and in the middle of opening gifts...

...Chloe decided she'd learn how to walk!!!!

The Party

The party was terrific!
The DeCooks know how to put on a party!
They had a bounce house...

Tate and Ava LOVED it!

Tate waited DAYS to eat what he called, "mommy's beautiful cake!"

It was a great night and a fabulous party!

The Birthday Girl

Happy Birthday Sweet Chloe Ann!

the finished cake

As you can see, I didn't clean up before I snapped these photos!

This is the finished cake...

and this is Chloe's little cake that she could dig into...

I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out!

a bit of a cake disaster

Okay, so it's 1:15am and I am just sitting down from a day of cake decorating. I casually did bits and pieces of the detail fondant work throughout the day today. I colored the fondant and made the butterflies and flowers. This evening I baked the cakes and decided to not freeze them like I usually do. Don't know if that was the best idea because I had kind of a major cake crisis. Ugh. All is well now, but the bottom cake was going to be a layer cake and it ended up just being one cake with no layers. The top layer literally broke into pieces and slid off. I was strangely not too worked up about it. I will say that under the fondant on that cake, it's not going to be pretty! But because of the disaster, I was able to sample the cake and oh my goodness...it is deeeelicious! :)

The little cake I made for Chloe is so cute! I didn't put fondant on that, but instead put green frosting all over it that looks like grass. Then I'll just put 1 butterfly on it and maybe a flower. So now, all of the fondant flowers and butterflies are done, the cakes are all in the fridge already frosted with buttercream frosting and just waiting for the fondant. :) I will put that on in the morning and then add all of the butterflies and flowers. I am not sure how I plan to store the cake until the party. I think I would like to put it in the fridge, but think it will be too big. Not sure what I'll do about that.

Every time I make these cakes I say, "I forgot how hard this is!" It's so satisfying to see the finished product though! Right about where I'm at in the process is when I start to wonder if they are going to turn out though. I start to get nervous and wonder what I got myself into! Ha. I hope that my disaster tonight will be the last disaster I have! Pictures to come!

the phases of creating a cake

So as I mentioned before, I am baking/decorating a cake for a special 1st birthday party on Saturday! I get really excited about creating fun and new cakes. It is tedious, but super fun! To make it not seem like it takes so long, usually the 3 or 4 days before the cake needs to be done, I start the process. I have created a system where I complete these cakes in usually 5 phases.

Phase 1: Make and refrigerate the Marshmallow Fondant. The fondant can last a couple weeks in the fridge and taste just as good as the day you made it! And yes, this fondant is actually GOOD! Super sweet, but doesn't taste like cardboard like the fondants I've had in the past. :)

Phase 2: Make the yummy homemade butter cream (my mom's deeeeelicous recipe!) frosting that I put under the fondant and between the cake layers.

Phase 3: Bake the cakes and freeze them. I prefer to freeze them and work with them when they're still a bit frozen...they crumble less and just seem easier to work with.

Phase 4: Assemble the cakes how I want them and then frost all of it with the butter cream frosting.

Phase 5: Cover the cakes with the fondant and do the finishing details to complete the cake!

The cake for this weekend will have two different flavors of cake...one for each layer. I will make chocolate for one layer and white for another. I will food color the batter of the white cake so it's fun and pretty when it gets cut into! :) When it's complete, it will be all white fondant and I will use butter cream frosting to create some grass along the bottom of each layer of the cakes and with fondant will make brightly colored butterflies to randomly place all over the cake.

I just completed phases 1 and 2 tonight. Tomorrow night I will complete phase 3 and then on Saturday morning I will complete phases 4 and 5. The party is Saturday evening. I will post pictures of the completed cake and from the party as well I'm sure!

My Day: a table, a cake, Tate and missing Florida

We have a table!!! We were able to pick up our new counter top for our island we built in our kitchen yesterday. Sean even attached it last night! The island will double as our kitchen table. THEN, we went and picked up our barstools that we ordered today! So we FINALLY have a table and chairs to sit at! We still need to stain the island, but at this point I am elated!!!! And it is huge and gives me tons of extra counter space! I love love love it! Woohoo!

I really wanted to have it complete by today or tomorrow because I am making a cake for Chloe DeCook's 1st birthday party that is on Saturday. It is going to be pretty decent sized and I'll be doing a lot of work with fondant on it which will require a lot of counter space. I am super excited about the cake and hope it turns out as fun as I think it will! I will post pictures of the finished product this weekend sometime.

So aside from Chloe's birthday and spending time with great friends at that, there's not a lot going on for us this weekend. It IS Mother's Day and so I'm sure we'll end up doing something on Sunday. We may head to Muscatine for a bit.

I still have a suitcase full of clothes I need to put away and some house cleaning and picking up to do, but just haven't felt motivated since I got home from Florida...so it sits for now. I'll work on it tomorrow I'm sure. :)

For Cinco de Mayo tonight, we ate Mexican Chicken before Sean had to head out to work. My parents and Chris, Brenda and the boys went out to Mi Pueblo (which I LOVE) in Florida for a night of Cinco de Mayo celebrating. Bummer that we couldn't be there with them! :( I have been soaking up some serious Tate time and loving every minute of it, but would be lying if I said I didn't miss the time I got to spend in Florida with my Mom. We had so many laughs...tons of laughs and lots of good conversation. It was great. And of course I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the time I got to spend with Chris, Brenda Boone and Bode. Oh how I miss them! I am longing for our next trip down there in a few months...this time with my lover boys! :)

Tate went to bed at 6pm (see post below) and about 10pm I heard him crying, "mommy, where are you?!" When I went upstairs, he was no where in his room to be found. I found him standing by my side of the bed pathetically weeping while saying quietly, "mommy, you don't go bye bye. Where are you, mommy?" Can you say heartbroken?!!! Ugh. I don't think I'll be leaving him again for ANY length of time anytime soon! As soon as he heard me come into the room and I let him know I was there, he came to me and fell limp into my arms and soaked my shoulder with tears. He was pretty out of it because he was so tired, but he managed to say, "Don't leave me. Lay with me." So of course, I did! Only I put him in our bed on Sean's side (he's working tonight) and he quickly went back to sleep. I am kind of excited to snuggle up to my little man tonight in bed. So I think that's where I will head now. :)

Goodnight!

you think he was tired???

I had a bit of a battle at supper with Tate.
He wanted something different than we were having and I wouldn't give in.
I made him stay in the kitchen to eat at least a few bites before he could get up.
About 15 minutes later, I looked in the kitchen and found him like this...

He's been in bed since I picked him up from the table and put him there at 6pm.

balls

While we were at Wal-Mart today, there was a woman who works there putting some balls in a bin. They were those kinds that are like a dollar that there's all different colors only these were really big ones. Tate sees her and yells, "WHOA Mommy, he has humongous balls! His balls are really really huge! Look at his balls Mommy!" He calls everyone "he" and doesn't really understand the difference between "he" and "she". It was pretty hilarious...there were lots of people that heard him and looked over and kind of laughed. I couldn't help but laugh myself and say (more quietly of course!), "yes, those are big balls Tate."

heartbroken

A conversation I had with Tate tonight as I was rocking him (which I don't usually do!) and snuggling before bed...

Tate: Mommy, I am so sad and cried.

Me: Why Tate?

Tate: Mommy, you stay home, you don't go bye bye anymore.

Me: I am so sorry Tate! I missed you so much and love you so much!

Tate: I miss you too Mommy, you leave me and go bye bye. You stay home so I am so happy.

Me: Tate, I will always come back if I go bye bye. I love you so much!

Tate: I love you so much too Mommy. I am so sad when you go bye bye. Mommy, you stay at home and no more go bye bye.

Me: Okay, Tate, I won't go bye bye again for a while.

He was genuinely upset and seemed worried that I was going to leave again. I am not kidding, it seriously broke my heart. Ugh. It makes me just feel awful that I was even excited to get away when I went to Florida. Oh my goodness, it was so amazing loving up on him today. He was so sweet and did not want me out of his sight! I feel awful that he might be worried that I would leave again. He is just so extremely sensitive and this is by far the longest I have ever been away from him. I love him so much!

Heading Home

I am heading home in the morning tomorrow. It's bitter sweet...I miss Tate and Sean terribly and cannot wait to wrap my arms around both of them! However, I have loved this time I've had to relax down here and also will miss Boone, Bode, Chris and Brenda terribly. I wish they lived in Iowa. It will be great to see them in about 8 weeks again, but I know that Boone will have changed so much!

It's been such a fun trip though. We've fit in a lot of things in the short week here. Mom and I spent hours laughing and chatting. We hung out by the pool a couple of days and I managed to get a burn. Surprise, surprise. We did a lot of shopping and had a lot of fabulous food. I look forward to coming back with Sean and Tate at the end of the summer!

And thank you to Cassie and her family and Nana and Papa P for taking care of Tate while I was gone and Sean worked! We really appreciate it!!!

More dragonfly shots...

I can't get enough of these dragonfly pictures!

I took a few more a couple of days ago...

and we couldn't believe it when we saw THIS...
In case you can't tell, this lizard had just caught and started to eat this dragonfly!
It all happened right in front of us on my parents' pool screen...pretty amazing!

the good life...

Relaxing by the pool...

can't wipe the grin off his face!

:)

Super Brothers!!!

If you're seeing what I'm seeing, than these pictures look grainy.

Just click directly on the picture and a clearer version will pop up...I have no idea what's going on or how to fix it. Hopefully it's just this computer and your seeing the clear shots.

Bode is a HAM!!!

He was cracking us all (and himself) up!

Again, these pics are grainy unless you click on them...what is going on?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!

More pictures...shocker, I know!

We had another photo shoot this evening. Brenda wanted pictures of the boys and of their family. Today was she and Chris's 6 year anniversary and so it was a nice way to capture it.

I'm not sure why, but some of these photos look grainy on the blog. Or maybe it's just this computer...not sure. If you click on the picture, it will bring up a clearer version of the photo...I have no idea why it's doing that.

Anyway, I thought there were SO MANY great ones!
These make my heart melt!!!

And I am sorry, but Brenda does not look like she just had a baby 3 days ago!

Can you say skinny?!!!!

Seriously, she looks amazing!

While Brenda was in the shower...

...I was put in charge of Boone.

I decided to have a little photo shoot and here are a bazillion of the pictures I took!!!

He's a pretty handsome subject!

Did you think the photo shoot was over????

Ha...here are even MORE pics from our little mini shoot...