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Papa’s BIG birthday

Posted on August 12, 2008 7:46 am by TheAngelForever

My parents and I have always been close. I have been blessed to live near them and watch them become amazing grandparents from the day NHL was born. My father has patience at times with the boys that I never knew existed. He loves to play with them, and especially take them on amusement park rides.

In July 2004 we started a tradition with Papa and NHL. They go to a local amusement park and get their photo taken together on the Merry-go-round. This year we went back again for our fifth photo.

Today my father turns the big 60! We will celebrate with them for cake tonight and then this weekend a family party at the lake in his honor.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Dad, thanks for being you and never complaining when we call in the middle of the night, or running over in an emergency. You have taught NHL important lessons, like playing Snood, "Yankees Stink," and how to sing Elvis and Neil Diamond.

We love you and even your crazy LA Dodger ways!

Categories:
birthday family photos

Mount Dinocake practice

Posted on August 11, 2008 12:05 am by TheAngelForever

As previously mentioned, my soon to be five year old son, NHL, asked for a dinosaur cake with a volcano on it. Rather than run and hide, I decided to make it . In my last post, I showed how I sculpted the volcano shape from our giant cupcake mold. It was not too horrible, but the real challenge would come in finding the right decorating tools to make it really look like a volcano.

We bought whipped milk chocolate frosting to go on the complete outside of the volcano mountain. I have found that the whipped variety spreads much easier. In addition to this, it works nicely in my decorating tools if need be. Below is what it looked like after covering the volcano shape completely with this frosting.

Please note that JL and I were acting like kids. We quickly realized what the cake also looked like and did impressions of Mr. Hankey.

Next we had to decide which of the items to use for the lava coming down the volcano. We had purhased two items after researching this online. They were:

Since we were unable to locate plain strawberry Fruit by the Foot I tried the Berry Tie-Dye one. It did not work! The red icing was set up using the star tip and I was ready to go. As you will see, a volcano was quikly born.

Once this was done I made the cupcakes to take to NHL’s birthday party with a friend that was today. I used the extra red icing and some sparkle sugar sprinkles. Photos of those to come with details of the party. I also decided to use the remaining chocolate frosting to make the excess giant cupcake remnants into something more pretty. Here is a before and after.

Next Friday I will bake another giant cupcake, freeze it until Sunday to take to NHL’s family party where I will construct another volcano with dinosaurs around it, officially naming it Mount Dinocake!

For now my project is to figure out how to get this volcano cake to JL’s work on Monday. At least that is the plan now.

Categories:
birthday food glorious food fun laughs messy nhl photos yummy

The volcano cake challenge

Posted on August 10, 2008 9:48 am by TheAngelForever

What do you do when your four year old son requests a dinosaur and volcano cake for his fifth birthday?

These are a few of the options. Do you. . .

hide under your covers and pretend you heard nothing?
run to the nearest store and order a cake for a lot of money?
search on Google for volcano cakes and get fabulous ideas in your head?

Here in Angel Land, I immediately envisioned using the giant cupcake pan to make said volcano into a reality. I most definitely did a Google search to see what others before this had done. Did I have a clue what I was going to do beyond that? Not really, I am quite good at making things up as I go. Of course JL and I bounced ideas to each other and I even opened it up to people on Twitter for thoughts.

In the end we opted to use the giant cupcake. I figured in order to make it more of a volcano shape I had to use the bottom as the top, and the top as the bottom. Got that? I am serious, the shape of the cupcake flipped around like that could quite possibly work. You will see how it worked in the photos below.

Yesterday we went out and bought the cake mixes (yes I cheat that way), frosting, red icing for possible lava, and Fruit by the Foot (another possible lava although no strawberry was to be found). After the kids were in bed JL and I baked the giant cupcake and eight little ones with the remaining batter.

This morning, after leaving the cake the chill during the night, I set out to create the volcano. Here is the giant cupcake before anything was done.

Next it was time to cut off excess cupcake that was not needed for the volcano. Please note, no fingers were lost in the making of this cake!

And some more here

Once all of the giant cupcake pieces were just right it was time to figure out how to put it back together as a volcano cake. First we simply put the top piece down for the bottom, and put the large bottom on top of that. It looked like this:

Soon we realized that the bit that was taken off the top of the original cupcake would make a perfect topping for Mount Dinocake.

The construction was complete and it was time to decorate to really make this cake look like a volcano. Those photos will be shared later on. Sorry for the tease, but it is time to get the troops ready to head out. Today we are taking NHL and his friend I. out for a birthday celebration. NHL selected a spot that he wanted to go to and after that we will likely head out for pizza together, followed by cupcakes that I baked. The real Mount Dinocake will be made next week for our family party on NHL’s actual birthday in a week.

Categories:
birthday food glorious food nhl photos yummy

It’s raining, it’s pouring . . .

Posted on August 9, 2008 8:18 am by TheAngelForever

my kids are not snoring – through the night at least!

Clearly the two boys have a deal between them to have Mommy and Daddy up each and every night. Typically this is between 12-2 in the morning. Most nights it seems to be a certain 14 month old little boy. NHL has slept the past two nights since he gave us the big scare. Thank goodness since I do not think my heart could take that again.

Thursday afternoon we had a horrible storm come through the area. In addition to the thunder and lightning, flooding rains joined in the fun. The city received over an inch of rain during the first burst in less than an hour. I often complain about the threat of floods in my basement, but we were lucky nothing happened here. We think it was thanks to DGS coming that morning and cleaning out the sewers. Perhaps they were admitting to a problem, but I am sure they will never fess up.

Sure we lucked out this one time, but others did not have this fate. Other parts of the city turned into lakes. Cars in parking lots in certain sections floated away as people were stranded inside buildings. One woman had to be recused from her car as a sewer suddenly started to spew water and form a lake around her. Her car could not be opened since the power system failed and she was trapped. Along with this other parts of the city had the pleasure of finding raw sewage in their lawns and basements. The city of course is claiming little or no responsibility, like when it happened here. Sad that with all of the taxes we pay nothing is done to fix this outdated system that is not working.

During the rain on Thursday I went outside on our porch to get some photos. You can barely see that the street in front of the house was a quick flowing river, but it was.

Yesterday was a lazy PJ kind of day here in Angel Land. I was beyond exhausted from no sleep and did not want to fight more rain storms with the boys. We stayed in during the day. The boys were bouncing off the wall. The little munchkin learned how to scare Mommy some more. Sorry no photos of this trick with no hands, I was too busy stopping him at the time!

Not long after this JL arrived home from work. I went to swap the cars around for the weekend. I knew the sky was quickly getting black. Of course as I moved the first car out of the driveway the sky started to dump more rain. I was soaked when I came into the house. A few minutes later I had an idea. It was raining, but no thunder or lightning. NHL needed to run and this was the perfect chance to test our the cowboy rain boots that Aunt L bought him years ago. I quickly put shorts and boots on him and took him outside to puddle stomp. When we first went out it was lightly raining, so I snapped a few quick ones. Then he found some giant puddles in the back of our driveway and was soaked from splashing up a storm. It was fun to watch his reaction when I told him to go and jump in a puddle, something he is always told to avoid.

Today we hope to catch some rays from the sun before the next few days throw even more rain on us.

Categories:
house jsl losing my mind milestone nhl photos sleep weather

A sushi and cookie cake kind of day

Posted on August 5, 2008 12:05 am by TheAngelForever

As previously mentioned, Sunday was my husband’s birthday. We all woke up early and I had a horrible headache. After eating breakfast the little guy and I went to take a nap. This gave JL and NHL time to play some Nintendo Wii and take a shower. Once I was up we got dressed and went to Moe’s. Thanks to kids eating free and JL’s free birthday burrito our lunch cost $7.55 for all four of us! Next we went shopping at BJ’s and then went back home since the little guy was getting tired.

After resting for a little while it was time to take the boys to my parent’s house. Mom and Dad had said that they would feed the boys dinner so JL and I could go out together. JL decided on a Japanese/Chinese restaurant. We ordered a bunch of different things. Both of our meals came with Miso soup. Then we ordered two appetizers and also received a free sushi roll. We picked out Agedashi Tofu (not horrible, just nothing to write home about), Eggplant Yaki (fabulous), and Salmon/Avacado sushi roll (my favorite part of the meal). Then we ordered two items that we have never had. Thanks to a recommendation from a friend I decided on the Veggie Tempura. It was quite good, but I am not used to fried food. JL decided to get a Veggie sushi roll platter. It had a seaweed salad roll, cucumber roll, and a squash roll. Here is a photo of the amazing platter thanks to JL’s cell phone.

When we finished eating we called and found out that my parents, grandmother and the boys were still having their dinnner. We went to Walmart to look for a new outdoor garbage can. We wandered around and then went back to my parent’s house for some cake.

JL requested a cookie cake . . . voila!

My mother had NHL’s gummy worms out.

I am unclear as to why, but eventually some of the worms ended up on the cake like so:

Not to worry, the creepy critters did not upset anyone from devouring the cake. Below is NHL figuring out a plan of attack and JSL already digging in.