A little contest...

I'm looking for a name for this cake. It's six layers of moist chocolate cake brushed with melted chocolate before frosting and topped with dark chocolate gnache and chocolate curls. YUM! So what would be a good name?

The Week in Review

I live in Las Vegas. Now it's the end of June and *Newsflash* it's hot in Las Vegas at the end of June. Now don't take this as complaining- it's not- I'll trade 115 degrees for a couple months over snow any day. Especially when snow play means long underwear, three pairs of socks (a person), coats, hats, mittens and on and on and on and brr! While summer play means swimsuits, spray on sunscreen and water. I'll take that anyday. We just play at the water playgrounds...


Swimming..

Megan didn't want her picture taken.
My NBF's baby (isn't she cute?)

Summer also means summer haircuts. This is Megan (W- not our Megan), Ashley and Hannah after I cut all there hair. I LOVE Ashley's hair short. It's a good length for her and always looks nice- I'm glad she decided to stop trying to grow it out.
Meanwhile Cori is learning how to walk. She loves walking in the pool. My inlaws have a shallow part in their pool and with the floaty Cori was cruising. It was so cute!! I'm apparently not smart enough to figure out how to load just one video so there are some others there too- several of her practicing walking from daddy to mommy, annika wanting in on the action, and cori playing peek-a-boo with the camera.

My Recent Shots

Random Reviews

Mozilla Firefox- Such a better browser then Internet Explorer. My favorite part? You can open websites in tabs. So I can have 20 sites open at the same time and just click from tab to tab at the top of the window. I'm not explaining it as cool as it really is. But you can download it here for free. Also- you can open favorites in tabs as well. Makes browsing favorite blogs fast and easy. Check it out (it'll also let you import your favorites from IE). Really, really check it out though. Did you do it yet? GO NOW!

Coppertone no rub sunscreen- Seriously the best stuff ever. Here we have to sunscreen for every event that we'll be outside more then 10 minutes- and with four kids it's a lot of work and time to rub them all down. This stuff is SO fast. It's also effective. I still do lotion on their faces but yesterday at the park I started to sunscreen up my three girls (the baby was sleeping) the same time as my friend did her one. By the time I finished she was just finishing up his back and shoulders and still had to do everything else. Worth every penny.

Dyson- I love mine. Seriously LOVE. Not sure if I've shared that before. Works wonders- also it's fun to see how much crap it picks up...

My mom- I know she's not really a product- but having her live close is so nice. I'm worried she's going to think less of me now that she sees how dirty my house can get and how obnoxious my kids can be. It's fun to have her to hang out with and to have her be a part of my kids daily lives.

My NBF (new best friend) Emily- As long as I'm commenting on people... Seriously she's awesome. She's so fun to hang out with and talk to and doesn't judge me for my dirty house or messy/mean/peeing constantly kids. The best part? Her girls and my girls play so well together. It's fab. She's also cool to just hang out constantly- which I love.

This site- I'm seriously loving the political comedy and irreverant humor...

I'm a good friend... but not really- an open letter to Sabra

Dear Sabra,
I know that when you called me and asked if I would store 'something' for you that I said it wouldn't be a problem. I didn't really think that it would be. But well, I'm really not that good of a friend. It's now a problem. You see, when the 'something' was delivered my kids played with it- for an hour- nicely. This doesn't happen often at our house. So I'm sorry, you can't have it. Then I started playing with it. I never knew that 'boy toys' could be so much fun. We don't have much experience with trains- but I think we're in love....I don't think that my girls play with the trains the same way that boys would though. Their favorite part? The 'train wash' and the 'round house' where they can put the trains to bed. Building tracks? eh. Bridges? eh. Abandoned mines? Not so much. But K will find his new trains nice and clean.. and well rested. Also, you'll be happy to know that there are 'twin trains' and 'mommy trains' and 'daddy trains'. Also, a little green one? Annika's favorite, it's the 'baby train'.

So anyway, don't worry about coming down. I know you want to see us and stuff- but we'll be busy- playing trains- and you can't have them!

Another cake, another old man

Here is the cake I did this weekend. I guess that 30 is the 'making fun of getting old' birthday. There were sayings around all the corners of the cake. It is all butter cream.

MIA

I got 'swimmer's ear' (massive painful ear infection) that has seriously killed me this week. Not helping was getting a crown prep for the root canal I got a couple weeks ago. So I've been on drugs and out of it most of the week. Sorry for my absence. I'll be caking it up tonight and tomorrow morning and will be back for show and tell tomorrow night.

An Oasis in the desert...

This weekend we went on a camping trip to a place outside of town (well, a ways out of town) in the middle of the desert. Here is the view from the parking lot. It's a true oasis in the Nevada desert with a natural warm spring that has been made into two swimming pools. It used to be owned by Howard Hughes but now belongs to my church who has improved the springs into pools. There is camping and swimming and it's surrounded by palm trees. Beautiful. We had a great time and came back a little burned. All our girls love the water. LOVE.

Ashley was swimming really well and doing all sorts of stunts. There are two 'cliffs' that you can jump from and she was braver then me. There was also a water slide (click the link for a video) and all the girls went down that over and over (well, except Cori). Megan is almost swimming. She's so close. There was an area that was shallow enough for Megan to walk in and she kept practicing swimming (she's in the back in the blue suit) under the rope. Annika LOVES the water and has no fear. She went down the slide about 20 times in a row by herself. The problem is that she doesn't realize that she doesn't know how to swim. She'd take off her floaties and not be able to figure out why she'd sink. Even Cori was having a blast in the water. She liked climbing up and down the steps in and out of the water.

We've not gone camping as a family in at least two years. Last summer was just so busy and stressful with Cori being a newborn and selling our house and moving that we never went anywhere. The girls really enjoyed the camping too. We were worried that it was going to be a really hot night- but the weather was perfect. They actually all slept quite well considering how many marshmellows and how much chocolate they ate.

It was nice to just spend the time together hanging out. My mom and sister Jessica came up on Friday night and swam with us. Jessica had to catch her plane back to Boston at midnight though so they didn't spend the night.