Trial Run

I've been thinking lately about what I would do for Max's first birthday. I thought of doing "Where the Wild Things Are" (how I'm decorating his room), but what I found online was either too complicated or discontinued...

Then I remembered that Max does occasionally watch Curious George, and he does resemble the precocious little monkey. So there you have it. Since watching "Ace of Cakes" and "Food Challenge" I decided that decorating cakes is, well, a piece of cake.
I went to PBSkids.org and there is a coloring page (most likely meant for 5 year olds) where you can go step by step to draw Curious George. My monkey looked NOTHING like the example. I decided I had better make a stencil if I want people to think the cake is appetizing. I used cocoa powder to dust my homemade stencil and successfully dumped the can onto the cake creating brown smudges everywhere. It still tasted alright, and I have to say my crumb coating was spectacular.

Since I have realized baking sweets with no purpose leads to excess weight on me, I gave this trial run cake to our friend, Jamin.



I learned some important lessons through making my trial run:
1. In the world of food coloring, red and green do not make brown- they make a nasty gray color.
2. The Smiths in Dayton does not carry food coloring!
3. I should not make too much chocolate frosting because I eat all the extra and get sick.

Procrastination

I could be doing many constructive things- touching up the house paint, doing the dishes, folding clothes... UNPACK. But no, I took a quiz to see which Disney princess I was. I think it's funny I got the only Disney movie I owned until I met Joey (funny, he has more Disney movies than me... ). It sort of reminds me of those quizzes you take in all those girl magazines in middle school (ok, ok high school) in Seventeen and such where you know you want to manipulate your answers to make sure you acheive, "Prom Night Princess" instead of "Prom Night Pooper" status. All in all, I was pleased with the results. Hey, I was just happy I didn't get Cruella.


You Are Mulan!

Strong and spirited. You're no one's girly girl; actually you are very determined person with a strong sense of self. Never let go of that! The only thing that equals your sense of self is your family, but the traditions of society can always be bent to protect something or someone you love.

Which Disney Princess Are You?

So I haven't been blogging lately- mainly because we were in limbo most of the month waiting for our house to close. We are still unpacking and finishing up painting and other lose ends. As soon as we get all the boxes unpacked, I'll take some finished pictures of the house. In the meantime, here are some things we have been up to this summer.

We went to Winnemucca for the fourth of July. We tried swimming in my parents above ground pool, but it was freezing. Max loved it though, and liked his new floaty... so did Joey. Joey didn't have to pick the pink one, but he was pretty attached to it. (They were watching my dad chip wood... It's a guy thing, I guess)

Seems like all our family outings revolve around water. We also went down to the river with the Pyrahs. Joey inexplicably took Max out into the rapids of the river and promptly brought him back after much yelping from the shore. Max's much paler cousins stuck to giving each other mud spa treatments on the shore.

I quite enjoy Max's floppy hat. I'm considering getting one for myself.

House Update

People have been asking us what the deal is with our house- when are we moving, when does it close, blah blah blah. Buying this house has to be one of the most stressful things we have done. For the past week we have been on a rollercoaster of thinking we can start working only to find out someone in the process has made yet another mistake. We think we have all the kinks worked out now and hopefully we will be signing tomorrow afternoon or Thursday. Our closing date is also Thursday, but we have the week after that to finish the carpet and paint. We have to be out of our apartment by the 13th, so we're in a bit of a time crunch. It has been SO nice to see how many people are willing to help us and we wish we weren't being such flakes about telling people when they can help. Thanks in advance to everyone who has volunteered to help us and hopefully we can take you up on your offer as soon as possible!

Max Power

So, this is a little old (a week or so), but Max has learned to crawl... well sort of. He does this sort of gimpy one-legged crawl. But it certainly doesn't slow him down! I remember looking around the apartment when I was going through my nesting phase feeling pretty confident we wouldn't need to do much child proofing. Max has proven me wrong. I never realized he could find the tiniest crumbs on the floor to eat. He quickly shoves them in his mouth as I run over to fish hook them out. He loves to pull books off the shelves, open and close cabinets (sometimes hitting himself in the head with them), and trying to dump out the bathroom garbage cans. He also loves outlets. Not just poking the outlets themselves, but he tries to pull off the entire plate. He must want to work with electricity like his daddy. Here is a video of his new favorite hobby. Atleast it keeps him busy while I do the dishes. Guess you'll think twice before accepting something from us in a tupperware container!

He floats!

For Father's Day weekend we took a trip to Forest Hill CA to Joey's parents' house. We had a lot of fun. Max had so much fun, he didn't feel like eating or sleeping! (that part wasn't so fun for us) The highlight of the weekend was going to Sugar Pine Reservoir. The water was a lot warmer than Tahoe and provided a great starting point for Max to learn to swim. He did so great, he was wakeboarding by the end of the day! He's pretty much a child prodigy.

Deep Thoughts by Joey

"You have to be careful with ham and cheese. Sometimes it can be too cheesy or too hammy."