Little Man's 13th Birthday

The Big 13! I can't believe it. The day started off with a light breakfast. We then went to a movie, and CiCi's for lunch. While at lunch, Little Man opened some gifts.

After lunch we did a little shopping, got some DQ and then headed to the Silver Hawks game. We had a birthday message put on the board. I think they should give us a refund since they misspelled his name :( During the 7th inning stretch Little Man got to play a relay game. He wasn't too thrilled with how it went down. But you can't tell from the grin on his face!

Later that weekend we had a little family party and I made the obligatory baseball themed cake. I think this makes 4 years in a row?

Next year he says I just have to make a baseball stadium just like they did on Ace of Cakes! I think I'd best start planning now...

The Mr's 40th Birthday

He wanted a little cake with a lot of candles. All for effect :)

4x12: March

Better late than never, I suppose! Not having my own computer to work with really hampers my creative time online. One of these days, I'm sure I'll break down and buy a new computer. In fact, it'll probably be sooner rather than later...

March 31 was the Mr's 40th Birthday! To celebrate we blew up 40 balloons after he went to bed so that when he woke up in the morning he would have a birthday surprise. It worked out pretty well. But when it came time to take pictures we found that most of the balloons wouldn't float any higher than our heads. So we blew up the rest of the balloons to give us a nice big bunch for the pictures. So the Mr's birthday pictures are pulling double duty this year!



A simple family picture turned into quite the production. Little Man turned his funny bone on its side and gave me plenty of photo ops:


He's such a goof ball! I suppose that's because he takes after his father...



Even The Girl got in on the fun!

Are these your glasses, Mom?!

I may be old, little man, but I'm not that old!

Saturday, February 28th, our friends and family tricked us into showing up for a surprise party to celebrate our 40th birthdays. Mine passed by on the 6th and the Mr's will be coming up on March 31st. So somewhere in the middle totally caught us off guard! Well done, people, well done.



I like this. My sis-in-law really loves me. She came up with 20/20 just for me! The Mr. gets stuck with the Big 4-0.

It was really great to see so many of our friends make the trip for our party. It has been too many years since we last saw each other. We can't let that happen again. Thank you, friends and family, for all the hard work putting the party together and actually managing to keep it a secret! Well done, indeed. :)

Little Man Turns 12!

Happy Birthday, Little Man!

The Big "12"

We started the birthday morning by sleeping in...always a good thing! And then we headed down to the ballpark to do some batting practice. Chad finished work early today so when he got home he came down to join us at the field for a bit. Then, after we cleaned up J opened the cards sent by the family and  we went to CiCi's for lunch. We love Cici's! That's why we don't go very often :) 

After lunch we ran a couple errands and then J headed back to the ballpark for team batting practice. After practice he came home and opened his gifts. Boy was he surprised!

His new shades. He needs them for baseball. But I had in mind a secondary use when I purchased them:

Protective eye gear for when his dad attacks him with his own birthday present!

J has been talking about these big, new Nerf guns forever. It's been on his list forever. Well, forever ended today, because he got not one, but two of them! (Gotta love those BOGO sales!) Plus, it just wouldn't be as much fun if dad couldn't defend himself!

Boys will be boys. Gotta love 'em.

Little Man's Baseball Cake Pops

Thank you, Bakerella!

The extra large baseball will be featured tomorrow on the official birthday cake!

And now, we're off to the ball park!

Happy Birthday!

Yesterday was my hubby's birthday!

WOW, that's a lot of candles! (one short of the big 4 -0!)

For his special day I made Kibbeh for dinner

It's a meal my Mom makes every year at New Years. Yummy.

For his birthday cake I decided to make Turtle Bars

Topped with vanilla ice cream and some gooey caramel.

The rest of us don't eat nuts, so I also made a batch of brownies

Topped with vanilla ice cream and chocolate mint fudge! :)

Before we ate all this sugary goodness, Chad opened his gifts.

His "small" gift was a new feather pillow. Do you know how difficult it is to find one of those things?!

His "big" gift:

Four tickets to see the Blue Man Group! yay!

He's been wanting to go to this show for years. We just have never gotten around to it, and it is a bit cost prohibitive with all four of us requiring tickets. But we saved up the cash, little by little, and as soon as the spring break craze is over we'll be booking those tickets and getting ourselves seats in the "splash zone!" I hope they allow cameras!

Happy Birthday, babe!

Birthday Cupcakes!

I found these cute cupcake liners in the holiday section and just knew I'd be using these for my birthday cake. Cupcakes are so much easier to store than a full size cake. And much cuter when decorated with lots of pretty colors!

Too bad those liners don't keep their color when baked. If I'd known how they'd turn out I would have saved my 2 bucks. Anyway, I made a buttercream frosting (from scratch!) using a recipe I found from Bakerella via The Pioneer Woman - both great cooking blogs! I scooped a bit out and colored it and frosted 3 or 4 cupcakes and made the next color. I made a pretty lavendar, but it photgraphed brown, so I took it out. I arranged the cupcakes into a balloon bunch and added a bit of ribbon. Unfortunately, the outdoor light was just as yucky as the indoor light. And the cupcakes were just too yummy to hold onto to wait for better light. Oh well. There's always next year :) 

It's my Birthday!

Happy Birthday to me! It's the birthday almost all women dread: 39!
(not me!)

I can't believe it. I certainly don't feel it. Nor do I look it :)

 One of my big projects for this year is an "all-about-me" scrapbook. Cause let's face it, I don't show up in the family scrapbooks all that often! :(   The idea is to answer a question about me, my childhood, my interests, etc, on a regular basis, I was thinking bi-weekly- but if I get really ambitious I'll try for daily, to use in the scrapbook. The hardest part will be finding pictures to go with some of these. I don't have a lot of childhood photos to choose from at the moment. I have a list of a hundred or so questions, that I'll answer randomly. This project will start tomorrow. Today, I'm just going to have fun!