Requisite October

SOMEONE in this house up and turned 7 last week. And determined that his front upper tooth is decidedly wiggly.

SOMEONE ELSE in this house is having trouble with all of this "growing up" nonsense.

We waffled on the idea of a birthday party - they are so much work, and the kids just EXPECT them now, like it's a first amendment right. We thought about letting Finn just invite 2 or 3 friends to go to the movies instead, but in the end we couldn't pass up a deal - the new Tae kwon do studio the kids take lessons at was having a special on birthdays, so big birthday party it was.

[Wait, what?? Just saw a commercial for a showing of the Sound of Music starring Carrie Underwood. With Heidi braids. What the what? I don't think this will go well. What was wrong with just showing the original, eh? Gah.]

Side note over.

He also wanted me to make him a Tae kwon do themed cake, so this is what I did:

It's supposed to be a Gi with a black belt (though Wikipedia tells me that Gi is actually the name of the karate uniform, and the Tae kwon do uniform is called a dobok? We'll go with Gi since it's shorter and I'm lazy). You'll notice, of course, that the belt is not actually black, but is in fact yellow. I decided to try my hand at making fondant (I made the marshmallow kind, if anyone is interested in that kind of thing) for the collar and belt of the Gi (the rest of it is frosted with buttercream because it tastes much, much yummier than fondant). I made a big batch of fondant (which is white), and then tried to color half of it black. The amount of black food coloring I had to add, and resultant cocoa powder to sop up the extra gel/liquid, to make something actually black rendered the stuff useless. So yellow it was!

I figured it was all the same to a kid who's only a white belt, right? Plus yellow is his favorite color at the moment.

Working with fondant is not for the faint of heart. This is what my kitchen looked like afterward:

Just keeping it real

The party was a big hit. They ran the kids through their paces for about an hour, and then we sped through pizza and cake. Finn got to cut the cake with a "Samurai" sword:

After

(sorry, am too lazy to white balance the photos)

You can see more photos of the rest of the birthday weekend, including Finn's breakfast in bed and his new fish (PETS! We gave him his very own pets for his birthday) if you follow me on Instragram. I don't know how to link to that here. Hmm. My handle is allisonmilutinovich if you want to look for me, and I will see if I can figure out a way to create a link in the sidebar of this blog. I've been taking lots of photos and sticking them on Instragram, and it is not easy to collect them all into a blog post (unless it is? And I don't know the trick? I just end up e-mailing myself each photo if I want to download it and stick it in a blog post. So mostly I don't, which means all these photos will eventually disappear into the Instagram ether, I'm afraid). So if you are interested in seeing them, follow me!

That was all LAST weekend. THIS weekend, we went to a pumpkin patch. We did a search for "Maryland corn maze" and pretty much went to the first place that popped up - Summers Farm. It was a HUGE hit with the kids - we were there for about 3 hours before we even contemplated heading to the pumpkin patch. There was a bouncy thing (not a moon bounce - more like a huge bubble lying on the ground?), slides, goats, ducks, apple guns, homemade doughnuts (though not as good as Smolak's, Massachusetts peeps), a big corn pit, random games, and a ridiculously large corn maze.

Entering the corn maze. Full of energy, bounding ahead.

By the end, M. was carrying Lucy. It took almost an hour. Lucy claims now that she was mostly just disappointed that M. and I didn't abandon her and Finn in the maze to make it out on their own. But I know the truth - girlfriend is NOT fond of walking.

Finally on the tractor toward the pumpkin patch

And after, with their spoils.

And since Halloween is only a few days away, we couldn't let any moss gather, or whatever that expression is. We dug right in with the scrapers and serrated knives as soon as we got home, elbow deep in pumpkin guts. The results are good, as are the roasted pumpkin seeds.  The pumpkin on the far right is Lucy's (she went with an arching cat design), and the one that looks like it's just at the bottom left edge of our front door is Finn's (it's a reaching, claw-like mummy thing). The other two that are lit up are actually fake.

Posing near their creations.

Am officially exhausted. But glad I've finally posted SOMETHING here. :-)

The Wrap-Up Catch-Up: Lucy's 4th Birthday

Before I run through some overdue photos of Lucy's birthday, I need to mark a momentous occasion. Not momentous in the good way, mind you. Momentous in the "Oh, crap!" way.

I will first say that it has been a good run. M. and I have successfully enjoyed hassle-free, TV-loaded, adults-only time for roughly 98% of the last 6 and a half years (with the exception of the odd newborn-intensive early months for each kid and the occasional sick night). That kid-free peace is probably the only thing that has kept us sane through the hustle and bustle of a life with two kids and two full-time, working-out-of-the-house-with-lengthy-commutes, jobs. For all those many years, we put the kids to bed, turned out their lights, and they stayed there.

Sure, sometimes (OK, lots of times) they called for us, to come fix a blanket, or schlep them more water, or change their pajamas because they're too hot. Two or three times one of them has actually come down the stairs from the bedrooms to the kitchen, where M. and I are usually finishing up the dinner dishes and packing lunches for the next day. Annoying, but no big deal, because mostly Finn and Lucy STAYED UPSTAIRS.

Tonight, M. and I finished up with kitchen duty on the early side, and we headed down to the basement to fold a bajillion loads of laundry with large vats of wine and some TV to distract ourselves from the task. We could hear Lucy over the monitor singing to herself, but since she wasn't calling for us, we left her alone.

Five minutes into an episode of Modern Family, Lucy appeared DOWN IN THE BASEMENT. Quiet and ghostlike. Scared the shit out of us. Thank god we were actually doing laundry and not something more, ahem, adult-like. But how the frack did our daughter, who refuses to walk down to the basement in broad daylight, find the guts to come downstairs all by herself, without a peep? She claimed to want one of us to put her "big red blankie" on her, but hadn't wanted to call for us (probably because we keep telling her not to). So she came ALL the way downstairs instead.  M. paused the TV, and agreed to walk her upstairs to help with the blankie sitch.

And that's when she noticed the TV was on.

And then settled herself in my lap and refused to leave the basement so she could "watch for a little bit."

We managed to get her up to bed, and she hasn't come back down - I think she's asleep. BUT NOW SHE KNOWS. And she'll probably tell her brother. It's all over - THEY KNOW WE WATCH TV AT NIGHT. We're fucked - they'll never leave us alone now!

6 years, 6 months, and 26 days - it was a good, good run.

Alright, on to Lucy's birthday, numero quatro. I'd be remiss if I didn't link back to the post I wrote on her birth, since I love it and go back to read it at LEAST once a year. I love remembering that day, and I love celebrating my little girl.

Lucy's birthday was on a Thursday (April 25th). I made some cupcakes for us to have that morning as a family - none for her daycare class, because I invited them all to her birthday party and thought that a school celebration too would be overkill. More cupcakes for us! I have no pictures of her actual birthday, because I'm lame. But mostly, we ate a lot of cupcakes.

But I have LOTS of pictures from her party, which was the following day. We had 11 kids and their parents at the house - I was more than a little worried that it would feel super cramped. But thankfully the weather was awesome, so our bounce house was out, and we were able to spread people throughout the living room, dining room, playroom, family room, and the backyard. Lucy had a great time, and aside from the fact that M. and I were preparing furiously right up until the first guest arrived, it wasn't too stressful.

 

First, a few photos of the setting. We did a pseudo "tea party/pink and green" theme. I didn't take the tea party thing all the way, though - I found some paper party cups with tea pots and tea kettles on them, make some iced tea, and offered "tea time" type foods. No hot tea or real tea cups were harmed in the making of this party, though I did try - I hit the local Goodwill to see if I could find some cheap but cute tea cups I could let the kids use, but no dice. Here is the table with LOTS of balloons, including a huge mylar, hear-shaped one for Lucy with pink feathered trim. It was ridiculously gaudy, and is still floating somewhere above our living room.

 

Flowers, and the hit of the party - candy melt-coated marshmallow lollipops.

 

The kids went ape-shit over these things.

 

I'm going to do a separate little post on how to make these - it was SUPER easy.

 

The birthday girl, drinking from her "tea" cup.

 

The food spread - finger sandwiches (tuna salad, egg salad, ham and cheese, and PB&J), scones, cookies, and berries.

 

Found this cute little tea pot at Marshalls for next to nothing - I love it!

 

I worked so ridiculously hard on Lucy's banner last year, you know it had to make an appearance again this year :-).

 

Bounce house in action!

 

We did a piñata for the first time ever - M. bought it that morning at one of the local party stores.

 

After many, many hits from the kids, and dropping it off of the deck above, to no avail, it was determined that this must have been one of those "new" piñatas that you pull open from the bottom.  Why don't these things come with instructions, exactly??

 

After the candy grab, we had CAKE!

 

FOUR. Goodness.

Birthday #37. And Pasta. But Not Much Snow.

Though I always (always!) complain about the inconvenient timing of M's birthday (still burned out from the Christmas shopping season), I must say that I managed to pull off a pretty good celebration this year. Admittedly, I probably couldn't have pulled it off if it weren't for some excellent shipping services, but I'll take credit where I can get it.

I was a wee bit worried about the "significant snow" we were slated to receive on Friday, as that was the estimated date of the arrival of M.'s birthday present (and also the date of M.'s birthday itself). Fanning the flames of this worry, I started receiving e-mails and phone calls by around 10 in the morning letting me know that pretty much all of Maryland would be shutting down by mid-afternoon, including the schools. Even though nary a snowflake had been spotted yet.

Luckily, I was already working from home, so it was not a problem to pick Finn up early. Also luckily, the "significant snow" was really more of a dusting. But the warning was enough to get M. home from D.C. early, which meant that we had a little extra family time. There was (barely) enough snow for a little late afternoon sledding, but not enough to hinder the delivery of M.'s present or the delicious Thai food we ordered for the birthday dinner (we've had a bit of an obsession with Tom Yum soup lately).

While we waited for dinner to arrive, the kids helped M. open his presents.

 In keeping with his new hobby, I got him a glass carboy secondary fermentor, and a new beer kit to brew, Northern Brewer's La Petite Orange Limited Edition kit (sounds so good!!). He seemed pretty happy with his present, and we are both plotting when the next brew will occur (maybe tomorrow!).

After stuffing ourselves with Thai food, we moved on to cake. The kids requested a repeat of the Wisconsin "W" cake I made last year, but I did change it up a little by going with a vanilla cake instead of a chocolate cake this time. I used this recipe for the cake (I cannot rave enough about this cake - even though it's from scratch, it is so moist and SO GOOD), and the buttercream frosting recipe on the box of the Dominos confectioner's sugar box. I ended up having to make a second batch of frosting for a second layer, because the first layer had a lot of crumbs showing. Does this make me anal? Maybe. Also, the cake recipe makes a three-layer cake, so 3 layers + 2 coatings of frosting = a ridiculous amount of powdered sugar. But let's not think about that, right? :-)

The rest of the night was less thrilling, as once the kids were in bed I discovered I was exhausted, and not good for much but bed. This morning started off with our usual busy Saturday schedule - swim lessons for Finn, ballet/tap class for Lucy, and then a trip to Wegman's for grocery shopping (a bit out of our way, but we were scoping out food options for the "beer party" we are hosting next weekend). We were home by 1 o'clock - plenty of time with nothing to do and nowhere to be, so I? Took a nap. It was great. And while I napped, M. creatively found a purpose for the 6 egg yolks I had leftover from making his cake (it called for 6 egg whites). He dug out our pasta maker, a wedding gift that was used several times just after we were married, and has been gathering dust since ever since kids came on the scene. And he and his helpers turned those egg yolks into a fabulous pasta dough (and made me think of the wonderful friends who gifted us with the pasta maker, and how we invited them over to try out the results with us not long after the wedding, and I served them pasta with LOTS of GRITTY parsely that I decided "didn't really need to be washed" before I chopped it. Oh how wrong I was!) :

The result? Well, Lucy ate two helpings of the pasta WITH SAUCE (jarred, not homemade - what? you didn't think I was THAT Martha Stewart-y, did you?), which is a miracle, as Lucy typically eats her pasta plain. Finn was a bit weirded out by how it was "different" than the usual boxed pasta, though we did manage to get him to eat a few bites. It was a fun dinner and a nice way to involve the kids in cooking. Here is the yummy result:

This girl kills me with her expressions

Finally, I leave you with a couple of impromptu post-dinner videos, where Finn explains what "legs" are for wine, and then does his best to imitate them. I will also note that I didn't know about wine "legs" until I was in my mid-twenties.