Nothing in the clean fridge . . .

. . . except a half naked baby!

When I got home from Seattle (I still need to get all the photos together to post) I went through the fridge to clean it out. Then I decided to give the whole thing a really good scrub. You know the type of attention it needs - taking all the shelves out and basically detailing it on the inside. I got off maple syrup from the door, something sticky in the back and I could almost see some leftovers had grown legs and were about to run out on their own accord. EWWW!

When I was putting things back I came across this

Eliza had wiggled out of her pants and climbed into the fridge to get either her baby food or Jeremy's medicine. She's a quick one. Cute, but into stuff.

Fun Rainbow Cake

I got this idea from Jon's cousin's wife who in return got it from this blog (don't you love how a good idea can travel?). On Sunday Jon had to go into work and my mother-in-law was watching my cute nephew and brought him over to my house to play. I had already decided to make this cake and it made it even more fun teaching my nephew how to lick cake batter off the beater (which he didn't like doing - he did end up licking the bowl for me).

Cassie is really wanting to know how to cook and so we made a white cake mix cake and she separated the yolks for me and did all the measuring. She also was allowed to use the hand mixer all by herself including putting in the beaters. She is getting to be so independent.

Next we divided the batter into several different bowls and added some gel food coloring. This is where Jeremy and Evan came to help us stir the color into the batter. We made purple, green, yellow, pink and orange batter.

You dump the batter into the cake pans on top of each other in the center and wait while it slowly creeps to the center and then you bake it.

As a side note . . . during this process Jeremy found a clear plastic wrapper from a Capri Sun straw and balled it up and stuck it up his nose. He kind of freaked out when it got stuck there and tried to use his finger to get it out and managed to push it up further. I should have taken pictures of him during this process, but I totally forgot. We made several attempts to extract it and after a call to the pediatrician we ended up going to Urgent Care to get it out between taking the cake out of the oven and frosting it. Ironically the cousin we got the rainbow cake idea from also balled up a gum wrapper when he was a kid and got it stuck up his nose. I wonder if there is a connection? Hmmm . . .

Cassie (who would NEVER put a straw wrapper in her nose) made some yummy butter icing from scratch and frosted the cake. We thought it would be fun to do plain white for the frosting and get a surprise when we cut into it. The top layer was done well as far as putting the colored batter into the center and letting it even out on it's own. The bottom one, however, was a less care driven and I can now see the results.

It was a really fun project and now she wants to try making a zebra cake with dark chocolate and white cake. I'm so glad that she wants to learn how to cook. I'm hoping that she continues learning and that we can do lots of fun projects like this again.

Family Pictures Again!

I figured out what the problem is with downloading the photos. I'm only allowed a certain amount of space for pictures and these fies are really big. Here are some complete family photos. One of these lucky pictures is going to get a place of honor in the hallway. The others will find some other place (like on a blog or something).

I know which one is my favorite. How about you? I'll try and be sneaky and post the rest in a different post on the same day and they should follow right after these.

Family Pictures

I've been wanting a good family picture since Eliza was born. Every day that I pass by the family photo on my wall in the hallway I think , "Great family photo - where's the rest of the family?" One of my mommy friends from Cassie's school came and took pregnancy photos for me. That's one BIG belly.
Then she came over and took cute newborn pictures of Eliza when she was less than one week old.

She included in her overly low price a family photo session. I wanted to wait a little so Eliza would be a little older and I would be a little slimmer. Well Eliza got older, but I appear not to be slimming yet. I kept waiting and waiting until finally I said, "Enough . . . I can always take more family pictures later."

We met her at Seal Beach and I brought my great-grandmother's red velvet chair (thank you Natalie for letting me borrow it) to mimic some of the cool photo shoots I see on my favorite photo blogs. I love how they turned out. Cindy was even able to get pictures of Jeremy looking right at the camera. She went to get individual shots of the kids and the females did a little better at posing than the male did. She did manage to capture the essence of the family at this point in our lives. Thanks Cindy (who I don't even think knows about this blog)!

Here are a few highlights from that day.

I'm having some technical difficulties with uploading more photos. I'll post more later.

I think they are lovely and I had lots of fun taking them. I think I'm going to try to take more family photos in the future. They are only going to be this little for a very small time.

Jeremy the T-ball Team Clown

Jeremy is playing tee-ball this year and loving it. Although he did tell me that he likes soccer better because you get oranges in the middle of the game and a snack after. Jon is an assistant coach on the team and a friend of ours is the manager. They are the Angles (as in the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim - I still laugh at that name).He had a lot of fun when he put on the catcher's gear. He ran out there banging on his chest like a gorilla and making everyone laugh.

One of the parents told me, "He's such a riot. What a fun kid." As I got over the embarrassment of it being my kid running around like a literal ape I thought "Yah, he is" He looks sooooo incredibly adorable in his uniform. Just like a little grown up man. The baseball uniforms look so clean cut to me. Maybe that's just my own image, but they always look nice when they are clean. That is until my son gets a hold of it and puts his own style into it.That would be

1. Facing not towards the batter

2. Hat on backwards as soon as he leaves the dug out.

3. Glove in a ready position behind his bum (you never know when the ball will get you from behind)

4. One pant leg up "gansta style".

It's never a dull moment with him. As he came in from being the catcher I wanted a picture of him in the gear and I discovered a shamrock sticker on his nose.

"It's lucky mom" he explained in a matter of fact tone. As he was walking away he turned back toward me and gave me an impish grin. Yep, never a dull moment with this budding comedian.

I love you, Jeremy!!!!

My new domestic diva side

I have been surfing around on the internet looking at all sorts of cute crafty things to do. I don't consider myself a "sew-er" in the least bit, but I can follow simple instructions and occasionally sew a straight line. I found a bunch of baby ideas and have now sewn two pillowcase dresses for Eliza. Last week I came across this totally adorable idea for sewing baby bibs out of bath towels. I was looking for the pattern to make the hand towel bibs, but this is much cuter (and cheaper).



Here are the supplies needed: freezer paper, patterned bath towel, bib you like the shape of, bias tape, Velcro, rotary cutter (or scissors).

Freezer paper - this lets you trace an existing bib that you like the shape of. Then you iron it lightly to the towel and you can rotary cut it out without pins.Peel the pattern off the top and admire the pretty pattern that is going to be on your bib.Now you might need to rescue your baby from under the chair at some point. That's Okay, she shouldn't slow you down too much.

Sew on some coordinating bias tape around the edges.
Then sew on some Velcro and PrEsTo . . . a baby bib.

I love the results. What do you think?

The Happiest Place on Earth

Our yearly passes expired on Friday so we took the opportunity for a Disney-overload this week. Two of those times Jon couldn't go and I had the kids all to myself in the Magic Kingdom. Jeremy and Cassie were so good about going on rides that we could take Eliza on. She loves Disneyland (who doesn't?) with all the colors and noise. I'm not sure when we'll be getting passes again. It might not be for months so we needed our Disney fix.


On Tuesday we went after school and it was EMPTY in the park. Part of the reason it was so empty was because it was cold and had rained heavily in the morning. It seemed like it was just us and the tourists. The kids got to ride on tons of rides and never stood in line for more than about 15 minutes.



We hadn't been on It's a Small World since Christmas and we went to check out the new Disney characters that they put in. I was REALLY not looking forward to seeing the changes, but I have to admit that I wasn't as upset as I thought I would be. The caracters are done in the same look as the other dolls. There is even a USA part in there now complete with barnyards, corn, cowboys and indians.


Do they belong there? What do you think?

As we were leaving the ride I noticed this postcard. Now I'm not saying that I'm always grammatically correct when I'm writing, but this was bad enough for a nine year old to notice.


Opening quotes without closing them.

Multiple exclamation marks in the middle of a phrase.

No ending punctuation.


Somebody needs to spellcheck Disneyland!


Cassie and Jeremy went on the rockets several times in a row. Eliza loved watching them. She'd laugh and squeel each time Cassie would call out to her.

Thursday
They remembered to wear their hats. There is only places that it is appropriate to wear beautiful golden mouse ears and a pirate hat and we like to take the opportunity when we can.I like to call this a random mommy sighting. Just to prove to my kids that I was there.YEAH!!!! Daddy came after work. (aka reinforcements for a tired mom)
There is a lot I can say for the next pictures.

Have you ever seen "A Christmas Story"? She's lucky it wasn't that cold.

I don't want to write this . . . but . . .

it was Eliza's first table top pole dance. She was so cute dancing to the music and so excited by all the attention she got from other families.

We closed the park down on Thursday.

Friday the passes expired. Bummer.
I don't like being without Disneyland passes - even if I konw that it will only be for a couple of months. I love taking the kids in the afternoon for a couple of hours. I feel so lucky to live close enough to have these kind of experiences with them.

We'll see you in a few Mickey!