It begins with a big boy turning eight years old. It's hard to fit 8 candles on a dinosaur cupcake. And, yes, he wanted his hair that short!
The dinosaurs were also party favors.
Nathan was born in Louisiana, and his birthday was the day before Mardi Gras....sooo, the dinosaurs fought their battle on a bed of purple, green and yellow-sugared vanilla frosting topping chocolate fudge cakes.
Best buddy Garrett
There were friends bearing gifts.
Reading circle buddy Tiara. They discuss books. :)
Then there was birthday number two, or rather number five, for Lauren.
She wanted a kitten princess cake. I had to take cupcake surrounds (outside liners) shaped like crowns and put kitty stickers on them. There were also picks shaped like castles and those got the stickers also. She loved it, but immediately asked me where the brown and orange stripes were that she wanted. I'm sorry, Lauren, but I just couldn't do brown and orange with pink and green. Bad Grammy!
The family was there to help her celebrate with homemade pizza.
Her best cousin/friend Kaitlyn, who is always by her side at Grammy and Poppy's.
Gaige sporting his visor creation that was the party craft.
Nathan and his winning smile.
Matthew was much more interested in the cake than he was the pizza.
There were a few Disney and My Little Pony characters invited.
And she was a very happy and excited little girl.
We also have Gaige, Nathan and Kaitlyn's daddy's birthday today. And I have one of my very best friend's BD, two nephews and one niece. It's almost as many as May and October!
Last Friday, the day before the big reunion, our grandson Matthew had his second birthday. We celebrated at our favorite Chinese restaurant.
Matt was sleepy and a wee bit bemused that all the attention was focused on him.
Sister Lauren got everyone going by telling us what we should do.
Cousin Kaitlyn kept things peaceful and on an even keel.
Cousin Gaige thoroughly enjoyed the many buffet offerings.
Cousin Nathan provided the evening's entertainment.
Finally, it was time to get down to business!
There was even singing by a lovely duo.
The very exciting finale!
Lauren was giving more help than was actually needed very helpful.
Happy Birthday, dear Matthew! Happy Birthday to you!
Randomness...
too small for a post, too good to pass up.
Been braiding some garlic.
Picking blackberries and making pies and cobblers.
Little Feather has decided the best place to lay her eggs is on a chair in my 3-season room. I leave Lucy the dog out there with the door slightly propped open when I'm away for more than a few hours, and twice I've come home and found an egg lying in the chair.
Well, it's one I don't have to bring in from the coop, I guess.
For Nathan's 7th birthday (7 on the 7th), he wanted a cake with the New Orleans Saints on it. My cake decorating skills are rudimentary at best. What I've learned has been from magazines, TV shows, my friend Cindy (who is a wonderful cake decorator) and the umpteen YouTube videos made by Edna Veracruz that I watched at 3:30 a.m. two mornings in a row because I was stressed out about making the cake and couldn't sleep.
First of all, for all the money I spent on supplies, I could have ordered the cake from the fanciest bakery in town and still had pocket change left over. Second, I would never, ever do this for a living. It makes the biggest, gommiest mess you can imagine, especially if you don't know what you're doing.
Do you have any idea how much frosting it takes for an 11 X 15-inch (half-sheet) cake? Here's the breakdown: 3 pounds of confectioner's sugar, 3/4 pound butter, 1 1/2 cups shortening (yes you have to use it if you want any measure of success..at least it wasn't ALL Crisco like some bakeries use), vanilla and almond extracts. And this was a simply decorated cake and the icing wasn't very thick. I can't even imagine how much it must take for a four-tier wedding cake!
For the cake: 11 cups of cake mix batter (which works out to about 2 1/3 cake mixes), which includes 9 eggs, 1 1/2 cups oil, and water. What did I do with the remaining cake batter? Well, we also had six giant cupcakes and an 8-inch single layer decorated cake. We could have sugar-overdosed 40 people!
Luckily, there are no snapshots of the baker/decorator slinging together this "masterpiece". You would have been less than impressed, especially by the colorful words coloring the air blue.
I guess it turned out okay. I could see every flaw, of course, and pointed them out to all until my daughter told me to hush, that it was perfect. Nathan pronounced it "AWESOME, Grammy!" So I relaxed. The bowling party was a huge hit with the seven-year-olds and the older brother and younger sister. The mess was already cleaned up at my house and we didn't have to have the party at anyone's house.
We missed the first two meetings, so the night they joined we got a lot of Scout stuff thrust upon us. Every year the Boy Scouts of America sells Trail's End popcorn. It is the only fund-raising event for Scouts, much like Girl Scouts sell cookies. When our boys were in Scouts umpteen years ago, and David was a Scout Leader and I was a Den Mother, the popcorn sales were pretty simple. There was one choice, the kind you put in a pan with oil and popped on the old range. It was really good popcorn...think Orville Redenbacher good. Now, of course, there is microwave popcorn and gift tins filled with popcorn goodies. One really nice feature in the sales, for people who don't care for popcorn but who still want to make a contribution and also help our men and women in the armed services, is the Military Donation program that sends gift tins to our troops.
The other thing that was an immediate rush-to-get-done item was the fall campout happening on Saturday! Four days hence! We decided that the boys would just go for the afternoon and evening, but not spend the night. They were fine with that plan. I think they were a little apprehensive about staying in a tent away from home. And that was really fine with Poppy, because he wasn't relishing spending the night in a tent either.
It had rained the night before and Saturday morning, too, so we weren't sure they were even going, even though there was a "no cancellation, if rain" policy in effect. Luckily, just about the time to leave for the camp, the sun came out and it turned out to be a lovely afternoon.
The guys need to work on their salutes/signs...I'm not sure which one they were going for here, but both of them need work. Gaige seems to have the Scout sign confused with the "peace" sign. Two fingers together, Gaige, and not quite so high in the sky. And, Nathan, the salute is at the right front of your cap brim. Nathan is a Tiger Cub and Gaige is a Wolf Cub.
Nathan and another Tiger Cub checking out a daddy long-legs.
Fishing was the highlight of the day. Poppy said they learned to cast fairly well for first-timers.
Nathan even caught a good-sized bluegill, but Poppy insisted on throwing it back. Nathan was not. too. threw ascreaming, crying fit happy. about this turn of events, and that is the reason he is not in the picture.
Gaige got to help cut up peppers for the chili cooking in the Dutch oven.
Nathan cut up apples for a tinfoil dessert that was cooked on the fire.
With Nathan's sixth birthday on the 7th, Lauren's third birthday on the 13th, my pal Cindy's on the 14th and Daniel's on the 18th, March is a very busy birthday month around here. Nathan's and Lauren's are the big ones and I'll let the pictures tell the story.
Wistful and wishful girls. Don't worry Lauren, your turn is coming soon.
"The river is within us, the sea is all about us . . ."
— T S Eliot (Four Quartets)
How does the river run within the sea?
Like the coyote, bounding deer-like
in the soy bean field last evening,
and behind him the honeyed sun
a young girl’s hair, cascading among
the trees. He distanced gradually
from the road we cycled, his body
now disappearing beneath
the shrubby, wavy green, now
reappearing in the bob and bounce
of a cork retreating from shore. Like
a dream. Like a secret stone that leaps
as the sun sets, an opal, a tiger’s eye,
to the horizon, until he and the sun are one.
~ruth mowry~
Our Lauren's Life
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
~President Dwight David Eisenhower
Websites of Mass Distraction--what keeps me from the cleaning
