Easter basket.

There were coloring books, reading books, stickers, jelly beans, chocolate covered marshmallow eggs, an Easter bunny, a tape measure, a towel bunny, bubbles and a sand bucket in K's basket.

There was a sand bucket, shovel, rake, microphone, Easter bear, two books, a towel bunny, chocolate covered marshmallow bunnies and jelly beans in L's bucket.

Don't worry, she didn't eat the candy; I did:)

L's "Let's Dance, Little Pookie" book.

K's sand box bucket.

Easter Dress

After all the Easter festivities, it was time to get ready for church. We go at 1:00pm so we had plenty of time to find eggs, go through our baskets, and eat lunch before getting into our church dress. I had the hardest time finding cute dresses this year for my girls. But I finally found these little cuties at Wal-Mart. I was very surprised, they are just so darn cute.

Our family picture didn't turn out very well, but we are all together and that is all that matters.

Dying Easter Eggs

We dyed Easter Eggs the day before Easter. I didn't want L to get all dyed too, so she just got to watch this year. Next year she will get to enjoy the fun. She was very well behaved while we dyed the eggs.

L in her high chair eatting.

K patiently waiting while the eggs sit in the dye.

Even Daddy helped dye eggs.

K checking the color of the eggs.

Pulling out her perfectly dyed egg.

The beautiful eggs after they were dyed. K did a wonderful job on them.