All Partied Out......

Okay, so I did eventually get in the party mood, and had quite a good time. I'm eternally thankful to my friend Heather, because without her the party would have been a total flop. I get overwhelmed by those find of things.

Not that many people came, which was quite surprising to me. Pastor J is very well loved at church and I thought lots of people would want to come to the party to show their appreciation and love for him. But that's how things go there....

The people that did come brought him some very nice things to help him set up house, and we had some serious food. Props to Heather again for what are the BEST masked potatoes I have had since my grandma used to make them! She said there were four stick of butter in them...so much for eating healthy! So good though!

Everyone oohed and ahhed over the cake, but I think they were afraid to eat it, because only a couple pieces were missing. The kids enjoyed eating the bow!

Chris fixed our real camera, so I'm working on figuring out how to use it with the MacBook and Blogspot.........but I missed some of the best pictures today! First, Pastor's J's kids and the senior pastor's grandkids got into the baptismal and had to be chased out! Then they were pulling each other wildly around the floor on my Twister mat. But, here are the boring photos I did manage to take in between servings of potatoes.





A bunch of people eating some food...













Super Heather and her side-kick Bo!












Josh and the kids.......









Opening gifts with lots of little helpers!

Party Day

Well, it's party day and I'm in no mood for a party. Mostly because I'm going to have to be at the church FOREVER. A month ago when we started planning this housewarming party we decided 4-6 would be best since it's a dinner thing. J said that was fine with him, so I made up the invites and passed them out with 4-6 on it. Well, last week in the church bulletin it was advertised as 2-5. After that screw-up (or not, I'm still wondering....) J said he'd prefer it at that time anyway! Nice. Now some people think it's 2-5 and some think it's 4-6 . They had the church calling machine call, bu no one listens to that thing. Every week it's the same.

"God is Good, All the Time! This is ---------- with church, calling to remind you that this sunday we'll be having service at 10, sunday school at 9. Please, bring a friend and join us for a great service"

Really.....church at 10 on sunday? Whew, glad they remind people. Someone might forget that we do that EVERY SINGLE WEEK!

By "we" I don't mean Chris and I...since we don't go there anymore. It's just a general "we".

Anyway, so no one listens to that machine and now people are going to be there all afternoon, which means I have to be there all afternoon. Plus, housewarmings are supposed to be low key....since I planned it for two hours, I didn't plan a lot of stuff. I figured we'd eat, talk, have J open gifts, and we're done. Well that's not going to take 4 hours! So I'm taking the MacBook and we can take funny pictures of everyone.....Heather is bringing catchphrase, I'm bringing my Bible version of MadGab. Thank goodness for Heather......this party would suck without her. She's so good at remembering all the little things (that really do matter) that I totally forget.

I'm off to make a casserole, then buy some bread and salad!

Woohoo! I love my cake!

I'm so exciting that this cake came out! I don't know what it will taste like, but I think it looks pretty good, especially for my first attempt at rolled fondant icing! It's definately not baker quality as you can see little marks or wrinkles in the icing and it's pretty thick (I was afraid to roll it too thin).





This is the bow that will go on top. I'm just going to sit it up there and take it off before cutting. It's all edible, but it's enough sugar to kill a person!



That's Baby cat peeking around the corner. Those darn cats. The kids sure love them though...

I'm making a cake!

I'm getting really excited about this cake I'm working on! I'm a miserable failure with buttercream icing so I've always stuck to glazes (or a bakery!) when I need a pretty cake. So now I'm biting the bullet and trying this fondant icing thing! I'd always heard it was SO hard, and so far it's really not! Like playing with Play-Doh mostly. I rolled out some for this pretty bow for the top of the cake (it has to dry in shape before you put it on the cake) and it looks goo this morning! It will either be a great looking cake or a miserable failure.....either way I'm having fun with it. One more perk about being a SAHM is I have to try stuff like this...

Here's the start of my bow. Doesn't look like much, but I assure you this is exactly what it's SUPPOSED to look like at this stage:





Finally, Jordan goes to school! Funny thing is, it's only 2 degrees warmer than when they cancelled school on monday and tuesday for cold. I guess they finally decided that was ridiculous.

I also need to do some laundry today. We had a bit of a backup (ummm.....Chris and his laundry. I went on strike two weeks ago and stopped washing his laundry. He was being vile and not doing an of his chores. Needless to say, when he started running low on underwear, things changed. But I still make him wash his own from that week, which was almost more trouble than it's worth. Almost, but not quite ) anyway, he finished his laundry last night so now I can do laundry (including his this time )

We're still on a break from potty training, which is frustrating both Celia and I. I think she's ready......but her poo is not. She's still having very messy diapers 3 or so times a day, so until that clears up....I just don't know. Poor thing went to bed with a bit of a rash, so I'm thinking some "free range" time might do her bottom good this morning!

Learning to Eat Pizza

I bet you thought you just always knew how to eat pizza.....not so! Once upon a time your mom used to cut it up into teeny tiny pizza squares, then you had to figure out how to do it the right way. Celia has decided she is quite the big girl, and did NOT want little pizza for lunch. She wanted BIG pizza, so here she is, doing her best to eat it!





Other than a nose full of sauce, she did pretty good!

She also tried to help me make fondant this morning! Whew, what a mess. I debated taking my rings off (I never take them off for anything) and I'm so glad I decided to. Just looking at the mess of melted marshmallow made my hands sticky! I had that stuff everywhere. But now I have a nice looking ball of shiny icing. I just need to figure out what to do with it........

Another Day, Another Snowstorm

Here we are on day 5 of no school. Which means Jordan has been home for about 7 days straight (except a sleepover and church). I kind of feel bad, because I honestly don't mind. I felt bad because I was sick yesterday and we did NOTHING, so I asked him what special thing he'd like to do today....he said he liked just sitting in his room playing Legos.....though he could use a new book since he's read all his! What a kid! It makes me think about homeschooling again.....but only for a little bit. I know public school has it's faults, but so does the real world. I guess I'd rather have him learn to deal with them as he's growing, rough as that may be sometimes. Besides, I'm afraid I'd get lazy to stuck on a concept and he'd never get into a good college. But it is nice to have him at home on these nice unexpected breaks.

We got 3 or 4 inches of snow last night and Jordan was just dying to get out there and shovel it off. So I bundled him up and let him go out....for about 15 minutes. Then he was frozen and needed to come in. It looks so sunny and nice out there with big piles of white snow, but it's just bitter cold. He did manage to get the steps cleared before the mailman came, which is pretty impressive in my opinion.

He came in and got warmed up with some hot cocoa. Celia doesn't like cocoa but goes crazy for marshmallows, so she got juice and a bowl of marshmallows. Silly girl will eat just about anything you put in front of her but won't drink anything warm or carbonated.

We ordered Papa John's Pizza last night (a real rarity from cheapskate mom!) I was in no mood to cook the kids were begging for it. Celia described it as "just right". She's very into Goldilocks and the Three Bears, so I think that was quite a compliment.

Jordan still has one lonely balloon on the ceiling!

Balloons on the ceiling!

Okay, since Jordan is home from school yet again, we are doing some fun science stuff. Since it's to dry in the house, we're playing with static electricity. We used a static-y balloon to separate salt from pepper (worked okay, but not great). The we were seeing how many balloons we could stick to the wall (an endless number) so then we decided to stick them to the ceiling and see how long they would stay up there. We currently have 18 balloons stuck to the ceiling!


We had some fun getting them up there. First the kids decided to jump off the chairs and launch a balloon to the ceiling. Well, Jordan was, Celia was just jumping off chairs. While lots of fun.....that was highly ineffective. Here is some chair jumping fun:




Sorry about the blurry photos. They're all from the MacBook camera, which is definitely not made for action shots! So not many balloons were making it to the ceiling (although Jordan really got some air on some of them! Air Jordan, haha!) and one popped after if got landed on....so we put Celia down for her nap and stuck them up with the help of a kitchen stool.

Today I'm also eternally thankful to Huggies and CVS for great coupons and sale (respectively) and restocking my supply of baby wipes. Poor Celia is still recovering from the barrage or raisins and apple juice......all she's done today is poo! Needless to say, potty training is put off until we have some more.....controllable....poo!

The house is nice and toasty too. We were going to make cookies, but I discovered I'm almost out of flour (hmmm....shopping tonight?) so I used this chilly opportunity to set the oven on self clean. I also put shallow dishes of water with lavender oil on the radiators since it's been so dry in here....so it smells nice and fresh too! Nice.