A multitude of cakes, sister pulls faces & a birthday party x 2

My niece had a birthday May 1st.  She wanted to have a Monster High birthday party theme.  My sister asked me if I'd do her cake.  After looking at pictures online I decided to create a coffin.  My niece had the Dracua Laura doll.  Here's what I came up with:

Brookelyn has recently learned how to XBox.  She rather likes her controller.  She thought she was pretty hot stuff playing with her brother and our neighbor friend, Alex.

Brooke is always doing this "OH!" face.  I haven't been able to catch it on camera for months.  I finally did it!  It cracks me up every time she does it and she does it ALL the time!

While Travis has been home this week he found my backpack I got when I went to Oregon a few summers ago.  In order to mow the lawn & keep sister happy, he put her in the backpack.  She rather likes it too.  The only problem is that my hair is so long she can reach it & yank it - HARD.  Guess we'll leave the packing to her dad for now.

Tonight we celebrated Nash's 7th birthday & Brookelyn's 1st birthday.  I was only going to make 1 cake for Nash, 1 cake for Brooke to have to herself & 1 cake for Brooke that everyone could eat.  However, I showed a picture of this amazing LEGO cake to Travis and his comment was, "That looks hard.  I don't think you can do that."  Thus, the bet was on.  So, FOUR cakes later.......the LEGO cake:

 I made marshmallow fondant from scratch & used fruit roll ups for the LEGOS on the side of the cake.  I used real LEGOS on top.  I'm pretty sure the LEGOS in the picture of the cake I saw were all fondant.  Yeah, I don't like fondant enough to do that.  So we'll just wash us some LEGOS!

Here's the cake that Nash picked the pan out for (easiest cake I've ever done for a birthday!):

Here's Brookelyn's cake I made to share with everyone:

This was Brookelyn's cake to have to herself:

Opening presents:

Grandpa Scott & Grandma Kris got him his own "big" camp chair:

They also got him this cool cooler/lunchbox to put treats in to take fishing (lucky for him he now also has a brand new fishing pole too thanks to Grandpa & Grandma Reeder):

Opening presents with Brookelyn:

Singing "Happy Birthday"

I love the look on B's face here:

Brookelyn vs cake (I absolutely LOVE the look on her face here):

Travis gave her a spoon & she proceeded to use it to eat the cake the entire time!

Can you see her double piggy tails?  I was so excited she had enough hair to do that for the first time today! She was not happy about it, but I think it's adorable!

Cousin Sunny

Our friend Heidi & her adorable kiddos:

Miss Sunny helping B eat her cake:

We had lots of fun tonight.  It was great to see everyone that came.  The only thing I was sad about was that I was dishing up cake/ice cream for everyone & didn't get to watch B dismantle her own little cake.  My mom was kind enough that when I said "Go take pictures!" she did it without pouting! :)  The kids got lots of fun presents & Nash has been building LEGOS since everyone left (even though he asked if he could have a movie night!)  

I can't believe my baby boy is SEVEN already and my baby girl is ONE!  It seems that every year goes by faster and faster.  I remember thinking when I was a kid that time dragged by so slowly that it seemed I'd NEVER grow up!  Now I wish time would just slow down!  Every age is so much fun.  They are all different and they all come with their own challenges, but I do love watching each of my kids grow into their own little person.  I'm just afraid that one day, way too soon, I will wake up and they won't be their own little person anymore.  They'll finally be their own person and out living their lives without me!

The next few weeks are going to be crazy around here.  I have one more week of work (next week).  Brookelyn is having another ear surgery next Wednesday.  Samantha has her end of the year dance recital on the 19th.  Nash has his last soccer game of the season on May 19.  Before long Sam & Nash will both be in summer school & Caleb will be going to summer camp with Miss Shannon.  I hope I can squeeze 1 session of swim lessons in before summer school too.  I'm afraid our summer is already half gone!  Don't blink!

Talent Search 2012, a birthday party & powdered donuts

Last weekend Samantha competed at Talent Search 2012.  My niece, Jade, got to compete too.  It was fun for me to watch both girls.  Jade hasn't competed before so this was new territory for her.  It was fun for me to watch someone who was excited about the hustle and bustle and not have to listen to them complain about how it's taking FOREVER!  (Actually, Sam's usually pretty good about keeping the complaining at these things to a minimum but the judges DID take FOREVER this time!)

Here are the girls with their awards.  They both got a trophy as well as a ribbon.  The ribbon for Jade was for participating in the dance down.  The ribbon for Sam was for participating in the drill down.  Plus, Sam got a medallion for taking 3rd in the dance down for her age group.

These cute girls look more alike every time I look at their pictures!  I love their matching glasses too!  I can't believe how old they both are!  I swear they were both babies just yesterday!

Speaking of how old these girls are, May 1st was Jade's 8th birthday.  We went out for cookies and ice cream.  My sister mentioned that we hadn't taken any pictures of these girls together since probably Christmas.  Despite Brook having what my other kids call "her boy hair do", I snapped some photos.  I think my sister got a few better ones.  It's fun to have girls so close in age again. Sam & Jade are 15 months apart & these two are only 2 months & a day apart.  Brookie looks as old (and chubbier than) Sunny!

Yesterday I took Brooke to watch Nash's soccer game in Nibley.  He's playing better at every game.  He's goalie (in the red shirt).  The sun was shining right in our eyes most of the game.  They kinda got creamed at this game (6-0).  Half this team was a year older than our team.  Their previous game they played a team where all the kids on it were a year older - they got creamed at that game too.  It makes me smile though because Nash always says, "They beat us __ to __, but I still had a lot of fun!  And that's what matter's, right mom?!"  Love it.

Tonight we got to dance about 45 minutes early so we ran across the street to Smiths to get pull ups.  Well, as my luck would have it, they had several items on their 10/$10 sale.  One of those items happened to be powdered donuts.  Powdered donuts are Caleb's FAVORITE (along with pink milk and waffles).  So, I let the kids each pick a drink and we got the rest of our 10 items as powdered donuts.  Why?  Well, Caleb loves them and I figured they'd be easier than letting everyone pick something else and make me walk all over the store.  Unfortunately, I still had to walk all over the store because Samantha HATES donuts (yes, she reminds me every time I try to get her to eat one).  So, 40 minutes later, we walk out of Smiths with about 7 of the 6 pack of powdered donuts.  Brookelyn was freaking out trying to grab everything of everybody else's.  When I had Caleb strapped in I asked him if he'd give Brooke a donut.  Not sure if that was a smart idea or not.  My vehicle looked like someone had been having a crack party after she was done.  She sure was happy though!

Tomorrow I get to make a Monster High cake for Jade's friend birthday party.  Should be interesting - I'm making my own pattern here.  Saturday is our big yard sale/bake sale fundraiser for Relay for Life.  I'm hoping we have good weather and an even better turn out....cross your fingers!

Sam's Youtube debut

My SEM students have been putting together podcasts since February.  The official name of their project is "How Things Work".  They were to pick a topic they wanted to know more about and how it works.  Sam chose the electric & acoustic guitar (gee, I wonder where she came up with that idea? :) )  So, the kids had to research their topic, take notes and write a script.  After their script was written, I would video them.  Sam did hers the other night.  She's kinda my lab rat in figuring out how to do this.  If I can figure out how to turn the video so you don't have to watch it sideways I'd be much happier.  Anyone know how to do that?
The next step for me is to figure out how to get all the videos of my students uploaded to my SEM website (it's a uen website).  Anyone know how to do that?  I'm thinking if I can zip the file to make it smaller I can do it.  Not sure exactly how to go about that yet.  Still working out the kinks.  I should be a pro by the time I'm done doing 28 of these suckers!
Happy viewing!

Pictures!

In my last phone dump post I posted a picture of Brookelyn eating a strawberry.  It so happens I took a bunch on my camera of that same strawberry eating.  You can tell how excited she is about it.

I love this one.  She looks like: "mmmm..this is so good.  What are you looking at?!"

This is such a Caleb face

This is totally a Caleb face too!  You can tell she's watching me trying to figure out what I'm doing.

Sam with her newest dance trophy.  This was at the Clearfield High School competition last weekend.  She competes again tomorrow night.  She'll have another trophy and probably a couple ribbons from that one.  I really need to get her a trophy shelf....soon.

It would appear that summer is already here.  Caleb has been digging like no tomorrow in the dirt by the fence in the backyard.  Apparently, he's not only digging in it, he's also eating and snorting it.

And here's where I realize I haven't taken any photos of Nash this past week or two.  That poor kid!  I always say he has middle child syndrome!  No wonder!  Actually, he's been sick.  Yesterday at work I got a phone call telling me he threw up in class.  The poor kid had to lay in the sick room for two hours before I could get off work and get there!  I didn't answer my phone when they called because I was with my students.  My class had just gotten underway and it's an hour and fifteen minute class.  When I did finally get the message, my fifth graders were on their way into class.  I did a half class with them so that I could get all the explanations they needed before I dismissed them.  Then I had a 10 minute drive from the school I was at to his school!  Poor kid actually ended up throwing up about five times yesterday.  He was home again today and seems to be doing much better.  I'm going to send him to school tomorrow despite the pleas I know I'm going to hear!  It was actually terrible timing for him to get sick.  I was observed TWICE today so I couldn't stay home with him!  Good thing Grandma closes at work on Thursdays and Grandpa was available between when Grandma left & I could get there.