One minute, he’s playing. Having the best evening ever.
The next, he’s in timeout for not sharing the slide with his sister.
Broken hearted.
So sad. Poor Graham, huh? You feel for him, right?
Then Dad has a talk with him. He listens, says “yessir” and promises to be a good boy. Then we go on and play some more, only to repeat minutes later.
A typical three-minute span in our day.
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This summer, my husband, my brother and his wife are all celebrating their thirtieth birthdays. (Thirty?? What? My husband is turning thirty?!?!? When did we get this old?) Of course, I am happy to celebrate with them as I have two more years before I hit that milestone.
Together, we all threw a party to help the three of them through this. Of course, good times were had by all. But I have to tell you the story of the cakes.
The damn cakes.
First of all, let me tell you that I was determined to buy the cakes, not to make them. For two reasons. One: I know very little about decorating cakes and have been “winging it” through each of my kids birthday so far. Two: I didn’t need that added stress in my life. However, when it turned out that my kids were going to their grandparents for a few days and I saw what the bakery wanted for three separate birthday cakes, I changed my mind. I thought, I’ve got plenty of time. I’ll just use a box mix and do something simple. No problem.
Right.
I made these cakes the night before. Mistake number one, perhaps? And, I used frosting from a can. Mistake number two? We’ll just say that Martha would not be proud of my cake decorating skills. Oh well. At least they tasted good. Didn’t stop me from eating two pieces today. (Hey, I’m eating for two, remember??)
But I do have to tell you that I did learn one thing in the process. I always get really frustrated when baking the layers of a cake because they always bake with a raised dome in the middle. Which I then have to chop off and discard (read: eat while waiting for cake to cool). But I feel like this wastes cake and my layers aren’t as tall as I want them after I level off the lump.
So, I googled it. And it turns out that I wasn’t the only one who was devastated by the dome. All it takes is some old wet towels wrapped around your cake pan as it bakes. Who knew?? I guess the moisture keeps the outside cool so it doesn’t cook as fast as it normally would. Follow these directions and you’ll get a perfectly level cake. Worked for me six times.
At least something worked.
Anyways, clearly the party was still a blast without beautiful cakes. Life is not about perfect cakes. Life is about good friends and good memories. Here’s to thirty more years of that with three of my favorite people in the world. Happy Birthday to Trever, Jenny and Brady! Love you guys!
Oh, and to explain the “23″ atop Jenny’s cake:
What woman wants to openly admit their true age, right? For this reason, I taught my daughter to say that her mommy and Aunt Jenny are “twenty-twee” whenever prompted. In fact, according to her, I turned 23 on my last two birthdays!! Love you, Lilah!
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One day last week, Lilah was playing in her pool and decided to “clean” the deck. She slid her bucket all over and sloshed an old rag back and forth all over the place saying that she was “Cinderelly”. I thought it was adorable – and was also amused that she gets her cleaning habits from a cartoon rather than from her mommy! She definitely hasn’t seen me sliding around the floor with a bucket too many times!
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Our world has been revolving around babies lately. With the arrival of our niece, Ela Sue, a couple weeks ago and with the beginning phases of preparation for our newest (due in December). Phase I = name research, moving Lilah to a room downstairs, mental preparation for being outnumbered by children.
Also, I have been making baby gifts out the wazoo lately. Nothing new and different – just more baby books, burp clothes, blankets, etc. But I thought I’d share a couple of my favorites. Both of these were made custom for the colors that the baby’s rooms were going to be decorated in.
The first was for Brady’s cousin’s daughter. Her name is going to be Sylvie (cute, right?) Her room is going to be decorated in turquoise with accents of hot pink. It is actually a vintage bird theme, but I never could find any bird fabric with those colors. 
The second was for an old friend from high school is adopting a baby boy. His room is getting decorated in blues and grays. How cute is that? I LOVED the gray with the blue. Made it so much more modern.
Makes me wanna get to work on our baby’s book. First step – convince Brady to learn the gender at next week’s sono. I won’t hold my breath.
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With a new baby coming in December, we have been talking lots about where to put all these kids! We have three bedrooms upstairs and one (plus and office) downstairs. Currently, each kid has their own room, and the extra room downstairs is for guest and toys. So, the big decision is: do we combine a couple kids so that they can all be upstairs with us? OR, do we move Lilah downstairs so they can each have their own space. And most importantly, their own sleeping privacy.
We go back and forth on the decision. But it’s looking like we are going to move, Lilah, who will be 3-and-a-half, downstairs. Then Graham will go from his nursery to Lilah’s current room.
So, this leaves me with a big redecorating project! I get easily overwhelmed with just one room, so doing the two is definetly throwing me. First step will be to paint both the spaces. Lilah’s room is especially gross – I am looking forward to covering that mess up!
I have been doing a little research for ideas and colors to use, keeping in mind that I don’t want to spend much money on these rooms. Fortunately, we don’t need to buy much furniture, except another crib for Graham. There are lots of nice places to look for inspiration out there, like OhDeeDo or Flickr for example. These can make me want to go over the top, but I am going to try to keep myself grounded.
Today I came across this mural that I am wondering if I could do something similar to for Graham’s room. I am loving the font and subtle color variations they used. Seems simple enough, right? Stay tuned for future updates on this project!
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My brother and his wife are having a baby today! As I write, Jenny is being induced. They have kept the gender and the name a surprise, so I am super anxious for this baby to get here! Wishing I had something I could do to speed the process up, I decided to make cookies for him/her. Okay, so their mostly for the baby’s visitors.
My prediction is that I will be taking the blue cookies to the hospital. But knowing my family, I am guessing they will all get eaten either way 
Can’t wait to meet you, little one!
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Happy 4th to everybody! If you live anywhere near me, you probably had the same Forth of July experience that we did: WET. A couple months ago, we had booked three nights in cabins at Cheney Lake for this holiday weekend and were very much looking forward to it. Might as well have stayed at home because we didn’t even ONCE get in the water. It rained and rained and rained!! The rain wasn’t too big of deal for the first day or so – we made the best of it by playing cards and games of washers and french darts in between the rain showers. But by the third day, Sunday, we were tired of it. So when the water started flooding the campground we were in, we bolted. Sad, but much better to be back on dry ground. So we celebrated my baby brother’s 16th birthday (16!?!?! What?!?!) at my folks’ house.
We still had a great time + we got to light fireworks, which were prohibited at the state park. We even painted faces and got some decent pictures of the little kiddos. They were all kinds of cheesy, which was a nice change!
Next up, a week of birthdays (Brady’s, mine, and hopefully a new Krehbiel baby!) and four whole days with no kids! Brady’s kind parents are keeping them for us…Yay!!!!!
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So, I’m cleaning Graham’s room today and lift up the bedskirt on his crib. And what do I find? But a stash of my son’s tossed, finished bottles of milk. Nasty, dried, yellowed (even greened), rotten milk remains. Um, gross. Guess that’s what I get for breaking the Don’t-put-them-to-bed-with-a-bottle Rule. I really do try not to do it. But I guess this is proof that I have. But only seven times. I swear.
Seriously! How nasty are these! They must be like six months old to have the milk turn GREEN.
And the Mother of the Year Award goes to…
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Every other year, our local quilt guild holds a quilt show. Two years ago was my first one ever and I thought it was really cool! If you are even a little interested in sewing, you will appreciate this event – I promise! I have been looking forward to it for quite some time – the quilts on display there are so beautiful and the talent involved is so apparent. I just wanted to pull them down from the display and snuggle up! There are also dozens of classes, tons of shopping and a raffle for an amazing quilt valued at over $3,600!!
**If you go – Be warned, do NOT touch the quilts! I didn’t know last time! However, there are gloves provided – of course, that kind of takes the fun out of touching.
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A few weeks ago, my baby turned three. Not so much of a baby anymore. Although you wouldn’t know it by the incessant amount of hardcore whining, fit-throwing, diaper-wearing, milk-drinking that still goes on around here. But she does do her fair amount of “big girl” things as well. Like wearing big girl pants all day. Or sleeping in her big girl bed.
For her birthday, she wanted a little mermaid party. Easy enough. I put on my party-planning shoes and whipped up some super simple invites. They were supposed to look like a mermaid tail, but I’m not so sure that’s obvious.
For the party, we planned a swim at the YMCA, dinner, cake and digging for seashells in the new sandbox she got for her birthday.
And the kids got beta fish as party favors. She named hers Flounder and surprisingly, she is still alive. Even though Lilah wants to feed it about a dozen times a day.
The cake was fairly simple to make. Turned out kinda sloppy, but Lilah never noticed. I bought the topper and the little sugar flowers at Cake Stuff and had no major problems, aside from the incident where Lilah stuck her little fingers into it the first time she saw it.
Her birthday party landed on Mother’s Day, so we were also celebrating that. My SIL, Jenny, and I decided it would be a great idea to have a portrait taken of the four grandchildren and give it to my mom. We took the kids to Portrait Innovations and it was NIGHTMARE. That’s all I will say about that. Any more details, and I’d need to start another post. However, the photo turned out great and Mom loved it – so mostly worth it.
Happy Birthday, Lilah! Here’s to many, many more years of giggles! Love you!
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