Review of cake

I have wanted to learn to decorate cakes for a long time.  Now, since I never took a class on cake decorating when I had the lived in civilized towns where one was available, I have determined to learn it on my own by doing it.  The last year or so I have been looking for opportunities to make a cake and try to develop some sort of skill.  These are all the pictures of cakes that I could find, and my attempts have been hit or miss. The only cake I can think of off hand that is not pictured here is Sarah's first birthday cake which was supposed to look like a stack of blocks.

The above cake was for Matt's birthday.  I figured out after trying to make brown colored frosting to just melt chocolate chips.  

This was a train cake when Benson turned 6 months.  

Since he was only 6 months he didn't get to try any.  Sorry Benson. 

This cake was for Sarah's second birthday.  

She also got one of those toy cars to drive around Flinstone style.

This was a duck cake for Benson's first birthday, and yes he got to eat this one.  

It think the eyes may look a bit evil, and I had some trouble getting the head to stay on.

The Cannon cousins were staying with us for a few days and got to party with us too!

For 6 months Sarah said she wanted a red duck cake for her birthday.  

Matt wanted another BYU cake for his birthday, but this time I was little more creative.

Don't be fooled by the candle, he isn't turning one, we just didn't want to start a fire in our new house.

The face mask fell down a bit, but it didn't do to bad, considering it is made out of blue air heads.  

I have also learned that the very dark BYU blue is a hard color to match in cake frosting, 

so we usually go with the classic BYU colors.  

This cake was huge and should have fed at least 20 people.  It was a two layer round cake with another cake I baked in a bowl on top.  It took us at least a week to eat.  

This is the guitar I made for Grandpa Davenport's birthday.  

We were all in Las Vegas for Thanksgiving and Dad's birthday.

The cake was red velvet and white.  Again I did the try to make brown frosting 

and then remembered chocolate

This Castle for Sarah's third birthday turned out amazing. 

The towers are ice cream cones, and the door is a graham cracker.  

I made like 2 million extra drop flowers that Sarah and Benson loved to eat like candy.  

Oh and inside the cake was a pink checker board.

Happy St Patrick's day.  I had to get a little creative when I had a stretch with no birthday's.

The buckle on this cake is white chocolate.

This was my Easter basket.  

Grandpa Davenport sent me a mold and we made the chocolate bunny too.  

I put fresh strawberries in the middle and they started to leak out a few places.  

I made a BYU egg for Matt.  

Happy Father's day.  Everyone took a turn wearing Matt's Braves hat cake.  

The bill was made from air heads and although I gave it two days to dry out it never did and it fell immediately after I removed the cardboard.  

The baseball was extra cake and Matt teased me that it was going to hit the batter in the head.  

Yard Cleanup

        When we first bought our house the yard was a little unkept.  We knew this, it was obvious by looking at it, but we figured we could clean it up and add a little value.  We did not know what we were getting ourselves into.  It is like every good project, everything takes us two or three times as long as we expect it to and everything we fix shows us two more things which we did not know were broken.  I do not have a very good before picture, but with our initial clean up and tree trimming we took five trailer loads to the dump.  And by we I mean my father in-law, thanks so much for your help! 

         After this it took me months to get started because I didn't know where to begin.  Everytime I would consider starting I would get overwhelmed trying to decide what task was most important.  I finally started by trying to clear the path from the front yard to the back and it took me at least 10 hours and a little over a week because I did it with the kids while Matt was at work.  

         Next thing we did was remove the pond.  Because we never take pictures of anything I don't have a before picture, but I do have a middle and after picture.  I think the picture makes it look like a small pond, but it is not.  Where I am standing in the picture would have been about a foot deep in the water and the deepest point was about 4 feet.  

       We are very ambitious and thought we could get the pond out before lunch.  Just grab the liner and pull it out right? Wrong, it both Matt and I two full days and the kids helped some too.  But we did take a break when Sarah hit Benson in the face with a shovel.  Benson luckily suffered little damage, we did however make a few mistakes which resulted in about 10 large fish and at least 100 small mosquito eating fish dying.  

This is Matt hard at work.  It the back you can see our pile waiting for the dump.  I like to refer to this as my magic pile because I added to it time and time again and some how it would always pack down and appear the same time.  It was like Mary Poppins carpet bag, I kept adding more than I thought could fit but somehow it just kept packing in. The fence and Block wall next to the pile are about 5 feet high, and where the pile is sitting slopes down to the street.  Many times Matt would say we would have to go to the dump because you could see our pile from the street, and the next morning it would have sunk down so you couldn't see it anymore, like magic.  

Grandpa Ballard came again and helped Matt take out the above bird cage which preciously housed our rabbit and then they took five another five loads to the dump.  This time however it was a truck and a trailer full for each load.   

      This picture is after we took out the bird cage and pond.  I have since then taken the two trees in the middle out.  We have so much more space in our yard now.  There is still a ton of work to do, but when we got this much done our yard looks much different.  Now you'll just have to wait two or three more years till I get the rest of the work done and can show you a finished product picture.  I can't wait to post that picture!

Tomato sauce on my flip flops

You know the book Alexander's Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day?  For awhile it was Sarah's favorite book and we read it about 300 times.  We had one of those days Yesterday.

The kids were up a lot during the night so I slept through my alarm and did not run.  Then the kids were up early so we got breakfast and dressed for the grocery store.  Matt had a scout campout planned and I told him I would go grocery shopping for them today.  Off to the store with 2 long lists and 3 small children. We got to the last 3 or 4 items before everything fell apart.  Benson and Sarah began to run screaming up and down the aisle, Benson ran in front of the cart and hurt his foot, so I picked Benson up and we went to find Lasagna noodles.  We had not found them when I heard a crash and felt something splash onto my legs.  I turn to find 7 cases of large plastic spaghetti sauce containers sprawling across the floor and my 3 year old standing where the stack should have been exclaiming "Mom, I did not mean to!".  After calling for clean up we made sure we had everything the scouts needed and quickly left.

At lunch I was warming up left overs and after I heating up Matt's I opened the microwave to find a spider in his bowl.  I don't know where it came from but apparently Spiders can survive in the microwave.

During nap time I tried to collect myself and prepare to spend half the weekend alone with the kids.  When the kids woke up we went for a walk/bike ride and then the kids continued to ride bikes and play in the backyard while I made dinner.  They were being so cute and playing nicely together I took a picture to remember that something good happened.

Not 30 seconds after I took the picture I was looking down while I set the camera down and Elsie started screaming in pain because Benson stabbed her in the forehead with a stick.  After dealing with the thankfully minimal damage to Elsie's face I returned to making popcorn and smoothies for dinner and almost burnt out my blender because the ice froze together while I was gone.  We ate outside to avoid more mess in the kitchen, while we were eating Benson tried to eat what I'm pretty sure was a rat dropping.  The hose was missing so we skipped cleaning up and came inside to take a bath.  At this point Elsie spit a large amount of rotten milk and cottage cheese on the computer, my shirt, and my flip flops.

After I got the kids to bed I made myself 4 cookies and poured a cup of milk to eat while I watched TV.  I'd finish the cleaning later.

This morning Sarah informed me that yesterday was the best day of her whole life.  "Yesterday?" I asked to confirm and she replied "The day we had smoothies and popcorn for dinner, yes, yesterday was the best day of my WHOLE life!"  At least someone enjoyed it.  

My cartoon epiphany

A month or so ago the kids and I began going to the library for Storytime.  We walk to the library and listen to stories and pick books and then Daddy would pick us up on his way home for lunch.  The kids love it.

One week Dad had a meeting and would not be able to pick us up, I knew the kids would not make the mile trek home after walking to and enjoying the library.   I decided to ride Dad's bike with Benson in the child seat and Sarah and Elsie in the trailer.  I wasn't sure I would be able to pull all of them but I was determined so we all piled in and off we went.

The bike ride went quite well.  Due to the positioning of the bike rack I needed help to get the bike and trailer into position to park.  It was at this point that I began to realize how interesting we must have looked to others around us.  After enjoying storytime, we were checking out our books I realized I did not have my library card, the librarian suggested Sarah get a library card of her own to check out the books and began the application.  Meanwhile Benson had had enough began to run wildly around the library.  I left Sarah to check out the books and tried to coax Benson out from underneath the table where he was playing peek-a-boo with a woman reading the newspaper.  She admired the baby and was amazed to learn I had a 3 year old, 18 month old, and 3 month old.  We returned to find Sarah had finished checking out the books.  

As we were all putting on our helmets and strapping in on the bike 20 or so people must have filed out commenting on us as they walked to their cars, including the newspaper woman further commenting on how awesome we were on our bike.  

That evening as Dad laughed at our retelling of the story I told him that the kids and I leave the house if not only for the bettering and education of our children, but also for the entertainment of others who get to experience the circus which is my life.  We are like our own little family circus.  It was then that the lightbulb above my head turned on and I realized why the cartoon The Family Circus is so named.