Sick boy causes canceled birthday party

It all began at 5 a.m. this morning. CJ cried, Joe went to check on him, got him to lay back down, and not one minute later he was screaming. Joe went back in and CJ began vomiting everywhere. I was feeding Alyssa so wasn't much help as if I had stopped we would have had two screaming children. So Joe took over like a champ and washed up CJ and got the sheets off the bed and in the wash. When I finished feeding Alyssa I went to check on my poor little boy. He wasn't warm or anything and was acting just fine so we were hopeful that that was that. Joe was awake at this point and so was CJ so they stayed on the couch while I went back to bed with Alyssa.

An hour later CJ was throwing up again and then another hour after that and an hour after that. Joe handled it while I slept or fed Alyssa. When I got up Joe and I discussed what we should do about Natalie's birthday party tonight. Natalie was still asleep and oblivious to the fact that her brother had been throwing up every hour for the past 3 hours. So I told Joe that he could take the girls over to the bowling alley while I stayed home with Alyssa and our poor sick little boy. So we went in and talked about it with Natalie.

Natalie was understandably disappointed and also wanted me at her birthday party so she wasn't sure she wanted to go bowling without me. So we discussed doing it a different day, but realized we had plans for the next two weekends and Natalie didn't want to wait so long to have her party either. So we told her to think about it.

Meanwhile CJ continued the trend of throwing up every hour. I gave more thought to what we could do and said hey, why does it have to be a Saturday night? So I told Natalie how about Friday night or the Friday after. Well, Natalie DID NOT want Friday the 13th. I guess she doesn't want to jinx anything with her birthday party anymore. As it is her sleepover has become a non sleepover. Only one friend could come and she couldn't spend the night. So we decided we'd try for Friday the 6th. I called Natalie's friend and left a message in hopes that Friday would work okay for them.

Joe took Natalie fishing. CJ threw up again and then fell asleep. He woke up wanting something to drink. It had finally been more than an hour since he threw up so we tried. It didn't work though. It came back up. Natalie and Joe had come home from fishing at this point. Natalie's friend's mother called and said Friday would be fine, but it will have to be a little later. I said that was fine. So we're trying again for Friday night.

CJ threw up again and went to sleep again. He got up all excited saying he felt better and wanting something to drink. So being that it had been a while since he threw up I got him something to drink. Things were looking good. He kept it down for nearly an hour and now he's throwing up again. So it's a good thing we canceled the party. I don't know what is going on with my boy, but I hope he starts keeping something down soon. Natalie is disappointed about her party and I feel bad for her too. Hopefully she can still have a good time on Friday and nothing else happens to mess this up for her. And most importantly lets hope no one else gets this stomach thing that CJ has.

A JumpZone Birthday

Natalie and Kaitlyn had their birthday party at JumpZone this year. What a fun party that was. I couldn't keep up with them. CJ enjoyed every minute of it too. I did get more pictures of him because well he's not as fast. A very fun day.

Natalie got tons of silly bands which she wanted. Kaitlyn got Tinkerbell stuff, which she wanted. So a great time was had by all.

If only my talents extended this far...

I want to make this cake for the girls birthday party this weekend. They are having a party at The JumpZone on Saturday. So what better cake could I make than a trampoline? But I can't make this cake. I don't know how to make the people. I've never worked with fondant before. But I am going to go ahead and give it a go. However, I'm not going to make the people out of frosting. Instead I am making them out of cookies. I probably won't put them along the sides like that either. I'm going to try to put them on the cake. I might be biting off more than I can chew here, but I'd like to give it a try anyways. Wish me luck on my version of the trampoline cake.

Bridal Shower

Ahhh, the much anticipated pictures from the bridal shower. Things have been so crazy busy here. The shower was beautiful. My cousin had a great time. We had a great time. It was nice getting together just the girls. Good food, good conversation, and good gifts.

Natalie took a picture of me and Kaitlyn snuck in

Me and Natalie

The cake, in case you missed the comparison

The bride with her aunt and cousins

The bride and her soon to be inlaws. She's marrying into a large family

The bride and her mommy

The bride and me and the girls

The bride and all of her shower guests

The bride cutting her cake

It was a beautiful day. A beautiful bride to be. And a bunch of beautiful ladies getting together to enjoy each others company.

A Comparison of Cakes

Today was my cousin's bridal shower. Less than a month ago I was telling a long tale of a difficult day for my friend's baby shower. I don't think I could have handled another shower like that. So I was determined to make today more enjoyable for me. And I must say I did succeed. I have many pictures to share, but for now I would like to give you a little comparison of the cakes from both showers. Now granted one was a baby shower and one was a bridal shower. One had a photo on it the other did not. One was a sheet cake one was round. But still this is how a cake SHOULD be decorated and how a cake should NOT be decorated.

The bridal shower cake purchased from Sam's Club

The baby shower cake purchased from Stop and Shop

Now which cake would you rather have at your event? I know I was much more pleased with the cake for the bridal shower. Now I know the colors are different and ones a sheet cake and the other a round cake, but still you can see the quality is just much better. The round cake has much neater writing on it and pretty flowers and designs. The sheet cake looked like it was just thrown together without a care. Now I know when I don't want to make my own cakes where I'm going to purchase cakes from.

The Good of the Baby Shower

So after cake issues, the surprise being ruined, and being locked out of the hall we did end up having a very nice baby shower. Good food, good friends, and lots of presents. It really ended up being a very nice day in the end even after that rough start.

Eating

The present table

Time to open gifts















So see the mom to be had a smile on her face. She enjoyed her day so mission accomplished.

Diaper Cake

Many years ago I had learned of these things called diaper cakes. It's rolled up diapers made into a three tier cake. So I learned how to make them and I used to make them all the time as gifts for friends and family who were having babies. Then I stopped. Or maybe people just weren't having babies. I don't know which it was. But now one of my best friends was having a baby and I said you know what I'm going to make her a diaper cake. And if you read about my baby shower cake saga you will know that this was the only good looking cake at this shin dig.

Here's a little step by step view of how it all goes together...

Bottom tier

Middle tier

Top tier

Decorate with some ribbon

All decorated with toys, pacifiers, and nipples

It was a huge hit with everyone.

Baby Shower Cake Saga

I love planning parties. I never knew how much until I had kids. It seems to gather all of my strengths into one thing. I love coming up with themes, figuring out a cake, making invitations. I just love it all. Yesterday though really tested my patience with the whole party planning thing. And it was something that was so out of my control.

I was helping plan a surprise baby shower for a very good friend of mine. I designed the invitation through Storkie.com. This was the final product:


The poem reads:

There once was a time
when we all heard her say
I'm done, that's it...
four kids, call it a day
But now that expression
"I'm done" is in the past
There's gonna be another (last name) baby,
will this be the last?

I worked very hard on creating the invites. They came out great. Everything was falling into place nicely. Balloons had been purchased in the pink and brown scheme. I brought the invitation to the bake shop where Joe works to have them put the picture on the cake and to give them an idea of the colors I was looking for on the cake. I was going to make the cake myself, but we were thinking 60 people and I had all this other food to make so I decided I'll delegate the cake making to someone else. Then I can get one nice big sheet cake and don't have to worry about making two cakes and filling them and stuff.

So I had this picture in my mind of this beautiful sleek cake to go along with the invitations. What I got instead was the ugliest cake in the world. I did not take pictures of that cake. I really should have. So I will try to explain what they did. First let me explain that the person I spoke to who said she'd be there Saturday and make the cake called out that day. So granted this person was trying to recreate something off of what notes were written on a piece of paper by someone else, but who would have thought anyone would be stupid enough to do this? They created an edible image of the invitation. Of the entire invitation. Of the RSVP date and phone number. Of the address of the venue. The whole thing. Who would want that on a cake? But it wasn't written on the paper that I did not want the whole invitation. I know I mentioned it numerous times to the person I ordered it from and even told her she could cut the invitation. But seriously, if it wasn't written and you saw it was an invitation you would think someone would have called just to confirm what the customer wanted just to be on the safe side if you had any doubts. I got no phone calls though.

There were no flowers on the cake like we had spoke of. The border was in brown and pink. Two piped lines, one brown and one pink. I did ask for the border to be brown to pull the whole color scheme into it. I didn't want a lot of brown because brown on a cake can be unappealing. The words Welcome baby Jazmyn were written in brown too. They were kind of squeezed in on the top. And right in the center of the cake was this invitation with this pink piping going all the way around it. And because there was nothing else on the cake but that your attention was really focused right there. It was not the sleek design that I was looking for at all.

So after much argument over what was written on the paper and whether or not they actually recreated what I had ordered they ended up making me a new one. I left to go get the stuff to the hall and then was going to go back to pick up my beautifully designed cake. Well, turns out this was just the beginning of my trouble for the shower. Turns out the guest of honor found out about the surprise. How I wasn't clear on, but the who was her brothers. Moving right along though we had to pull this off. We arrive at the hall and it's locked. We were half an hour late, but the doors definitely should have been open. So we checked all the doors. Nothing. We called the church. Nothing. We called the pastor. Nothing. People were arriving. It was raining. A cold rain. The guest of honor arrived. We still had not gotten inside nor decorated. Someone went around and checked the doors again and found one open. A door that was checked originally was now unlocked. Was it on a timer? Did someone sneak over and unlock a door and we miss it? There were a lot of comings and goings in the parking lot. Ugh, it was a huge mess.

While we were trying to figure out the whole ordeal someone offered to go pick up the 2nd try at the cake for me. She came back and told me it's not perfect, but it is still very pretty. Oh geez what am I going to do now? So I looked at the cake and all I could say is well it's better than the original, but I saw lots of fault with it. Here's the redo of the cake:



Now, I pointed out some of the things I found very ugly right on the picture. Where's the brown border? There was some light almost like a chocolate brown around the bottom of the cake where it touches the cake board, but that was it for brown on the cake. The border was very sloppy. I found the writing to be very sloppy. I don't know what was up with those flowers in the upper left corner of the cake. And my friend looks like she's in a window with that thick piped border going around the picture of her. And unfortunately you cannot see it in the picture, but there was a line going through her face on the picture. It wasn't on the invitation. I'm not sure if the edible image broke and they just pieced it together instead of making a new one or what.

Now if it where me, I would have put a few flowers in the corner of the picture. Made maybe a vine like look going around it if it needed it. The border I probably would have done with a star tip in the three colors. Dark pink, brown, light pink, dark pink, brown, light pink, etc. I suppose they were crunched for time and of course I can't expect them to do exactly what I thought, but this just wasn't even close.

I guess the moral of this story is if you want it done right do it yourself.

Other than these catastrophic events the shower was a huge success. I will share the good of the shower later.

End of the Year BBQ 2009

Last night we had our End of the Year BBQ at the school. Every year the PTA hosts this BBQ. It's a fun event. Lots of work for the PTA, but worth it. We had rain so everything was moved indoors. I did manage to snap a few pictures of the festivities though.

Kaitlyn's balloon hat

Natalie's lady bug

Our friend Hunter eating an ice cream sandwich

Hunter's all done with his sandwich. Look at that face

Tails making balloon animals

CJ checking things out

Kaitlyn waiting for her balloon flower to be made

Kaitlyn and Tails the Clown


Our friend Spencer helping clean up


As you can see it was a fun night. I had a hard time getting a lot of pictures of the older two because they were always running around playing with all of their friends. It was a fun event that was a huge success and our last PTA event of the year. A nice way to end things.

First Picnic of 2009

So on Saturday my friend invited us to come down to the park with her and her family for a picnic. Not having anything else to do on the holiday weekend and with Joe having a rare day off on a Saturday we accepted.

Here was our day...

Kaitlyn

Hi CJ!

Happy Boy

Natalie getting ready to play catch

Such a cute face

Catch!

Playing

Daddy strangling Kaitlyn (all in fun)

Mikayla's turn

For two kids who claim to not like each other these two were always together. If you wanted to know where Natalie was you just had to look for Noah and vice versa.Natalie and Noah playing catch
CJ loves the ball




A little trouble at the skate park. A boy broke his arm and three ambulances and fire engines came.Taking him to the hospital

Noah up at bat

Joe playing wiffle ball

Batter Up!

Made it to 1st base

CJ's playing ball

Muahhhh

Mikayla's up

We had lots of fun. The weather held out for us too which was great. A nice kick off to summer. Even though we still have 3 weeks left of school.