Friday, February 18, 2011

Birthday Party


This year's birthday party was a big change from last year.

Last year we couldn't even have it at our house!

Henry got to help me - I decorated the cake and he decorated a piece of wax paper.  If only the camera could have captured how hard he was working to squeeze out the icing, because his little arms would start shaking as he tried to squirt it out.
I can bake a cake just fine, but I'm not going to pretend I'm awesome at decorating.  I had lofty ideas, but common sense dominated and I am very thankful for the internet and contact paper so we could have our Dinosaur Train cake.
We squeezed all the cousins in at our wrap-around counter top.
And it's a little hard to see, but we had cool curly candles from aunt "Joni in Nicu-agua."

Thank you to our wonderful families who love to come celebrate with us!  (And those who celebrated with us even though you couldn't be there)

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Monsters and Snow

We've been enjoying the warm weather again.  Funny how negative (or single-digit) temps can make you appreciate even a 15 degree day.  But now it's so warm it feels like spring!

We burned off some energy and ended up burying each other in the snow.  Although it took quite a while to bury my legs as Henry made progress fistful-by-fistful.  I tried to show him how to scoop up a bunch with his arms, but he stuck to the fistfuls, even though his progress was as slow as shoveling out a driveway with an ice cream scoop.

But we had fun.  And our walk to the school's soup supper was a warm one for maybe the first time since we moved here.
Since we've had a fascination with monsters at our house for a while, I thought these cupcakes I saw at Annie's Eats would be perfect to take to daycare for his birthday treats.

I even had all the Dum Dums and Peach-Os in the cupboard.  But as I was putting the frosting on (which was quite fun, and probably faster than actually frosting a cupcake, even though Doug told me I was an over-achiever), I was second guessing the "eyeballs." 

First,  that was a lot of suckers to unwrap.  Second, that was a lot of sugar, and what three-year-old is going to let you throw away candy, let alone a sucker?  I really didn't want to get the kids on a major sugar high because I'm not the one that has to deal with a room-full of them!

I opened the cupboard, and there were mini marshmallows and mini chocolate chips.  Perfect.

Extra perfect that Henry had picked blue.

Because they looked like Cookie Monster without me setting out to create him.  I love happy accidents!
The daycare ladies told me the kids had so much fun with them, which made me happy.

Because I don't do things like this to try and out-do other moms.  I have fun doing this with hopes that the kids get to have a little extra fun (and sugar).