Alicia's first school play was a few weeks ago. Unfortunately I spent most of the time shuffling the kids around getting them to where they needed to be and trying to help with everything I didn't get a chance to take as many pictures as I would have wanted and the lights were dark so I couldn't really get too many that weren't blurry anyways.
The girls getting their hair and makeup done before the show.
The napkins/flowers. Unfortunately by this time they were all a little tired and hungry.
My little Belle
All in all it was a lot of long afternoons and drama I thought was only possible by teenage girls mixed into chaos that tends to surround shows. Still everything worked out in the end and it was fun. Alicia enjoyed herself and wants to do another one next year - I told her we'll see.
In attempts to feel like I'm at least on my way to becoming a decent mom and creating traditions that my kids will somewhere in their deep subconsciousness thank me for at some period of their life I decided to try and have some Easter fun. This was the first year that we've really made our own Easter eggs and it was a lot of fun. Thanks to the web I made my own dye and everything. Mostly this year we had fun experimenting with different things and Alicia enjoyed coloring special things on each of them.
The next morning the eggs had mysteriously been hidden around the house by some surprise visitor who also left Alicia a new dress and Sunday socks in a basket along with some chocolate Easter bunnies. I didn't get a picture of the dress yet but the kids definitely enjoyed the bunnies the poor creatures didn't last the day out.
(don't mind the milk from breakfast still on his face - I was actually impressed that I got some in him before he started in on the chocolate.)
Since I don't really have the time yet for a full post I'll just do a quick preview of the birthday madness around here...
For some insane reason, I decided this year to attempt to make birthday cakes for the kids. This was extremely ambitious considering that I've never succeeded in anything of the like. I think I tried to be creative one year for Alicia's 2nd birthday (maybe 3rd) and make a double layer flat cake... yeah... that DID NOT work out so well, thankfully Wendi was here to help me salvage it enough to put some candles on it and Alicia didn't know better.
This was the cake that Alicia picked out... I know - way cute right - it's called a Mad Hatter Cake and the recipe was on the Family Fun website. Well - here's how my first ever cake creation turned out...All in all not too bad although I wish I knew how NOT to get the silly cake crumbles in my icing.
For Ryan Alicia and I thought of a train cake, I kinda based it on this creation from the Betty Crocker website http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/train-cake/5685f320-1e5c-4ebb-b2cd-1ab73633b016 but I customized it a lot... this one Alicia helped quite a bit on. Still we decided that the cookie icing on the rice-crispy treats may look okay, but not so much for the taste - a little too sweet I think when combined. Okay, so you're probably laughing now, but all in all for my first two cakes I declare it a success. The kids loved them, they had fun helping me make them (or should I say eating the icing and candy goodies whenever they thought they could get away with it.) Most of all I learned tons about how to do it and I'm not so scared of trying as I was before I just got in there and tried to figure it out.
This morning we had phase 2 of birthday cake madness. We frosted the cupcakes I made last night to take to Alicia's class. I didn't get any pictures but I think they were cute. I was swirling the icing in circles to frost them and so Ryan went from calling them "pup-cakes" to "pup-snakes" I won't even discuss the brilliant moment I had when I decided to pre-heat the oven to make the cupcakes last night (at 10:00 because naturally I forgot until the kids were going to bed and then I still had to get them in bed) yeah, let's just say that I'd been hiding the pans with the birthday cakes in the oven and well...because they were both half eaten it looks worse than it was - the train actually pretty much was the same just a little gooey - I just had to laugh at the puddle of icing around Alicia's though.
The girls getting their hair and makeup done before the show.
The napkins/flowers. Unfortunately by this time they were all a little tired and hungry.
My little Belle
The next morning the eggs had mysteriously been hidden around the house by some surprise visitor who also left Alicia a new dress and Sunday socks in a basket along with some chocolate Easter bunnies. I didn't get a picture of the dress yet but the kids definitely enjoyed the bunnies the poor creatures didn't last the day out.
(don't mind the milk from breakfast still on his face - I was actually impressed that I got some in him before he started in on the chocolate.)
I know - way cute right - it's called a Mad Hatter Cake and the recipe was on the Family Fun website. Well - here's how my first ever cake creation turned out...
All in all not too bad although I wish I knew how NOT to get the silly cake crumbles in my icing.
because they were both half eaten it looks worse than it was - the train actually pretty much was the same just a little gooey - I just had to laugh at the puddle of icing around Alicia's though.