Playing catch up

As I have been getting ready for Grant's birthday at the end of this coming week, I realize that I never posted any pictures of Cole's birthday back in November.
So, even though he has been two for nearly four months now, here are some of my favorites of the birthday boy.

I love his sweet smiles.
He is a very happy guy and loves to get other people to smile back at him.
As you can imagine, it isn't very hard for him to do :)

He really liked his cake. Especially the teeny balls of fondant around the bottom.
He kept stealing them to play with and eat. Yummy!

Blowing out the birthday candles.

I thought I'd add a picture of just his cake as a side note. At church today in young womens we had an excellent lesson on individual worth. Of course it was geared towards the girls but at the end of the lesson the teacher had all of us, even the leaders, write down five things about ourselves that make us unique or special.

In situations like that I always have a hard time thinking of things to write down. I think most people do. I took me a while. But one thing that I did think of is that I love to try doing new things. Seeing a picture of Cole's cake reminded me of this.

I had never made a cake out of fondant before, I just wanted to try it. The whole thing was an experiment, from making the homemade fondant to the gum paste bow on top. It's not the best cake ever but it was my first try and I loved doing it.

My point is that I may not be good at a lot of things,
but one thing I am good at is trying to do new things.
That makes me different.
And I might not be good at all the things I try,
but I always have fun learning something new.
And that is one of the things that makes me...me.

So what's makes you...you?
Think about it.

Listen to this playlist: My Glee Faves

Puppies!!

My kids love to visit my sister Melanie. She's is a great aunt and they get so excited every time they see her. Of course what makes her more exciting and that much cooler these days is that her dog Subie just had a litter of puppies. Six new puppies, to be exact. (poor, exhausted and overworked momma. I'd like to say I can relate, but fortunately for me and those who value my sanity, I seem to only have the ability to pop one out at a time. Whew, we humans really lucked out on that one. Well, most of us anyway.)

Grant LOVED playing with the puppies. It was funny watching him, he kept saying the funniest things like "Look, it thinks I'm its mom, it's trying to drink my milk!"


He had to kiss them all goodbye. He really wanted to take one home but he was ok when I told him that yes, we could come back and see them again "on some days after this day".


Janna, with her favorite puppy.


I thought this one was the cutest. He has such light fur and he was so sweet.

Thanks, Mel for letting us come play with your sweetie pies (:

Ice Cream Cake Pops

So stinkin cute!

One of my favorite blogs is a site called Bakerella. I tell you what, that girl can create! She comes up with the cutest ideas for cake pops and they are so much fun to make. My first attempt at cake pops didn't turn out so hot. I mixed in too much frosting and it turned into a gloppy mess. It was yuck.

For these, I just used a small amount of cake. I used the tops I had cut off of some other cakes I needed for layering and it worked out perfectly. All I did was crumble up the the cake and mix in cream cheese frosting until I could roll it into balls. Stuck them in the fridge overnight and put them on the cones and dipped them the next day.

I decorated almost exactly the way she did. The only difference is that I used a melted Hershey's bar for the chocolate syrup look, and for the cherry I used a pretzel m&m instead of a peanut m&m because it was more round like a cherry (: (yeah, I'm a little o.c.d. that way)

They are only a few inches tall so they are perfect for little guys, but even the big kids can't get over how much fun a teeny, tiny ice cream cone that doesn't melt can be. Janna's reaction was "Awww, they're sooo cute, do I get to have one??"(please excuse my horrifying pictures. bad lighting, bad background, bad photographer. I know, I know... someone should take my camera away from me)

Cole couldn't get enough of them.

Awww. Look. He's sharing (: What a nice boy!
Anywho, I love the way they turned out and they were a blast to make. Y'all should check out Bakerella's blog and see what other amazing things she comes up with or if you want see her ice cream cones (which are way cuter than mine) and her instructions go here. Some of the other things of hers that I want to try are the Valentine gift box of red velvet cake balls and the mint oreo truffles for St.Patty's Day, oh yeah and her cheesecake pops. Yummm... this list could go on and on.

Homemade Soft Pretzel Bites

Don't these look delicious!! I just had to share the link for these yummy bites over at Two Peas and Their Pod. I just happened upon this recipe while I was over at Money Saving Mom and now I'll be saving it to make when my kids have a day off from school. They love to cook and this will be perfect for them to help out with. Click here if you would like the recipe too. Happy baking!

Happy Birthday to Janna!!

I can't believe she's nine!! That's right, this week Janna had a birthday.

She's growing up so fast!

We had dinner at Dockside to celebrate and then came home to open presents.

On Saturday Janna invited some friends to go see the movie "Tangled". Then we came back to the house for cake and other fun stuff. They painted canvases for their bedrooms, they played dance party on the wii, they had a little improv talent show... lot's of fun!

For her birthday cake Janna wanted one that looked like a painter's palette. We also made paint brushes out of pretzel rods and licorice to match.

Silly girls (:

One of the things I love about Janna is that it doesn't take much to make her happy.
Her outlook is that life is good and everything else is just icing on the cake (: Gotta love that.
Happy Birthday Janna, love ya girlie!!

Viva Mexico!! A little late.

On January 2nd, Ryon and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. Crazy, I know. We didn't really do to much to celebrate except for dinner and a movie the night before. That was fine with us. We did, however, do lots of celebrating LAST February when we went to Mexico for our 10th anniversary-a-little-bit-early. I never posted the pictures, just lazy I guess. After coming upon them on my memory card I thought I would share with you all some of the highlights (:
One of the things about Mexico is that there are people selling stuff EVERYWHERE. This is the hat guy selling hats on the beach in front of our resort. He reminded me of the book "Caps for Sale". Its a good book, you should check it out (if you have a 4 year old at home).



Also in Puerto Vallarta there were iguanas all over the place. Like randomly in the trees and on the rocks around town and stuff. Well, this is by far the largest iguana we saw while we were there. But this one belonged to some guy who put it on me while we were getting off of a boat. Then, as Ryon is taking a picture of me and Fluffy, the guys tells us in some sort of english that it cost 50 pesos to hold his iguana. So this picture ends up being me looking stupid and telling the guy that I don't have 50 pesos. He was mad and he took Fluffy away.




On one of the days we took a boat out to go snorkeling and go on a hike up to a waterfall. When we got to the spot for snorkeling the waves were a little out of control so they cancelled that part of the trip. I can't say I was all that disappointed. The water wasn't warm and it was kind of overcast. Not my idea of fun.

The hike up to the waterfall was neat. Some of the people rode horses but we walked. First, we went up through a teeny little village. There were some people and some horses, but mostly there were lots and lots of dogs. After that, we walked across a small river and kept hiking up until we got to the top where the waterfall was. It was beautiful. Some people went swimming. Not us. That water was FREEZING. Like I said before, cold water/not sunny, that's not my cup of tea. Check out my dollar store sunglasses...sweet, huh.



Both of us had the most fun on the day we went to Sayulitas. It is a small surfing town about two hours north-ish of Puerto Vallarta. Maybe it really wouldn't take you two hours if you drove yourself there, but we rode the bus everywhere and that's probably why it took us so long to get there. I enjoyed the bus ride, we got to see the outlying area. It was great to get away from all the resorts and touristy noise. We just relaxed on the beach and watched the surfers.
We also enjoyed walking around their little town. This was the view from the dive we had lunch in. So cute.
Downtown on the Malecon in Puerto Vallarta they had a sand sculpture competition while we were there. That was fun to see.

There were also these awesome wooden and chain link bridges to get from one side of town to the other.



One of the things I loved about our trip was sitting on the beach at the resort in the evening, reading a book and watching the sun go down. This picture is of the pirate ship going out for the dinner cruise. We saw it go out every night and could hear them fire the cannon ball. It looks awesome in this picture.


Anyway, we had a great time Puerto Vallarta. It was wonderful to get away from the frigid temps up here in the frozen north. I really enjoyed spending some alone time with Ryon. We don't get a whole lot of that at home with four kids (: I'm sure there are more pictures from our trip somewhere. Maybe if I find some exciting ones I will post them later.