1/22/11

I had to get a picture of Evie and Tommy together. They are both so busy moving around, that I finally had to have the dads hold them to get a picture. Kara had a story book party at school on friday. She brought in Peter Pan: Retutn to Neverland as her book. She dressed up like a pirate. All the kids were dressed up super cute that day!

Kiersten was pretty scared of the hook. Kara's teacher said some of the kids at school were made nervous by it as well. It's just hollow plastic, so I don't think it could do too much damage.

Evie had her first baby cookies today. She did pretty well with them. I thought she ate them completely, but when I got her out of the highchair, she had a few little pieces stuck to her thighs. She had a doctor appt on thursday, and he thinks she will be walking early, like her sisters. She is in the 90% for height, and 75% for weight. She can now stand without holding on to anything. she'll stand for a minute or two, but hasn't taken any steps yet. But I think standing is a pretty good accomplishment for a barely-6-month-old.

Kiersten can out-mess pretty much anyone. She just looks at food, and suddenly her face is filthy.

Karalee's birthday party

Kara really wanted to have her birthday party while Nancy and Victor were visiting, so she could invite her cousin Tommy. So we decided to have her party on the 15th instead of the 22nd. It turned out well, because one of her friends from school is having a birthday party on the 22nd, and they would have overlapped. We had her party at the Norpoint center in Tacoma. It was a luau/swimming party. Kara looked so cute in her little party dress. the norpoint staff did all of the decorating, and then all of the clean up as well. That was pretty nice to just be able to show up, and set up the food, and be ready for the party.

We had dominoes pizza for lunch. I made a few desserts to go along with the cake.

I used my babycakes machine to make these cheesecakes. I think it would have been easier and faster just to make them in the oven though. Ben made a strawberry topping for them.

I also made cream puffs for the first time since I was in high school. They turned out right, but I didn't take out enough of the center, so I think they were a little too dense. I made a pineapple cream filling for them too.

The last thing I made were these flower shaped brownies. I used a flower shaped silicone mold, and most of them turned out well.

my pretty little birthday girl. It has been a little confusing for her to have had her party early. She keeps saying she is 5 now. Close enough, I guess.All the kids loved dressing up in grass skirts and leis. I didn't get any pictures of them swimming though. One of the mom's did, and I'm hoping she'll share a few of her pictures with me.

limbo, one of Kara's favorite games.

I kept trying to think of games to play, but never ended up getting anything for games, so I was glad when we got there, and they had provided a few games for the kids.

Evie slept through most of the party. She did get to swim, and really liked it.

blowing out the candles. She was very careful, trying not to spit on her cake.

she got so many fun gifts from her friends. She will be busy for the next few weeks at least!

some of her party guests. She had 4 friends from school, 2 from the ward, 2 kids of our friends, her sisters, and her cousin. I think that totals 12 kids including Karalee, a decent sized party.

I'm glad she seemed to really enjoy her party, and as far as I could tell, all the other kids did too. It totally feels worth it, when you see your kid having so much fun, and just feeling happy and special.

cleaning carpets, creating cakes, and a cruising cutie!

For Christmas, I got a much needed carpet cleaner. We usually get the carpet cleaned once a year, but that just wasn't cutting it with 3 kids, so I was thrilled to get the Bissel pro heat 2X. It is working so great! I've been going through room by room, as I've had time, and the results are great. No more scrubbing on my hands and knees every time something gets spilled, or someone has an accident(...Kiersten....). The cleaner does most of the work, and I just stand there, pushing it around. Here's a before picture of my shamefully filthy livingroom carpet. We spend lots of time in this room, and so does our cat, Daisy. So it was first. and after, much cleaner.some of the spots didn't come up completely, but next time I'll use the pre treater on those, and see if it gets even cleaner!

The girls' room was another really dirty area, as that's where many accidents have occurred lately. It didn't exactly smell fabulous in their either.

after the cleaning. I feel much better about my kids living in this room now, and have even let Evie crawl around in there.

Evie stood up 4 times yesterday without holding on to anything to pull herself up. We thought it was time to bring in the hippo toy. Kara and Kiersten both used this to learn to walk, though, not at 6 months old...

Kara's birthday party is tomorrow, and it's a luau/swim party. I wanted to be lazy and buy a cake, or just make cupcakes, and put flowers on top. But Ben came up with an idea for an island cake, so I agreed to at least try. We decided to make the palm tree out of rice krispies and Kara wanted a "hula Kara" on there as well. So I made the rice krispies, and Ben shaped them for me. I know what this looks like, and, yes, there were many jokes made about the shape of the palm tree.

we dyed some fondant green, and Ben traced out a shape for the leaves. I cut them out, and then Ben cut little notches in the sides.

Then he had a good idea, to set them on this sifter to dry into a curved shape.

I was going to just stack the cakes in a column, but we decided that would make too large servings, so we went with more of a figure 8. the carving was minimal, and simple, so Ben took care of that.

then I frosted the sides blue, and the top white. I also covered the cake board with blue scrapbook paper, and then we covered that with butcher paper to protect the blue from frosting drips.

The next step was sprinkling on crushed graham crackers for the beach, and Ben kind of molded the head into a face, for me to cover with fondant. I wish I would have colored the fondant a flesh color, but oh well, it's white. Kiersten ate Kara's rice krispie body, so we decided to bury her in the sand. Ben cut some marshmallows in half, and we just covered them with the crumbs.

Ben gave her some beachy hair, and I piped on some grass. I couldn't find my grass tip, so I just used a large star tip, but we figured it would mostly get covered by the palm tree anyway.

to cover the tree trunk, we melted some chocolate, and spread that on. I did pour some burning hot chocolate on Ben's hand, unfortunately. Good thing he's such a tough guy! When it was set up, he drilled holes in the bottom and used sucker sticks to secure it to the cake. I piped the border, because we didn't like how the sand was meeting the blue.

I figured we weren't gonna be fooling anyone into thinking it was an actual island anyway, so it didn't have to be realistic.

here's a closeup of the buried Kara. She's a little surprised, I think.

He drilled another hole in the top, and stuck a toothpick down. We then made little holes in all the leaves with another toothpick, and just slid them on. It was what really brought the cake to life. Then he just clipped off the top of the toothpick that was sticking out, and we had a finished palm tree. It was looking cute, but we thought it needed a few more finishing touches.

good thing I bought these swedish fish. I didn't know what I was buying them for, but figured I could use them for something at her party. I cut out those little fondant flowers last night. Ben didn't want me to. He said they would turn a classy cake trashy. That made me laugh because classy wasn't exactly how I was envisioning the cake anyway. I wanted them all over the beach, but he thought they'd be better just in the grass, and I think he was right.

I think the two of us working together made a pretty fun cake. I do think it looks better in person, than the pictures, but so do most things, I guess. It was lots of fun working on this together, and it is my new favorite cake I've made. I'm glad I didn't cop out and just do cupcakes. It may have been cuter with the hula Kara that was supposed to be dancing under the tree, but this turned out to be less work, and that's not something I'm gonna complain about! I sure love that Ben, what a great dad, right?

here comes trouble...

for anyone who wonders what TROUBLE looks like... here ya go a week of crawling, followed by a week of pulling up/cruising, and now she wants to tackle the stairs, yikes

in with the new.

I really missed my family in utah on new year's eve. For some reason, I just really missed them all this year, and couldn't help wondering when I'll be spending a holiday with them again. I know, pity party, but if you know my family, you'll understand why I miss them so much. We had a fun new year's with the girls, despite my missing being in Utah. Here are a few pictures of the festivities. we had a few confetti poppers and things, but since it was pretty cold out, we set them off in the kitchen. Ben was nice enough to clean up the mess, but I did find a few of the caps in the livingroom the next day. Those things really flew!

Kara wanted her picture taken with the mess, silly girl.

Kiersten got to drink out of the glass with no straw too this time. She talked about it all night, how she did such a good job.

toasting the new year. sorry about the mess in the background, we were packing away Christmas decor earlier in the day.

We spent a good amount of the evening playing wii party, which is Kara's new favorite thing to do. Even Kiersten could play some of the games. But at midnight, we went downstairs for the countdown, and to play some party games Kara planned for us. She made us do a freeze dance, and the limbo, and karate. I don't know why karate is a party game, but I guess it is, so we had a competition. I was out in the first round. I think Kiersten won the championship. Ben and Kara were better at limbo than Kiersten and me. Evie was already in bed, and had to miss Kara's party.

Kara is back in school this week. She wanted me to take a picture of this snowman she made today. She was the class helper today, and also took her birthday party invitations, so she was pretty happy to be the center of attention so much at school in one day.

I got this popcorn popper from Vicky for Christmas. We have never had one since we've been married. The girls didn't know there was any way to make it, other than in the microwave. So they have thought this is pretty cool. We've already used it 8 or 9 times. I think I took this picture the first time we used it. Don't they look impressed?