www.soggycheerios.com

Okay- for real. I've got it figured out and set up and ready to go (mostly) so join me at:

www.soggycheerios.com

See you there!

PS. Apparently the link wasn't working earlier- hopefully it is now

A Cake a Week

One of my goals this year is to decorate a cake a week. Of course the preference is to have someone pay me to do it- but if not then I'll either make a cake for a friend or decorate a dummy. Anyway- this week's cake was for a man named Peter. Peter's wife requested something with the New York Yankees. Peter wanted chocolate cake with white frosting. This is what they got:


It's supposed to look like a Yankee uniform and the NY logo on the side is a little hard to see. The top is a baseball (hopefully that's obvious) and the Peter! is supposed to look like an autograph. The frosting is navy blue- but looks black in the picture.

It's chocolate fudge cake with chocolate cream puff filling and white buttercream frosting. I brushed the tops of each of the layers with melted chocolate.

Our 'magical' dinner

Steve and I are trying to be healthier and are both doing the Weight Watchers plan. In order to fill up and get in our 5 fruits and veggies a day I have a goal of having two (different color) veggies and one fruit at dinner. I'm also trying to incorporate more fish into our diet. So tonight for dinner we had 'pancho villa tilapia', brown rice, acorn squash, steamed broccoli and cantalope. My girls eat pretty well- but it usually takes some encouragement to get them to try new things. Actually it usually takes some encouragement to get Megan to try old things a lot of the time. ("I don't like chicken! It's yucky to me! Followed by, 'hey, this isn't yucky- this is yummy to me!' after 20 minutes of trying to get her to eat it.)

The fish was baked in foil packets- so they couldn't see them. So before I opened them I told them that we were having magic dinner, and if they ate it then they would grow big and strong. (Hey, it's the truth!) They were all excited to try some and all ate it! We told them the broccoli (not something we usually serve) were 'magic trees' and they ate those too. Cantalope is a favorite as is rice so those weren't a big deal. Ashley ate and enjoyed the squash as well. So YAY!

Random things

Our next door neighbor is a foster parent. For the last year and a half a 10 year old has been living with them. We walked him to school all last year and he's a friend of Ashley's. I found out yesterday that he's being adopted. YAY! So great for him.

I went shopping today and bought lots of fresh fruits and veggies. Annika just came in and told me she was hungry and wanted a snack and handed me a carton of fresh mushrooms. I told her she wouldn't like them. She insisted she would. So I gave her one. She took a bite and proclaimed, 'I like it!' Then threw the rest away. She just has to be right...

Today at Costco I saw two sets of twin boys. The first mom had two other kids with her and I commented that the transition from 3-4 was my hardest. She said it was her hardest too- but that the twins were numbers 5 and 6! They were 8 weeks old (and tiny!) Then I saw another mom with twin boys on the way out. She asked if Annika and Cori were twins (common question actually- maybe if Annika had more hair she'd look older). I told her that they weren't- they were just close in age. She told me her older two were 15 months apart. Her twins were 7 months. We keep joking that when/if we get pregnant again we should have twin boys. Then we'd for sure have a boy and he'd have a brother (something that concerns me actually- if I'm not going to have two I'd rather just have more girls).

hmmm...

So it's see the full pictures and have my blog be screwy or see only the left two thirds of the pictures in the slideshow... preferences?? Know how to fix it?

Pictures from Hawaii (but I'm sparing you the ones of me in a bathing suit)

Flash Slideshow

Back to the real world

After spending all day yesterday sleeping off the trip I've got to wake myself up and get busy today. School is in, I'm hosting two different activities in the next two days and it seems there are a million things to do.

It was really really nice to have the vacation though and have no where that we had to go and nothing that we had to do. You'd think that it would refresh me and leave me ready to hit the ground running- but instead I think it's made me more tired...