As promised...

Yesterday was Todd and I's 4th anniversary, tomorrow is Tony's 2nd Birthday and the party is today. The majority of the evening was spent making this lovely cake and getting things ready for the party. I have a feeling we will spend many anniversaries doing much of the same, with one tiny exception; I wont be decorating any cakes. Yes this was a one time crazy idea I had, and I learned my lesson. From now on birthday cakes will be bought. I am not very happy with the way it turned out, very novice looking, but considering Todd accidentally threw away the instructions and I had to use a picture off the internet to copy with no instructions, I think it will do just fine. Especially since I also ordered an Elmo cake from a real cake baker who has a little more talent than I do.

For the love of Barney!

Don't ask me why, but for some reason, out of the white snowy sky, (yes it's snowing here), I feel like blogging today. Hmm, wonder if it could have anything to do with the fact that right now I have no kids, no husband, no house to clean or bills to pay, and no job to do. Yep, I am in a hotel Starbucks sipping a Nonfat Gingerbread latte and totally enjoying this rare quiet time to myself with no other obligations. Todd has been in Grand Rapids for Farm Bureau meetings this week, and yesterday I pawned the kids off on my mother in law and drove up to do some shopping and have dinner and stay the night. Todd has meetings again this morning and then we will head back to life with obligations, after making a quick stop at Costco.

Christmas is coming so fast, I can't believe it. I still haven't gotten a tree or started my shopping. I really need to get on the ball. Yesterday I had planned to do some shopping, but by the time I got to Grand Rapids I only had time for one stop. The cake store. Let me explain...
This Monday is Tony's 2nd birthday, and for his cake I wanted a Barney cake. Not just a cake with a picture of Barney on it, but I wanted the actual cake to look like Barney. My MIL has a friend who made an Elmo cake, which I saw on Facebook and it was so cute, looked just like him. I asked her if she could make me a Barney one, which of course she could, only problem being she does not have a Barney cake pan. So determined woman that I am when I get my mind set on something, I did some Amazon searching and sure enough found a Barney cake pan, for $19.99 plus $9 shipping. Since it was Thursday and the party is Sunday, I wasn't sure that it would arrive in time. Since I knew I was coming to GR for the day I called a cake store and found out that they had a Barney pan to rent but not sell. Well GR is a good hour + drive and the rental is for 2 days only so I wasn't sure that would work either. Todd has another Farm show to attend in GR next week, so I asked if there was anyway we could keep it for a week. She started chuckling on the phone, and then proceeded to tell me that the last time the pan had been rented was in 2005, so she was pretty sure a week would be just fine. "I guess Barney isn't that popular" she said. Well maybe not, but to my Tony, he is #1. Everyday we must watch Barney, many, many, many times. I have several episodes saved on the DVR so we can watch it anytime he wants/demands and he knows it. He will bring me the remote control and say "Barney". If I ignore him or pretend I didn't hear him, he just says it louder and louder until I give in and turn it on. We try telling him that Barney is sleeping sometimes, but that doesn't work too well. I don't really like Barney myself, but he has a good message for kids, teaching them to play nice and morals and all that stuff, so I guess if he wants to watch it he can. I just wish he liked other cartoons too, for a little variety.
Anyway, back to the cake, so I get to the store and I walk in and the whole place smells so good, apparently it's not just a cake store, but a cake bakery too and the aroma from the frosting and cakes baking in the back filled the store. I think it had a hypnotizing effect on me, cause when I got there I did something totally crazy! First of all the cake pan was not at all what I had wanted, it was more like a cake with Barney on it, and I really wanted the cake to be Barney! So I started looking around the store to see what else they had, they had all kinds of cool kids cake pans. I tried to look and see if there was anything else that I could get to take back to the cake baker to make for him and I spotted a CARS cake pan. Tony does love CARS, so I decided that I would buy the pan. And then I started thinking crazy, how hard can it be to decorate a cake, it had a picture on it for me to use as a guide, why do I need to pay someone else to do this when I can do it myself? I asked the lady what she thought about it, I told her that I had helped my sister decorate a cake many years ago and we used a star tip. She said if I could use a star tip then I would be just fine. So I bought all the frosting dye colors, frosting tips, couplings, bags, and clear vanilla, butter and almond flavorings. I walked out of the store feeling really excited about making this cake, but as soon as I got out of the store and into my car, I started having doubts. (That is why I say the store smells had me hypnotized.) So I will probably most definitely be calling my sisters to help me. Hopefully we can pull it off and make a nice cake, but I still think I might go ahead and have the cake baker make me an Elmo cake too (just in case)!

Wish me luck! I promise to post pictures of the cake and party afterwards!

This, that and some pictures

Yesterday was my 32nd birthday. Turned out to be a really nice and relaxing day. The kids were extra good and took really long naps. I guess they aren't too young to give me a gift after all.

We had a lot of family over for a cookout and made burgers (real and veggie). Rachael made strawberry pie for me instead of a cake at my request. It was so good. My mom was here for the occasion, she was stopping by for a day on her way home from OKC.

They good news in OKC is my Grandma Annie is doing so much better. She got transferred to rehab today where they will work her 3 hours a day to get back her strength. I am really hoping she does well. She has a big church family and they have made a sign up sheet so that people can take turns sitting at the hospital with her so she isn't alone all day which I am so thankful for. Tony being patriotic on Memorial Day.

Grandma making Bella smile. Yes she can smile now, started doing that around 6-7 weeks old. I am already slacking on the baby book. I don't even have one, I really need to get one before she grows up and I forget all this stuff. This is how Bella sleeps, all swaddled up. You may laugh, as most of my family did when they saw her like this, but she sleeps through the night so it's not that funny. Last night was her record sleep of 10 hours straight! 10pm till 8am.

Tony doesn't like to eat with bibs on anymore so this is the type of mess I get to deal with 3 times a day.

Bella sleeping in the stroller while Tony plays at the park.

Getting dizzy with daddy at the park.

More fun at the park.

Watching for "da-da"

Trying to wear "da-da's" shoes.

Bella having a bad hair day.

2 months old

Anthony is into everything these days.

Bella and Da-da.

Kristen's 12th birthday celebration

Yay, I finally got it (the slide show) figured out. Although now that the birthday was 3 days ago, the desire to write about it is gone, but since I already made the slide show, I'll still share it. My sister wrote a sweet birthday post about her on her blog, so I'll just direct you there.

Anthony's 1st Birthday Party

I woke up early this morning to get to the store and get the last minute things I needed for the big party today. Everyone in the house was still asleep, but I left the camera hanging on Tony's bedroom door with instructions for Todd to get a picture of the birthday boy first thing when he woke up. He did as I asked, in fact there were about 20 pictures on the camera, but sadly only two was worth keeping.

Here's the birthday boy. He has no idea what a big day is ahead of him.

The party was great. We had lots of people to share in this big day. While Anthony turning one was a huge deal to Todd and I, we weren't sure how big of a deal it would be to everyone else. Apparently he has a lot of people who love him and wanted to be here for the celebration, we had close to 40 people in our house for the party. There wasn't even enough seats for everyone to sit, but no one seemed to mind.

My sister Natalie was in charge of taking pictures for me, but I didn't get them from her before she left, so I am not able to post but the few pictures I took on my camera.

His Grandma got him this really cool wagon. It's a two seater, so he can share it with his little sister next year.

By the time everyone had arrived, Tony started to get a little cranky. I'm not sure if it was because he was overwhelmed by all the people, or if it was because it was somewhat close to his naptime. Either way, we decided to do the cake and sing Happy Birthday early on in the party just in case his good mood didn't last long.

Here he is waiting for his cake. After we sang to him, we were all hoping he would dig in to his own little mini cake, but he just wasn't that interested in it, at first anyway. Eventually, he dug in and had some fun with it.
He made quite the mess by the time he was done. It was so cute though, and that is after all what your supposed to do on your first birthday right?Then we moved on to the presents, he had a rather large pile waiting for him. He got lots of cute little outfits, and tons of new toys to play with. The good news is, I don't have to get him much for Christmas, he should be all set with new toys for quite a while now. I think I have enough now to have a play room on all three floors of our house.
After I helped him open all his gifts I took him upstairs for a nap. He fell fast asleep without any fussing and slept for 2 hours. He was plum tuckered out.

All in all it was a great birthday party, and one we will for sure never forget. Thanks to everyone who came to share in this special day.

Once I get the rest of the pictures from Natalie I will post some more. There were lots of cute ones I'm sure.

A little of this, a little of that

Baby Gap has the the cutest baby boy clothes. Last week I did a little online shopping for some summer clothes for Tony. This is one of his new little outfits. I learned my lesson last summer when I bought maternity clothes from Gap.com - Buy just a few items the first time around, because when they send you your order, they include a 10% off coupon for your next on line order. I have a whole shopping cart full in my account that I need to buy now that I have my coupon. It's kind of like online lay away. Every time I sit him on the couch for a picture he puts his arm out on the arm rest. A natural couch potato?
This was taken on my 31st birthday over the memorial day weekend. Yes, I am into my 30's now, which is a big difference from just being 30. I had a really good birthday as usual (I love birthdays, even if it means getting older) I went to Chicago with a group of friends for dinner and shopping and stayed overnight. It was my first 24 hours away from Tony. He did fine, but I missed him a lot. Then on my actual birthday I went over to my sister Rachael's house for dinner and birthday cake. Then we went over to Todd's cousins house for a cookout, not for my birthday, but for Memorial day, but they got me a cake so that was pretty cool. My mom wrote a very sweet birthday post over on her blog with some cute/some embarrassing pictures of me growing up. You can read it here if you like. Tony's shirt says "lil squash". Francie bought it for him from RachealRay.com last summer. Perfect for a future vegetable farmer don't you think?
This last weekend we finally got weather that feels like summer. I also realized that we have very few pictures of Todd or I with Tony. I frequently take pictures of Tony, but rarely with us. So this weekend before going to my cousins graduation party, we went outside and tried to take a few pictures. Problem was, we let the dog out with us, and Tony would never look at the camera, he was always looking at the dog.

Yes, he's looking down at Brewster here too.
Here he is in his new toy. It's a $40 well spent. I almost bought the $80 baby Einstein jumping thingy, but decided that he would probably like this just as much. Good call on my part. He loves it and I saved $40.
Head shot. Future Gerber baby?
So one of my friends mentioned that one of her friends works in marketing in Chicago and they are looking for a new Gerber baby. Age 6 - 9 months. I don't know much more about it and I'm not one of those crazy mom's that would go and get a modeling agent and market her kid. But if it were as easy as forwarding a picture of Tony to my friend who then forwarded it to her marketing friend and they just happen to agree that my baby is absolutely adorable, well then.... I'm willing to do that.
Here he is in his new little swim outfit. We haven't made it into a pool yet this year, but hopefully soon. I can't wait to see how he likes it.

Here he is with his daddy. Notice the drool on his chin? It's like a leaky faucet.
Love those little legs.
After several attempts at a self family picture, we gave up. This was the best of many. Pretty sad huh?
Tony checking out the Peonies.

Catch all

I have so many blog posts I wanted to write this week and just haven't found the time. Strange too, because in the past 8 days I think I've only worked one shift. So I thought I'd have tons of time to blog, but today is my last day before I start working again and then I'll really never get to all these blog posts. So I have decided to combine and shorten all of them into one post. Since I am combining several posts into one, I will let you get away with only leaving one comment too. (haha) So here goes, I'm going to try and whip this out quick before Tony wakes up from his nap.

SICK
I caught the "cheer" (stomach virus) that my nieces and nephews shared with so many over the weekend. Unfortunately I caught it on Tuesday, which also happened to be Todd's birthday. Thankfully it only lasted a day and by Wednesday I was feeling better again. It's a real bummer to be sick when you have a baby, they don't seem to care that you are sick, they still got needs. Luckily Todd's mom was able to help me out for part of the day and watch him so I could rest.

TODD'S BIRTHDAY

May 6 was Todd's 29th birthday. Unfortunately for him his birthday is in May during farm season, so unless it rains, he still has to work all day. There was no rain this year, so he worked all day, and since I was sick, he didn't really want to come home either. We really didn't see much of him, he stayed away till after Anthony and I had gone to bed. I guess he didn't really want to catch what I had. Since I am such a procrastinator, I had planned on gift shopping for him while he was at work on his birthday. Getting sick ruined those plans, so his birthday was kind of a bummer, no gift, no cake, no card. Hopefully we can celebrate this weekend. Here is a picture of Todd playing with Tony on his lunch break (before I got REALLY sick and made him not want to be home). Hopefully next year is a better birthday!

BREWSTERS EYES

Remember I talked about my dog's eyes and the really expensive medicine I bought for him? Well it's working! They say give it 2 months for the full effect, but after just a few weeks I can already tell a huge difference. By now he would normally have tons of crusty goop in his eyes. So it was money well spent.

ANTHONY EATS FOOD FOR THE FIRST TIME

I started giving him rice cereal this past weekend and the first time he did really well. He seemed to like it, couldn't get it fast enough. He wasn't really sure what to do with it once he got it in his mouth though. Most of it got sloshed around and spit back out and probably less than half actually got into his tummy. I wonder how long it takes to master eating, because almost a week later, he's still only getting about half in.

But I will say that for all of you who suggested feeding him cereal would help him sleep through the night, you were wrong. The first night after eating he woke up 4 times. Then the second night he slept through the whole night for the very first time, 9:30pm until 7:30am. Unfortunately that turned out to be a one time deal. He is back to his usual wake ups at 1am and 5am. He also gets juice once in a while. He was having problems with constipation a few weeks ago so I started giving him 1-2 ounces of juice a day when he needed it, and it worked well. Yesterday I gave him 2 ounces of pear juice and he sucked it down really fast and seemed to want more, so I gave him another 2 ounces. Well lets just say I've changed a lot of dirty diapers ever since. So from now on, 2 ounces is all he gets!

ISN'T MY BABY CUTE (sorry I have to brag, he's just the cutest thing I've ever seen)