Milestone

Newsflash!! This little girl

just peed on the potty for the very first time.

Pink and purple M&M's will be forthcoming!

Burning Question

I had to mess with the flush lever inside the toilet tank this morning. Matthew, upon observing this task, said: "All my life I've wondered what was in there!"

2010--A Cupcake Odyssey

I saw a blurb in the March issue of Family Fun magazine for rainbow cupcakes, and decided I HAD to make them for Grace's birthday. Little did I know what I was getting into. I read up on them a bit online, and decided to make the investment in some Wilton gel colors to get the really vibrant colors they showed in the magazine. But I wasn't willing to invest quite enough to buy each color I needed, so I ended up getting a basic set with red, blue, yellow, and brown and mixing my own orange, green, and purple. I knew being an art major in high school was going to pay off eventually!!

So here's the white batter (Pillsbury Pudding in the Mix--my favorite type!) after I unscientifically divided in preparation for dying.


And here's the colored batter. The orange was maybe a tad more peachy than I would have liked, but overall, the colors were what I was hoping for.


I layered them in reverse order of course, with purple first. This was a hard layer because I wasn't sure just how far each little glass of batter would stretch. The mix said it made 24 cupcakes, the recipe from the magazine claimed 16. In the end, I got 12 "full" ones, and 4 that were basically "dregs," since some colors went farther than others.


Next came the blue. This is the layer where I had to figure out my technique for getting the new color to completely cover the previous color, but not displace the previous color. It was not easy.


Now for the green. I was kind of into a rhythm by this point, but already starting to get a little tired of the whole project!


Yellow!! It was at about this point that I realized it was taking me 15 minutes to add each layer of color. I'll do the math for you: 6 colors x 15 minutes per color = an hour and a half! Then add in batter prep time and baking time, and voila! TWO HOUR CUPCAKES!


Now for the orange. Sometime around this color (or maybe it was during the yellow) Jonathan came into the kitchen and asked me if he could help. I really WISH I could have had him follow behind me with the next color, but I really didn't see this as being a team project. Plus I was being way too particular about having even, uniform layers. He did keep me company though, and was rewarded with the spoons after I was done with each color. ☺


FINALLY, the red!! I'm not sure whether my bowl of red had less batter in it, or maybe it's because cupcakes are widest at the top (maybe a combination of both), but I ended up running out of red before I finished all 12 of the main cupcakes. Oh well, at that point I was just happy to be DONE! (So happy, I forgot to take a picture until after I'd stuck the pan in the oven...ooops!)


Hot out of the oven...they look kind of like lava flow from Eyjafjallajokull. (Look at me being all current event-y...) I was just hoping the layers held through the baking process. I was a little nervous seeing some green poking up on a couple of them.


Here they are! The finished cupcakes, with their whipped cream "clouds" all laid out in a "3" for presentation to the birthday girl (note the 3 candles on the center cupcake...)


And VOILA!! Clear distinct rainbow layers on the side of the cupcake. Success!


Here's a cross-section. There was some "heave" of the layers on the side, but I expected that. Even the magazine's picture didn't have perfectly horizontal layers.


So overall, I'm glad I made them, and I'd probably be willing to do it again sometime. I'm also glad that I planned to make these the afternoon BEFORE Grace's birthday, rather than trying to do it the day of and being REALLY frustrated. I've been trying to think of ways to make the layering go faster but still allow for portion control. I also want to experiment with making some multicolored cakes (good thing the boys' birthdays are coming up!). "Blobbing" is the word I'm using in my head. Stay tuned!!

What the kids are up to

Long time no blog, of course. Maybe our lives are really just that boring. But I thought I'd try to post a little kid update.

Grace insisted on getting her hair cut Monday night. We were taking the boys to SuperCuts and Grace kept asking me over and over “Can I get my hair cut too??” She was SO excited about it. Well, I’m not about to actually CUT her hair, because I just love how long it is (this is from St. Patrick’s Day—thanks for the picture Lyndsey!):



But her bangs were in need of trimming up, so I asked the girl at SuperCuts to at least do that. Grace was JUST thrilled. At least until she saw the scissors coming at her face. She didn’t freak out or anything (not like the boys when they were younger--boy, talk about DRAMA!!), but you could tell she was maybe rethinking the whole thing.



But she did fine and was just so excited about the fact that she'd gotten a real haircut. When she was freed from the chair, she immediately ran to Mike and said "Look at ME Daddy! I got my hair cut too!!" It's the little things that make us girls happy, you know?

Jonathan has been busy learning Spanish and how to play the recorder in school. Now that he's in 3rd grade, there are so many more options available to him. He is also in the 3rd/4th grade chorus, and they did a wonderful Christmas concert last December. Of course I got video, but from 2/3 of the way back in the auditorium, it was hard to see much. So I was really happy when I happened onto pictures from the concert on the school's website, and found this treasure:



Angelic, no? He was in a couple other shots with the group of kids around him as well. I guess the photographer liked their section.

Jon will be starting baseball again at the end of April. This will be year #4 on Yankees, and year #2 with Coach Jacobs, who was really great last year. In fact, most of the team will be the same as last year, because a lot of the kids really liked Coach Jacobs. And thus our Mondays and Wednesdays will be booked for 2 solid months.

As for Matthew, school is going well for him too. They just finished up their spring reading program, and Matthew is doing really well. He and Mike are currently big fans of the Captain Underpants series (to read together), but he's also getting really good at reading on his own. This spring and summer, Matt will be playing soccer with the local soccer club. He's very excited about this. He enjoyed playing T-ball last year, but he liked the recreational soccer program he did even more, and since the seasons run concurrently, we had to make him choose. He tells us he's going to do baseball again next year though! I don't have any current pictures of him doing soccer, but here's one of my faves from the rec program last summer:



I just really like his form there. I'm looking forward to seeing what he does in a real program where they play actual games.

That's all for now!

Right idea...wrong execution

This the door from the playroom to the tool room. In case you can't quite read it, it says "Pick up aftr youer sefe." It seems the boys are tired of the playroom always being a mess too, so Jon decided to write up this "reminder" using a Strawberry Shortcake stamper Grace got in a Happy Meal. Happily it came right off with a little Fantastik. And yes, Jon is the one who cleaned it. Then I gave them paper to write their reminders with.

Now there's a "Pick up aftr youer sefe" note taped to the ceiling.

New Year's Greetings

Happy New Year to all three of my blog readers! For my New Year's Resolution, I really will try to keep up with this thing. I don't know if I can promise once-a-week updates, but I will at least strive for once-a-month. (Hey, I never said that I was much of a writer...)

May the new year bring you happiness, health, and humor.

Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek...and back...and leg...and hair...

I imagine you've all seen the clip of that soccer player who apparently thought she was in a WWE match rather than a soccer game. If not, check it out here.

Well I happened to be reading a post on a Yahoo sports blog about this charming woman, and the writer made some very good points. He also asked a couple of interesting questions:

How did she keep getting away with it? Why didn't her teammates tell her to cool it? Why didn't somebody on BYU give it right back to her?

Yeah, hey...why didn't any of those BYU players fight back in kind? Hmmmmm...I wonder...