New Eyes

He only mentioned that he was having a hard time reading the board at school a few times so I was a little surprised when I took him in and the eye doctor told me his near sightedness is fairly severe AND he has a substantial astigmatism to boot!
Glasses are miraculous!  Walker suddenly sees with perfection.  -And he's stylin' too.

Cake it On

 Yellow cake filled and frosted with vanilla whipped cream frosting.  She wanted a "flower cake" and wanted them made out of sour straws so this is what  we came up with.  She loved it.
Tasty too.

White cake with strawberry filling, frosted with vanilla buttercream and topped with white chocolate shavings.
For a friend.  Didn't get to taste this particular one


BUT... Fallon wanted a "strawberry cake" for her birthday so I made the same thing with extra strawberries on top and I had more than my fair share of that one!  Mmmm...

Yellow cake, chocolate ice cream (dredged in Oreo crumbs), and Airhead tomatoes and lettuce, fondant cheese.
Fun party cake!
I didn't take photos, but this month I also made a German Chocolate cake, with peanut butter filling, chocolate buttercream, and "decorated" with Reese's Peanut butter Cup pieces on top.  Divine!
But I think the favorite was the "Black Forrest" cake:  Devil's food cake, a little chocolate buttercream to crumb-coat, cherrie pie filling, frosted with Cool Whip, and topped with more cherries.  Always beautiful AND delicious.

One of Those Weeks

It all began on Wednesday.  It was a beautiful day and Jeff was driving with his truck window rolled down when -ZAP!- out of no where a bee flew in and stung him on the lip!  Not only was it a rude gesture, but the sting-site became a giant swollen lump of lip for a couple of days.  OUCH!  (Jeff wondered if that's how it feels to have colajen injections?)
By Friday the swelling had gone down considerably and we decided to go on our Friday night date.  We were on our way to Logan and then decided we'd just grab a bite to eat here in town instead and head back home to catch up on the smooching we'd been missing.  Before our meal was even served we got a phone call from a nearly histerical Quincy to "Come quick!"  Stilman and Walker had been riding home from soccer practice (so at least they were close to home) when Stilman popped a "wheelie" and his front bike tire fell off ("quick release" tire- the clamp of which had been messed with by who-knows-who, but most likely little sisters or neighbor kids just wondering what it was for.) and he hit the street face first.  It took some time to get him cleaned up and dig all the gravel out of his cheek and neck, but we were grateful that, aside from lots of scrapes, some bruises and a few chunks of skin off here and there, he was in pretty good shape!  It certainly could have been a lot worse.  He was feeling pretty beat up of course and couldn't help wondering aloud, "Why does this stuff always happen to ME?"  (-Honestly, I'm beginning to wonder that myself.)
As if that weren't enough to keep us busy for a while, Sunday night Tevya was playing outside without any shoes on (Which of course she's been warned about 746,893 times - if you include the 17 that particular day.) and stepped on something that hurt her really bad.  Being the kind and compassionate mother that I am, I brushed her foot off, pulled something off that looked like it might have been a stinger, and said, "Well, I'm sorry, but that's what you get."  She whined about it all night and I finally had Jeff look at it before she went to bed to make sure there wasn't something else in there like a sliver or something I'd missed in my haste to be so compassionate.  Nothing.
But 1:00 a.m. she came flying down the stairs screaming her head off and I was up with her every hour for the rest of the night trying everything I could think of to make the pain stop.  Next morning her foot was swollen so fat and was so red and she was SO miserable it was certain my instincts had been wrong.  She wasn't just being dramatic after all.  The doctor confirmed she's been stung -probably by some mean yellow jacket, had an allergic reaction, AND gotten an infection!  She missed 2 days of school and we both missed a lot of sleep, but she's better after a bout of antibiotics, lots of Benadryl, and alternating doses of Tylenol and Ibuprofen for 3 days (and nights).  Whew!
I could do without another week like this for a looooong time.

Have your cake

Suddenly, over the last month or so I have felt inspired, even driven maybe, to bake cakes. Yummy ones. With delicious fillings and delectable frostings and something akin to lovely decorations. (Obviously I'm about as far from professional as a person can get. Like my little plastic decorating tube?)

Because I am a firm believer that no woman should ever have to bake her own birthday cake. EVER! Especially moms. And because no child is ever going to let their mom get away without having one AND because I'm sure there a

re more women out there who -like me- wouldn't dream of BUYING a cake for themselves when they could make one for $25 less, I've decided to bake birthday cakes myself and give them to my friends who might otherwise feel obligated to bake their own.

I've done regular sized ones for my friends with families, but

I found these adorable little "single serving" size cake pans online which are perfect for those who don't. Monday I took them out for their debut and I was not disappointed! Look how cute these little cakes are! And my kids were thrilled that the cake mix (Yeah, see. Not professional.) made 5 little cakes (double stacked- so 10 individual layers) meaning that after we gave away the two birthday ones, we had three left over for Family Home Evening treats!

These ones are German chocolate filled and topped with Coconut Pecan frosting and frosted with chocolate buttercream. Mmm. Mmm.

Now. Who's going to make MY birthday cake?

The Bishop Beard

Happy birthday to Jeff! I saw this "Beard Beanie" and thought it was the perfect answer. Now he can have facial hair whenever he wants AND he can stay warm in the freezing winter weather, AND he can hide from people he doesn't want to talk to! It's pure genious! (We've named it the Bishop Beard.)

A stiff upper lip

Who knew ice skating could be so dangerous? Okay, I'm sure there have been many greater injuries sustained, but, OUCH! Stilman said he was skating backwards and lost his balance when someone skated past him real quick. Next thing he knew he was on his face with blood dripping down his chin. At first when he looked at his reflection in the glass around the rink he just saw a big gaping bloody spot and thought he'd lost a tooth, but it wasn't long before the entire ward (It was a mutual activity.) came skating over and the Young Men President told him his lip was gashed. Anyway, there was a hole on the inside where his tooth had poked through, but I think just the impact did the actual splitting of the lip. Jeff was in favor of just letting it heal on its own ("Every guy needs a cool scar or two!") and having a scary, gnarly, chewed-up lip-that-nobody'd-ever-want-to-kiss for the rest of his life, and, while that would be fine with me as long as Stilman's a teenager, I DO have dreams of him finding some nice young lady to marry someday and I've never met anyone who wanted to marry someone they didn't want to kiss a little! It took some doin', but I finally helped him see that a trip to the emergency room really was a good idea.
You can't tell from the pictures, but ya know those huge Q-tips they use to iodine everything with? The ones with the inch-long cotton tip? The whole was so deep they had the entire cotton tip up inside Stilman's face to clean it out! Yikes! It only took five stitches to stick him back together, but they had to take extra time and care to match up the lip just right so it wouldn't look goofy. They did a good job, and I think both Stilman and Jeff are pleased that he still got a good visible scar there - minus the scary, gnarly, chewed-up bit. I am pleased too!



























Maybe the most amazing part of the whole experience is the fact that this was our very first trip to the emergency room in our entire married-with-children life!

Yards & Yards of Summer Fun!

(Okay I just spent an hour trying to get the words with the right photos and then ended up accidentally erasing a picture or two -How do you work this blog thing anyway?- so this will just be easier.)

It's been an all-summer-long project, but it finally looks like we might actually get it done! Hooray! Our 70 year old lawn was too lumpy for kids to play on safely any longer or to mow evenly. It was time! Each of our neighbors came over one by one to ask what in the world was going on after Jeff killed the grass. (It was brown for about 2 months before we finally tilled it up and I'm sure they were ready to volunteer to come water it FOR us if that's what needed to happen.)

We've been living with a slightly-gravelled driveway that is mostly mud for a major portion of the year, and decided we'd start there - AND the walkway between the driveway and the garage door which was in even worse condition. (I'm ashamed to admit that I have spent winters visiting the recycling dumpster every week to find new cardboard pieces to lay over the mud so our shoes don't get sucked off on our way into the house.)

We poured a concrete drive (complete with mandatory family handprints), and Jeff layed a lovely paver walkway over my mud and also constructed a cute curving paver pathway from the driveway to the front porch to make it easier for visitors to get to the front door!

Next we dug trenches and put in our very own sprinkler system! (It really was exciting to turn them on for the first time! In fact Jeff said, "I do this every day and I've never been excited about a sprinkler system like I am about this one! This is great!)

On Labor Day we built a curvy shrub bed and filled it (and the bed created between the house and the pathway to the porch) with pretty black mulch and lots of shrubs and perrenial plants/flowers. We're still on the lookout for a couple of small ornamental trees or plants to finish them off, , but we are in hopes that our summer-long project will be complete - including grass planted- this weekend!
It's a good thing too because, although we did have a Saturday here and there and a couple of holidays, most of the work has been done after work and long into the night (I'm sure the neighbors are grateful the flood lights are no longer keeping them awake.) and Jeff and I are ready for a long winter's nap.