Well, its all about cake these days. I did Lizzie's cake a couple weeks ago. Last week our Stake had a film festival and a culinary cake competition. Our branch won best overall for the film, it was a blast to make. We had very talented people working on it! At some point I am hoping they will put it up on YouTube or something so ya'll can see it. It is a hoot. For the cake competition I won a prize ($15 gift cert. to cakelove) for the most creative cake. It was really fun to make although it was a hectic weekend and I was pressed for time.

The girls helped me with the fish, we made them out of starburst candy.

After we watched all the films everyone got to chow down on the cakes. You could spot people who ate mine a mile off... blue lips, blue teeth and blue tongues! Cake number ten (behind mine with the raspberries) won best taste and best overall, I thought it looked beautiful!

Last night I remembered a bit late that I needed to make cupcakes for Samantha's school. They give cupcakes to every child the month of their birthday so today a bunch of us moms dropped cupcakes off for the August and Sept. birthdays. I think it is awesome and its always fun to do the cupcakes. However at 1 AM it wasn't seeming quite so fun. I copped out of the elaborate deco I was originally planning to do and just make M&M balloons. (BTW I discovered that in moments of desperation we often have good ideas! I came up with the brilliant idea of using our leftover Krispy Kreme box for the cupcakes. Perfect!)

Billy came down and looked at them this morning and said "nice flowers" ((sigh.)) Note to self: no more doing cupcakes at 1 AM.

Lizzie is 1!

Lizzie is officially a one year old! Actually she hit one a few weeks ago on September 2, so I am a bit late in posting about it. Although we have no family in the area to celebrate with us, we had a marvelous time. We have an adopted "aunt" who came to celebrate with us. Thanks for the great pics Aunt Barb!

The cake: We have a tradition of naming the cakes I make if they are animals. It was over 90 degrees, very humid and of course our AC was broken. (Still is, thank heavens it has cooled off.) Anyhow the frosting was melting faster than I could pipe it out and running down the sides of the cake... thus the poor bear was named "Droopy."
We had to work with Lizzie a bit to convince her to blow out a candle, she is a bit more timid than her ferocious siblings and took a while to warm up to the idea. Here the girls celebrate Lizzie's success while practicing. I love how supportive my children are of each others' successes. Did you notice they seem to be wearing the same outfits they wore the first day of school? Wow, you are observant! This IS the first day of school. Poor Lizzie.. doomed to have her birthday on the day she has to go back to prison every couple of years ;).
Getting ready for the big moment! She was much more interested in getting her hands on the cake than she was in the candle. I finally had to take the candle off the cake and hold it up to her so she could blow it out.
Being a cautious eater, here she is making sure I haven't botched the thing.
Hmmmm not bad!
Grandy and Papa always send fun packages for birthdays and holidays! Here is Lizzy enjoy the first of many to come! She had a fabulous time with the box.. first it was a drum, then it was a table, then it was a thing to hold on to while she danced, then it was a thing to climb, then it was a thing to sit on... Mom decided to stop there before it became a thing to fall off of.
Once we got the box open lots more fun was to be had with the bubble wrap. At first she was rather terrified as her more ferocious sisters made a racket jumping on them. Then she became possessive and growled when anyone tried to pop her bubbles.


Fun picnic basket! So fun in fact that her sisters often sneak it away from her to play with it themselves.
Reading the card. Yes, my children are brilliant.. reading by age 1! Sadly they not only inherited my brains but also my terrible eyesight....

BACK TO SCHOOL

Everyone is in school except Lizzie. The first day of school is always bittersweet for me. I do miss the girls when they are gone. Everyone was pretty much ready to get back into the swing of things. Sam was a bit hesitant as she did not enjoy her teacher last year. However her teacher this year seems terrific and she is loving her class so far. She is in a 5th grade class of gifted students. They are digging into the 6th grade math curriculum. I better start brushing up!

Emma is in 2nd grade and really likes her teacher as well. She announced to me yesterday that she is the only kid in her class that takes lunch to school, but she is glad. She knows we reduce waste that way and she gets more of the food she actually likes, being a somewhat picky eater. Fairfax county provides pretty good lunches. There are some areas that need improvement but generally the food is healthy and tastes ok. Looks like Emma is going to be heading to the gifted center as well next year. It will be nice for her and Sam to be in the same school for a year before Sam heads to middle school (talk about feelings of denial!)
Mandi has started Kindergarten! She has the same teacher Sam and Emma had and is very happy, she was really hoping to get her. She is probably the youngest in her class as she turned 5 a couple of weeks after school started. She was very happy to be the first in her class to have a birthday. We will see how much she likes it when she is the last in her class to get her drivers license. Her picture really shows off her spunky personality. The P.E. teacher told Samantha the other day (while she was waiting for the GT bus) that once Mandi steps foot in the gym, she OWNS the gym. I will have to find out exactly how she is owning the place chuckle.

While the girls are in school, Lizzie has been having fun getting mom all to herself. Her favorite activities include stealing the mouse from the computer desk and removing the batteries, eating dog food when mom isn't looking, vacuuming the floor (its a competition to see who gets to it first, Lizzie or the dog,) climbing anything she can get a leg up on and, of course, learning to walk!

BACK IN BUSINESS....FOR NOW

Well, I have not posted for some time. We headed up to Palmyra to see the Hill Cumorah pageant July 18 - 20 then flew to Utah July 22 for 3 weeks. When we got back our house was devoid of beds, furniture and clothing as we had all our hardwood floors refinished. Our whole house is hardwood flooring except the basement and the kitchen, so there was no way to do it while we were actually living in the house. Here is Max enjoying our nice new smooth and pretty living room floor. Billy managed to get the entire house packed into the attic or the basement... my hero! We decided while all the furniture was packed away that it would be a good time to paint everything so we got busy painting. Sam's room became "paint central"


In the midst of all this craziness, we have had some trouble with our camera and it looked like we lost all 200 of our pictures from Utah in the process of transferring them to the computer. Man was I BUMMED!!!! However a few weeks later Billy, while working to delete a bunch of stuff off the computer so we could upload a video of Lizzie's birthday, discovered all my pictures hiding in the recycle bin. (Did I mention.. he is my hero?) I am very happy he found them and once again feel motivated to start posting although I continue to have problems with the camera. Perhaps it is time to send a letter to Santa. We are still working on putting the house back together and fighting off various varmints. The floor guys let in mice who apparently had a REAL party while we were in Utah. We found a dead bird in the basement, also let in by the floor guys.

YUCK!

Shortly after school started we discovered lice...yes LICE on Samantha and Emma. I have never in my life had lice and neither has Billy. Luckily we have contained it to just the two girls. Getting rid of them has been a P A I N! I am not sure if they picked them up from someone in Utah or from a friend here. They are nasty critters and going through two heads of hair every day for 3 weeks is not my idea of fun, it has taken me about 2 hours a day, sometimes more and really sucked up my time for other things. Well at least life is not boring!

The Lizard

Lizzie is growing so fast. Her nickname has been evolving from hiccups (which she rarely has anymore) to Lizard. Billy is mainly to blame chuckle. She is into yoga, mainly the downward dog position. She does it much better than I have ever been able to do it.


Mandi shot this picture of her. She looks eager to finally achieve her lifelong goal of gnawing on the camera.












Lizzie taking a breather at Emma's Bday party.













She has her first tooth! Of course she has to do things her own way so instead of growing the center two in the bottom or the top, she is growing one tooth on top one over from the center?!
She is supremely camera shy for some reason, every time we have tried to get a picture of this tooth she clamps her mouth shut... it is so funny. Billy ended up having to force the issue as I did want this pic before her other teeth break through.

Emma's Birthday!

Emma is SEVEN!! I am in denial (as I usually am every time my kids get a bit older.)
She wanted a horse party at our pool (go figure.) We decided to re-name a few games to make them horse friendly. We played horse horse pony (duck duck goose), stomp the fly (kids tie a balloon around each ankle and then try to stomp everyone else's "flies" without getting their own popped,) and mustang river round up (freeze tag, only with a wrangler, a corral and having to swim under captured mustangs to free them.) We also had a pinata and of course a cake. Our camera battery died near the end so we have no pics of Emma blowing out her candles or opening presents. Oh well.








Being silly










Getting ready for the pinata. It wasn't til later that I realized both boys escaped this picture.
Emma playing with Lizzie in her luxury yacht


The cake. I am really glad I decided to take a picture of it before bringing it to the pool.... our camera battery died during the pinata fun. I am not a very good artist so the horse was a bit of a challenge but I think most people did recognize it as being one snicker.
Overall it was a fun but busy weekend with the last day of school, Emma's birthday and Father's day all in the same weekend.

School is out!!

I am always so happy when school gets out and I get time with my girls. Here in Fairfax County they start the day after labor day and finish mid-June which feels late to me. The kids don't have their minds on school after Memorial day when the pool opens. Last year they didn't get out until June 22 which was horrid. This year since we didn't use any snow days they were able to move it up to June 13 which was much better. Emma thought it was a great birthday present :) Now we will be spending our days at the pool, we practically live there in the summer time. We go in the morning, sometimes we stay through lunch and then we go back again after Billy is home from work for an evening swim. It will be challenging this year keeping an eye on 3 swimmers and a bobber. Sam and Emma are very good swimmers now. Mandi is getting there quickly but I still need to keep a close eye on her as her feet don't quite touch the bottom yet.

Here are some end of the school year pics:
Samantha's strings concert. My word the place was packed. They said this was the largest group of 4th graders to take on strings that this school has ever had. She has really enjoyed playing the violin this year. I am hoping she will keep at it for next year.
Samantha's invention! Samantha had to invent a machine for her final science project. She teamed up with her friend and they built this handy dandy pet feeder!
Emma with her lovely teacher, Ms. May. She was such a perfect fit for Emma and she provided Emma with advanced work so she wouldn't be bored in class, I sure wish Emma could have her for 2nd grade as well! Ms. May is just a lovely person, we will miss her and I really hope she is around when Mandi hits 1st grade. Sam's teacher was..well.. lets just say they had a wee personality conflict. She is a nice lady but I don't feel she as a teacher was able to serve some of Samantha's needs as a GT student. Two days before school was out, watching Sam struggle to finish a bunch of math homework using concepts they had just learned that day I think I finally conceded that the nickname people have been using may not be too far off the mark.... Miller, the killer (tee hee.)
I usually let the girls keep a few of their favorite pieces of work from the year and then throw the rest out. We take pictures of some if they are hard to part with. Lizzie had great fun with Emma's "discard" pile! She sure made a mess. Looking at it, and considering how many students there are in the area, I think its amazing we actually have any trees around here, good grief.