Penelope had a birthday party

And I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I wanted to.

But that's ok, because it was fun. And I have these, which are fun too.

The table set up with the photo shoot area in the back.

We found tea cups, saucers, and tea pots at various thrift stores, along with doilies, lace things, and a pink-ish lacy curtain that was our photo shoot backdrop. I made the cupcakes look like flowers (which was crazy easy, thanks youtube!). They also had mason jars as glasses for lemonade.

All the tea was fruit tea (peach, blueberry, etc) and they actually drank it.

The food table: fruit, rice krispy treats, lemonade, cheese & crackers, candy dipped pretzels.

I briefly thought about making scones and mini cheese sandwiches and then had to reign myself in. She's 6, I'm pregnant. This was just fine. I liked the fancy punch bowl, provided by a friend. It was a nice touch.

Table + wall and ceiling decorations

The wall garland was super cute, I wish I had gotten a better shot of it. I do still have it, but I'm not about to drag it out of the kid's room just for a picture. The pom-poms hanging from the ceiling are still up in the house. We'll see how long it is before someone finally gets annoyed with them and takes them down. They're just tissue paper, and easy (but time consuming) to make. My dad & Bryan made half of them while mom and I prepped food the night before. Proof that my dad and husband are pretty freaking awesome.

The hat decorating station

So THIS is where I went overboard budget-wise. The girls each got a hat and a feather boa. They could add ribbons & flowers to their hats to make them super-fancy and tea-party ready. I had to ship the damn hats express to get them here on time because I suck at planning (well, I just got busy), so they were much pricier than I had originally planned. BUT they turned out insanely cute, see:

Birthday Girl in her fancy hat, boa, and party dress.

And then there's these:

My mom, who is awesome.

Penelope, blowing out her candles

I have more, mostly of Sissy and her friends or of her friends posing with the background, but since I don't have permission to post those I think I'll hold off. I'll print them for each girl though and we can include them in her Thank You cards.

I was pretty exhausted by the end of the party, and it was only a 2 hour gig.

Now to start planning Bubby's 5th. I think he wants a Robot theme. Hello Pinterest!

Beaches, Boardwalk, and Elephants

You have no idea how disappointed I am that I couldn't fully alliterate this blog title. I sat here for a good three minutes trying to figure out how to make the alliteration work. I could have said "bears" since we did see bears at the Monterey Zoo today, but when I'm 90 years old, the only thing I'm going to remember is feeding the elephants so they get first billing.

Still, I wish I could have alliterated it.

Anyway, elephants!

Well, lets go in chronological order. We'll start with beaches.

A few weeks ago, Judit & I took the kids & the dog to the beach to play. It was chilly (Asilomar is rarely very warm), but we had a lot of fun. By the time we left no one could feel their toes.

They like to hold hands and run away from the waves

Harley-Quinn LOVES the beach. She'd play in the waves until her heart gave out if we let her...

Playing in the waves!

Remember, this water is COLD

This one just amuses me

Watching the waves

Not long after the beach trip, we went to a series of parties for friends. It was a fun, but exhausting, weekend. I tried to get some good pictures, but it was hard to take pictures AND socialize. So I just captured a few that I really like.

See, you CAN take a selfie with a fancy camera!

Penelope took this one :)

Griffin took this one of our friends Patrice & Sascha

Having fun dancing with her new BFF

After the weekend of parties, I left for Pasadena for a few days. While the conference I attended was both informative and productive, I was very happy to be home. I get a few days of vacation before the school year gears up and we're taking advantage of the time.

We went to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk this weekend (as well as the Aquarium), but I didn't take as many pictures. Penelope went on a dozen rides and Griffin finally discovered his bravery shortly before we left.

Today we ran some errands and then went to the Monterey Zoo, where we got to get up and close with some animals AND we got to FEED ELEPHANTS. This was the coolest thing I've done in ages. You can actually take tours there where you can bathe the elephants. I desperately want to give an elephant a bath. Desperately.

Sissy feeding the elephant. She was SO brave. Other little kids, her brother included, were terrified, but not my little Miss!

Griffin didn't want to get near the elephant, but consented to be held while I fed her.

Judit & the elephant!

The whole tour was neat, but the elephant part was awesome.

In other news, Griffin is pretty much night potty-trained. We haven't had an accident in almost a week and he's really proud of himself for not wetting the bed. I'm pleased as well, hooray for less laundry!

We're still working on sleeping all night in his own bed. This is going to be harder because he really does hate to sleep alone and he is such a mama's boy. We'll keep up with the sticker chart and hopefully he'll be in his bed mostly full-time by the end of the year. It would be nice if it happened sooner, but neither one of us is ready to really push it (sticker chart aside). This too shall pass and one day I'll look back fondly on all the extra snuggling.

Tomorrow I have some work to do, but the agenda for the week includes a trip to SF, swimming, beach time, and a baseball game!

The post where I describe party prep and you all tell me I'm crazy

Bubby's party is Saturday. It's Superhero themed.

We were originally planning on Thomas the Train, but he asked for Superheros and so we switched. And then I went slightly overboard for a 3 year old's party.

There will be three cakes. They're made but not decorated yet. One chocolate, one lemon, and one funfetti-style. All made from scratch (because my cakes are better than box cakes. Full disclosure: I made box cupcakes for Griffin's daycare party, because "'ain't nobody got time for that").

The chocolate cake will be decorated Spidey-style. Red frosting (also homemade, because why not), spider, webbing. I do guarantee it will look good. Lemon cake is Iron Man (he's the sour one), decorated as his mask. The funfetti cake is Captain America, mostly because that will be the easiest one to decorate.

I have blank masks, foam stars, planets, & paint. I'll get felt squares and fabric glue. Large pieces of felt will be cut into cape-shapes and we'll decorate our Superhero capes & masks. Ribbon will be used to tie capes on.

While the capes dry, we'll go on a scavenger hunt to find the Avengers. Because Red Skull is threatening to crash the party and we have to have the Avenger's help to defeat the bay guy. My dad is making a Red Skull pinata, so that when we come back from our neighborhood search, we'll defeat the enemy.

I also have a cardboard cutout of Captain America for pictures. Industrial strength bubbles to test our superpowers, and chalk - because who doesn't like chalk?

Normal hot dog/hamburger party fare. I'm not getting fancy on food. I may just buy a giant tub of macaroni salad because, again, make macaroni salad from scratch? 'aint nobody got time for that.

The party in my head is awesome. I just hope the party that actually happens is just as awesome. Or at least that everyone has fun.

So my mom gets off my back :)

For the last two days my mom has been pestering me to post these pictures of our cookie decorating party this weekend. I have a lot of posts to catch up on, so posting this now isn't quite right chronologically, but I'm sure y'all will be able to figure things out.

So yes. Cookies.

It's a tradition in our family to bake an army of cookies around the holidays and invite people over to decorate. My parents recently uncovered a significant amount of video from Christmases past of all of us, plus many other family and friends, decorating oodles of cookies. I have many, many fond memories of cookie decoration parties. In fact, most of my Christmas memories are of cookie parties.

I have learned many things from my years participating in cookie parties.

1. Bake the cookies beforehand.
2. Wax paper the heck out of your decorating surface.
3. Keep sprinkles out of the reach of anyone under the age of 5.
4. Bake about a dozen cookie (or slightly less) per participant.

The reason you "only" bake a dozen cookies per participant is that the younger kids lose interest about 2 cookies in (and eat those anyway), the older kids decorate about 10 before losing interest, and the adults usually end up making a dozen "fancy" cookies before just slathering on some frosting and sprinkling it with whatever is handy. So a dozen per person means less 'grunt' work at the end of the party and you still get enough cookies for everyone to eat a few and take some home.

This year my parents were 3+ hours away and I considered not doing any cookies. It was the end of the semester, I was exhausted, Bryan was busy with work and school, and the parties can be a lot of work. But because I have such fond memories of cookie parties I decided to have one anyway and invite some of my coworkers.

And I am so, so, SO glad I did. We all had a wonderful time - the kids (well, Penelope) still talks about the cookie party, so I know that she's starting to form the same kind of memories I have about the holiday season. And I love that we're establishing traditions for our family. We don't have religious traditions (since we're Atheists) but we still feel that traditions are important, so the cookie parties give us an opportunity to create/maintain some secular holiday traditions that we can enjoy every year.

Also? We have Star Wars cookie cutters. So the party was extra awesome.

And now - finally - here are the pictures:


Star Wars batch


All the baked cookies


Griffin "decorating"


Two of Penelope's cookies and one of mine


With the Bubs


Sissy with her crown (which she got at the $1 bin at Target for being brave and peeing in the bathroom there - which, BTW, is loud and scary)


Apparently I have not learned rule #3 well enough


Heather, Andrew, & Chrissy - A&C teach English at SHS. H is a SPED Aid and is married to A. H&A have two girls (6 & 16 months).


All of us, sitting in the front are Patrice and her son Connor. C came because of the Star Wars cookies ;)


Some of Connor's "masterpieces"


More cookies!

As you can see, we had fun. So much fun that we forgot to take video. This will definitely be a yearly event so next year I promise video.

In a few days...

The beast-child will be one. ONE.

As in an entire YEAR OLD. People, where has the time gone?????

I read once that in parenting, the days are long but the years are short. Which is the most perfect description of anything ever.

This year has flown by, although I will admit that there have been a fair number of days that have felt as though they lasted for eons and nights that were longer than some ice ages. I am happy to see though, that we have all survived a year with two babies 16 months apart. It was touch and go for awhile (and I'm only half joking). But we're all here, Bryan and I are still married, and we plan on staying that way for the foreseeable future. :)

I have 1,876,093 things to do to get ready for G's party. The ONLY thing I have done is reserve the space and send out invites. So yeah, I'm way behind. But I work every day this week (granted, they're only 2 hour shifts) and I have an interview Thursday at the Zoo for a summer teaching position, so it's not like I have TIME or anything.

Thursday I will attempt to get some shopping done (for the food) before or after the interview and Friday the kids and I may hit the 99cent store or Party City for party favors. Friday night after work Bonnie is coming over to help me make macaroni salad and cake (thank you Bonnie!) and my parents will have the kids, so hopefully we can get it all done. There will be wine involved. Lots of wine.

Then Saturday is the big day!

AND Sunday I graduate - which reminds me that I need to get my mom the gown & hood so she can iron it. I haven't told her I need this done. So... Mommy? Can you please iron my gown & hood for me? Pretty please? We don't own an ironing board and you know and I know (and the world now) that you are 1 BILLION times better at I am at ironing. A billion.

A post with pictures

Yesterday was Penelope's first Christmas party :) We met up with some of our baby/mama friends at Kim & Orson's house (notice how the Dads always get left out here? I didn't say Kim, Matt, & Orson's house - just Kim & Orson). Anyway - the babies played, the mommies ate, and then we had a baby white elephant gift exchange. Basically we set the presents in the middle of the room and had a baby free for all.

It was pretty funny to watch. Some of the older babies (ones who've had their first birthdays) knew what to do with the gifts, but the ones who had yet turned one weren't quite sure what to do first. Penny picked up a wrapped present, pulled it onto her lap, and proceeded to gently unwrap it; at least until she had a good chunk of wrapping paper in her hand and then she attempted to eat the paper.

Here's some pictures:




After the mess, the babies fought over toys (I don't have any pictures of that, so here are some of them playing earlier in the day):

I love this one, Penny and Orson decided to mob me at the same time

And then we took pictures with Santa:

I had better get used to this look of Penelope's... I'm sure I'm going to see a lot of it in her teenage years.


Today is Penny's 1 year check up! I love her visits to the Pediatrician, mostly because I love getting her measured (I know, it's weird). She's not as much of a fan, but that's because it means shots. I don't know how many she's going to get today - but I'll post later on & update her growth charts.

I'm sure there's a ton more I could blog about, but it's hard to keep track of all the new stuff she does...so I'll leave you with a picture from last night. She made a royal mess during dinner so we stripped her down to play until bathtime - I call this series "Hillbilly Baby" Enjoy!

The Great Cake Debate

You would think that a child's first birthday party would be a pretty easy thing to organize. After all, it's not like baby will remember it, right?

Ha. Hahahahahaha.

While we now have a location, theme, guests, and decorations, we have yet to settle the Great Cake Debate.

This isn't a debate on flavor, it's a debate on sugar. While I'm not super strict when it comes to sugar (although some would argue that I am), I'm not really lax either. Penelope will get some sort of sweets/cake thing to smash, she will not be getting box cake (which has a TON of sugar) or something from a bakery that also has a ton of sugar. Although I will be making box cupcakes & gluten free cupcakes for the party guests - because while I restrict P's sugar intake, I'm not going to force everyone else to give it up.

So I've been debating what to do about Penny's "smash cake". Do I make one from scratch? Get one of those "reduced sugar" box cakes?

And then I found this site: http://www.cupcakecraving.com/

Which has a Sacramento location - and makes sugar free cupcakes! The reviews are excellent, and a cupcake is PERFECT. Just enough to make a mess for pictures.

So I'm going to head over there at some point tomorrow and pick up a couple and try 'em out (you know, to make sure they taste good enough for my baby).

Then all I have to do Friday is make box cupcakes for the party guests (sorry everyone, no homemade cupcakes... 1 year old + pregnancy = no one is getting homemade cupcakes, maybe ever).