Awesome Weekend!

We love busy weekends with fun things to do. Saturday was definitely one of those days. We started the day by taking Ashley to gymnastics, after which we went to Freehold Mall to look at puppies (Mike’s favorite), Ashley went on a Carousel ride, Katelyn gets motion sickness, so she doesn’t like these kind of rides. I browsed through Sur La Table (one of my two favorite kitchen stores), and we had lunch at Food Court. The kids ate well, and then it was time to go home for their nap. Ashley didn’t nap, but Katelyn did and we had to wake her up to leave for Lana’s 3rd birthday party. It was a fun princess theme birthday party, filled with a lot of activities. Ashley was happy to participate in everything and Katelyn being one of the younger one was also surprisingly cool with all of the big kid activities! She doesn’t get intimidated easily. They made crowns, danced to princess music in tutus, had pizza, and got to play in this toy house with a slide and a ball pit. It was pretty cool. Ashley ate 3 slices of pizza and some cake. Katelyn ate a slice of pizza, a bunch of fruit and enough cake for the two of them!

While they were eating Katelyn she a couple of 5-6 year old boys sitting on the end of the table, burping, so she picked up her plate and moved closer to them. She is a very loud belcher, so she thought these boys were hilarious! She was laughing so much, almost flirting with them! I guess she could appreciate their humor! She’s so outgoing and friendly, we really love that about her personality although I image we’ll have to keep that in check as she gets older.

During the whole birthday party, Ashley kept an eye on Katelyn and took her with her to do all of the activities. Last year, Ashley was not so outgoing, she was pretty clingy to me, and I think because of her preschool program, she’s really come out of her shell. She doesn’t need me to be in sight all the time, and loves to keep an eye on Katelyn when we are out.

As if the gymnastics, mall trip and birthday party weren’t enough, we then decided to stop by my mom’s house, since it was only 25 min away. Pumped with sugar from the cake, Ashley and Katelyn continued their hyper screaming-dancing-jumping-laughing fun for another hour at their house before we packed up to go home. As always, Katelyn took a break by sitting with Chuck. She has a very strong bond with him, even though she doesn’t see him too often. Every time she sees him she wants to sit with him. It’s very sweet :)

On the ride home they were so tired, that they both fell asleep in the car. We carried them into the house and didn’t even make Ashley change into PJs. In the morning Ashley was so surprised, to be still wearing her clothes from the day before! She didn’t remember how that happened.

We had such a fun Saturday that we decided to attempt a breakfast out at Perkin’s for the first time in a long time. Eating out with kids has been rather challenging, so we’ve tried to avoid it. And again, to our surprise, this time both behaved very well, and we had an enjoyable breakfast out! We are starting to think that perhaps we are over that difficult period where two kids are unmanageable to take out.

Sunday the kids got to play with the neighbors while we did some yard work, and for dinner we went out for pizza! Two meals out in one day! And again, both kids did extremely well! Wow! I can’t describe how big of a milestone this is. It really makes things so much more enjoyable, knowing that we can have a stress free meal out! We are still not talking about a prolonged dinner with appetizers and dessert, but it’s still better than nothing :)

I know this post came out kind of long, but oh well. I hope that one day when Ashley and Katelyn are older then can go back and look at some of these and get an idea of what it was like for them growing up :)

Spring is here!

Well we can tell spring is officially here, our local ground hog is awake and back hanging out by our shed, he survived another winter! Baby bunnies are out, and we have a new visitor to our backyard - a baby Cooper’s hawk. He’s been coming over and hanging out the beam of our swing set. Mike was able to capture a great picture of him by taking it through the lens of the binoculars (our camera zoom was not enough to get a close shot of him)

Ashley got a new bicycle!

Ashley’s little tricycle has become way too small for her, so last weekend we went out to get her a bicycle with training wheels. At first she couldn’t figure out how to pedal forward (the pedals don’t turn backwards) but got the hang of it pretty fast and was zooming around the Toy’s R Us store on it. This is a pretty cool new trick for her. She’s very proud of herself :)

Another cool trick that our neighbor Emma taught her is to pump her legs on the swing herself, so we don’t have to push her. She can go really high without any help!

She’s becoming so grown up so fast, definitely huge changes even from 6 months ago!

Katelyn's Dancing Bears Music Class

Since January, once a week we’ve been taking Katelyn to a music class at Dorbrook Park. This is the first semi-structured class she's ever attended. The instructor plays guitar, blow bubbles, they sing songs, dance around with scarves, drums and bells and play with balls and parachute. At first she was a little shy, didn’t want to participate, and preferred to go out in the hallway to climb the stairs. But now she’s really into it. She likes to help clean up the stuff the instructor hands out, and pays attention for the whole 45 minute duration of the class. It’s very cute. Here is a small video of the “Good Bye” song that they sing:

Ashley's Driving!

Spring is almost here, so Ashley has been practicing a lot driving her pink Cadillac. She and Katelyn hop in and off they go. A lot of the kids on the street have these, so they get together go around the cul-de-sac. Ashley started with 2.5 mph setting and now Mike's bumped up the speed to 5 mph for her.

Typically we keep her car in the shed, but sometimes if we are too lazy to walked it there at night, we back Mike's car out of the garage and park Ashley's car there instead. It looks so funny there next to my minivan :)


Here's a video of Ashley and Katelyn (this is her second time driving)

Mike's Birthday Cake

Since I've been on this cake making kick for a while now, I offered Mike to make whatever cake he wanted for his birthday. He chose basketball theme. So with a little help from Google, here's a cake that I made for our family dinner:

For dinner Mike requested Coq Au Vin with spaetzle and French string beans. Coq au vin is a french chicken dish, slow cooked in red wine, with bacon, pearl onions, mushrooms and herbs. Spaetzle is a dish of German moodles enhanced with fresh herbs. Both of these recipes came from William Sonoma cooking demonstration classes that I did last fall. We really liked the flavors, however I had to tweak the recipes to make them more healthy.

My Cake Decorating Class

In the month of February, I took Wilton's Flowers and Cake Design class. We learned to make a variety of flowers from different edible materials including daisies, pansies, roses, apple blossoms, primroses, daffodils, lilies.

Coincidentally the last class ended the night before Mike's birthday. So my final project was Mike's birthday cake :) Do to the nature of the class, the cake came out very girly, turns out it's hard to make a manly cake with flowers..

I don't have pictures of all of the flowers that I learned to make, but here's some:
Daises and Pansies from fondant:


Some apple blossoms and primroses that I made to put on the cake for the final project:


Here's the final product:
Marble cake with chocolate ganache filling and vanilla buttercream icing.


Basketweave on the sides and crunchy, sugary flowers on top:

The Family Portrait

Ashley's been into drawing our family. Here's one of her family portraits of us:

It's Mommy, Ashley (the biggest one), Daddy (the smallest) and Katelyn.

Diaper Cake

This past weekend I got a chance to make a diaper cake for Nelya's baby shower. I used 100 diapers and since she's having a girl, I decorated it with all things pink - ribbons, ballerina kitty, diaper pins, hair bows, chew toy, pink sockies and little carseat toys and a soft blanket.


Since I didn't post this earlier, here's a picture of the diaper cake that I made for Jen's baby shower last fall:

Katelyn went on the potty for the first time plus more "Sissy" Love

Both Ashley and Katelyn were sick with a virus last week, so to rule out any infection, Dr. Yia asked that we give her Katelyn's urine sample. The problem is Katelyn is still in diapers and the topic of potty training has been deferred until warmer months. Dr. Yia gave us a baggie with tape round the opening that she suggested we try to use on Katelyn inside her diaper, however knowing how stubborn Katelyn can be there was no way she was going to agree to wear a plastic bag in her pants, besides we wouldn't know if she went, so it may all spill into the diaper. So I decided that we would try to potty route. So armed with a book and mini M&Ms I convinced Katelyn to sit on the potty after her nap. She didn't like the idea, but being that she really likes sweets, she couldn't resist the M&M. And I'm happy to report that in less than 10 min we had success! I'm not sure Katelyn even realized what she did, but she certainly got a lot of praise for it!

Her test came back negative and both of them are feeling much better this week. We again managed to avoid antibiotics. It's been more than a year since the last time that they had to take them! I think it's quite an accomplishment, being that both Ashley and Katelyn go to activities outside the house and interact with other kids all the time.

Here are some more recent pictures of the "sissy" love at our house :)