GASP! What happened to May?!

Just noticed that I completely MISSED posting the photos of the biggest one's birthday cake!!  This year's theme was FROZEN, of course, which was FUN to do and fun to make!  We started out her 5th birthday celebration this year with a friend party at a gymnastic place, with cupcakes:

These guys were fun and easy to make!  I found the eyeball candies in the cake section at Safeway, mixed up some black frosting and went to town.  The blue around their bodies are supposed to be reminiscent of the little blue pants that they wear.

For her actual birthday, she let me do a "Frozen" cake, which took some convincing, because not a week before that she wanted me to make her a Hercules cake! After searching high and low for some sort of Elsa cake topper/toy, and having no luck, I tried my hand at sculpting, with also no luck.  Last ditch effort, was to find a graphic online, print it out, stick it to a stick.  Miss 5 year old was thrilled.

I was also pretty happy with the looks of this cake - I'm still working on find the perfect recipe for the INSIDE of the cake, along with a yummy delicious filling.  The snowflake cutters were the funnest in this cake - they were so cute, and fun to stamp out little fondant snowflakes.  The "ice" was a little tricky, as it was a hair humid at my house that week, so when I made the glass a couple of nights before, some pieces were crystallizing by her birthday.  None the less, it was a fun cake to make. 

iPhone shattered.

For the first time since we brought two little souls into our lives, we decided to take a "family getaway" to celebrate our oldest going to Kindergarten next week.  I know!  Kindergarten!  I'm sure lots of experienced parents out there are rolling their eyes and asking what the big deal is, but for us, it's very big!  And we needed to celebrate it.  We decided to stay in-state and go somewhere that I've been DYING to I go to for a long time - Glenwood Springs, CO.  The drive has always been a little daunting for us, but we decided to go with it.  The girls could watch a movie (or two!) on the iPad along with having a few snacks to go with.  Needless to say, they did AWESOME.  They even napped, which was unexpected.  We hit a few of the big ticket items in Glenwood Springs, one of which was the Glenwood Cavern Adventure Park that is accessible by taking a gondola/tram up a mountain to a little theme park.  Unfortunately for Littlest One, lots of things were aged 3+, so she and I spent a lot of time eating ice cream and playing in the dirt.  The bigger one had a great time!

At this adventure park, there's lots of trails up and down the mountain to get to various attractions.  We were all walking up to one of the them, when we heard "DADDY HEWP!!"  When I looked back, sweet baby girl had managed to slip and was half under a plastic fence with her leg going down the mountain.  I got over to her and helped her up, but as I stood up, my phone fell and landed on the ground, face down.  I knew it was trouble as soon as I saw it land.  When I picked it up, it was completely shatter.  Ugh.  The good news:  the phone is completely functional.  Just shattered.  So after a fair amount of web searching since the incident I decided to just have the screen replaced...I know, voiding any potential opportunity to have Apple work on it for me, but much cheaper then getting a replacement phone!  And with my contract up in December, there's a slight possibility of getting a new iPhone 6...although I'm not completely sold on that idea yet either.  Anyhoo, here in about 15 minutes I'm hoping that my phone will be back to new and be working great.  Update:  It's working great!  I'm thrilled!!!

The rest of the weekend was loads of fun; we spent a lot of time swimming in the hot springs pool, taking naps, and eating (my favorite).  The girls had a BALL swimming as much as they could...even the 2 year old, although she gets tired faster.  It was a little bit of a hike over to the pools from our hotel (Hotel Denver), but both of the girls did great.  Speaking of, Hotel Denver is AWESOME.  Granted, it's old, and has some features of an old hotel, but it was clean, quiet, and the hotel staff was awesome.  The best part was that we could buy discounted hot spring passes, and they'd let us borrow huge white towels and would throw in a bottle of water for each of us too.

We pretty much enjoyed all of the restaurant that we ate at, with the exception of the Brew Pub right at the Hotel Denver.  While they were super convenient (and you can wait for your table in your room, with beers, and they'll call you when the table is ready!), the items that we ordered weren't fantastic, and the service for us was SLOW.  Which blows my mind a little, since there were tables that got sat AFTER us, that got to order, eat, and leave before us!  So maybe it was just our server that wasn't paying attention.  We were certainly making enough noise, you would think they'd want to get us out of there as fast as possible!  Other restaurants that we dined at included Juicy Lucy's - AMAZING, and a Cajun restaurant, which was also very good, and a nice change of pace, that didn't skimp on quality or service.  We rounded out the weekend with a stop at Beau Jo's for pizza in Idaho Springs, CO.

Now we ramp up for school to start next week.  Which is thrilling but scary, and fun all at the same time.  I better take my tissues along..might be a long teary walk home for me!

Minnie Mouse.

Minnie Mouse is a favorite of my baby girl.  Every day she asks to watch "Mouse" on TV, carries around a Minnie Mouse stuffy, and often comes and shows it to us.  She even has a little Minnie Mouse dress up doll thing that she loves.  So, for her birthday this year we decided it was appropriate that she have a Minnie Mouse theme!  We didn't go crazy this year, but did manage to get my folks to come to her birthday party!  I decided to make a Minnie Mouse cake as well, although was intimidated by lots of the cakes that I was seeing online.  I ended up finding one that I thought I could pull off. 

For the cake, I decided to do a bottom up cake using this recipe, which I ended up tripling to get enough for two 8" square pans and a small 1/2 circle cake.  I also used Sweetapolita's whipped vanilla buttercream frosting recipe.  It is delicious!  The end result - (I had baby girl's name on it, but blurred it out):

 

I have to admit, I wasn't that excited about the buttercream bottom when I was trying to get it smooth, but once I started putting stuff on it, I started to mind less.  I was reminded why I am drawn to fondant, it's ultra smooth texture is so nice and clean.  I've struggled in the past covering cakes with just fondant, and didn't want to go that route again, so opted for the buttercream and struggled there too!  In the end, i thought the face ended up adorable, and I love the polka dots and decorations on the side of the cake.  

Another issue I ran into.  Beings that I work at my job during the day, I was working on this cake in stages.  I baked it Monday, and decided to save myself some time Tuesday night and buttercream it - which in total with baking probably took me 3-4 hours.  On Tuesday, I did all the decorating with the fondant, which ended up taking me another 2-3 hours.  But then it sat another day until we had the party Wednesday night.  I wasn't sure what to do - I didn't really want to put it in the fridge in fear that the fridge would completely dry it out, but it ended up being a little dry from sitting on the counter for 2.5 days.  Ideally, I suppose, "real" bakeries bake one day and decorate the next?  I'm curious what everyone else does!

Scoot over, you're driving.

So, I've mentioned this before, but I grew up a farm kid.  Well, I was a farm kid compared to city kids, so technically a "town kid" according to all the other farm kids around us.  My family lived in town, and my dad drove out every day to "the farm" to work.  We went out there a lot too; our grandparents lived on the farm as well as my aunt, uncle, and cousins.

One day, when I was like 7 and my sister was 10 and my little brother was maybe 2 or 3 (my sister says she was 10 - in my mind I thought she was a little older than that - like 12...but I can't be certain), we were heading out to the farm, but first we had to stop at the local grocery store to pick up some groceries for Gramma.  That day we were traveling in the 66 Ford F100, (ours was green) (and although I say "ours" it wasn't really ours, I think it was "the farms" but vehicles came and went often enough that we never really had 1 vehicle...except for the Cadillac, and that's a whole post in it's own).  Back to the point.  So it was a nice summer day, I think I had decided to ride in the pickup bed for the ride out to the farm.  It was 6 miles out of town.  My mom comes out of the grocery store with a bag of groceries, which btw, we were able to pick up on store credit, you could go get your groceries and "put them on the bill"; the cashier would tally up the groceries and write it down, and off we went!  So she comes out of the grocery store, and idles over to the passenger side of the pickup and says "Scoot over, you're driving," to my 10 year old big sister.  My brother, who had never seen or sat in a car seat in his life, was standing, as usual, in the middle of the seat.  So Jean, scooted over and got behind the wheel.  As I remember it, she was very reluctant to do it, but my mom insisted.  I remember it being VERY EXCITING, and had my nose pressed to the glass watching all the action on the inside of the cab.

The ride out was...slow, with my sister killing the pickup multiple times before getting it to move.  I guess I should point out that this pickup was a manual; no learning on an automatic here!  After a few times of doing this awkward rabbit hopping down the road (letting the clutch out too fast...you all know what I'm talking about), she managed to get it going.  Shifting was a little rough especially since the '66 didn't seem to have a clear path to where the next gear was.  The "stick" would bounce all over and you kinda had to guess where the next gear was.  Talk about satisfaction and relief when you actually found 3rd gear!  At the time, it was all dirt roads to the farm and you had to drive in the worn down areas for the smoothest ride.  Usually, there were 3 paths on the dirt road, left middle and right, and generally you occupied middle and right paths when driving, except when you meet a car, you have to pull over on to the gravel so both vehicles have room to pass.  The highlight of the drive, was meeting an oncoming car, making Jean panic, and mom having to reach over and pull us out of on-coming traffic!  Or, well, mostly just forcing us to share the road.  Luckily, everyone knows everyone out there, so we received a friendly wave after seeing a little kid who could barley see over the steering wheel driving.  We made it to the farm without incident...although I'm not sure that Jean volunteered to drive us back home!  She did eventually get behind the wheel again, and I remember driving became a joint venture.  She'd push the clutch in and say, "Clutch!" and I'd sit in the middle and do the shifting.  She was so skinny it took all of her weight to push the clutch down, imagine her little body practically standing on the clutch when it was time to shift!  Sometimes we'd still kill it which would cause eruptions of giggles from us.  Good memories!

Supper.

Dinner or Supper?  I suppose it's a geographical thing.  Growing up in rural Montana, we had dinner and supper, sometimes we had lunch and dinner, or lunch and supper.  It was all just relative to the time of day that it was being referenced.

Every single day Matt and I have the same conversation.  "What's for supper?" (Or in Matt's case "What's for dinner?")  And every single day I say, "I don't know what do you want?"  It got me thinking, so much of our day to day are shared decisions about what we do, eat, and the chores that we have to take care of.  For instance, who cooks dinner, who decides what we should eat, who empties the dish washer, who bathes the children, who puts them to bed.  Maybe this is the norm for all families out there; maybe it isn't, and I'm just blessed.  When I was a kid, had my mom called my dad and said "what should we cook for supper?" she probably wouldn't have gotten a response!  (Let alone actually being able to reach him during the day!)  My mom, a stay at home mom that was our world and I would never change that in a million years, did all the child rearing, cooking and entertaining us for a million hours during the day until it was finally late enough she could put us to bed.  There were times of the year that we'd get to see my dad right before we went to bed, he was gone that long during the day.  Drawing from a little experience, I realize now that a whole day with little children is mentally exhausting...maybe not in so much of a "my brain hurts" type way, but in a "just please stop fighting and crying for 2 seconds" type way.  Bless you mom, I know we put you through the ringer!  

Anyways, back to dinner/supper.  Matt and I have exhausted our ideas for dinner.  I believe my #1 question when we get together with other couples is, "What do you cook for supper?"  Matt and I are seriously tired of our entire menu, and while it tastes good when we're eating it, the idea of having naked burritos every week makes us want to retch!  So tell me, what do you eat for supper?  Would you consider leaving your recipe in the comments?  Thanks!

Oh, and I should note my criteria - I"m basically looking for a 30-45 minute meal - getting home at 5:00 and getting dinner on the table by 5:30-6:00 is my goal!

iPhone.

So I posted a while back about getting an iPhone, which was a big leap for me since I'm a through and through google user.  Luckily I've found some apps that make using Google easier and easier on my phone, which has been great.  I really like the phone and see myself using this phone until it breaks.

And break it may, because I go through cases like they're going out of style!  As with all my other phones and devices, I'm constantly looking for a case that is slim form.  A friend of mine once looked at an old phone of mine and said "doesn't it stink that we buy these fancy skinny phones and then cover it up with a huge case?"  I couldn't agree more!  In consequence, I believe I've gone through like 4 cases since getting my iPhone.  Here's what I've learned:

1. TPU cases are the skinniest, but last about 1 drop.
2. Silicon cases seem sticky to me and move around too much for me.
3. "Tough" cases are just that, but add so much weight and size to the phone.

I currently am sporting an XDoria Defense 360, which is a clear fully enclosed case that has been working very well for me for about 4 months.  The problem is that I dropped it, which caused a crack, and a few days ago I took apart the case to clean it up, and that cracked piece fell out.  Now I have an exposed corner which puts me back into shopping mode.  Ugh.  Matt is currently sporting a Luvvitt case which seems to be a hybrid of silicon and something else - it's pliable but not sticky, which is interesting to me.  It doesn't have a front cover, but I could get a screen protector - another pet peeve of mine!  I can never get them on straight and without bubbles!

Do you have any suggestions for cases?  Leave them in the comments, I would love to hear!

iPad.

This year we spent the holiday in Turner, MT with my family.  True to form, the weather managed to dip to -30 degrees (-50 windchill)!!  We didn't really go outside much when it was that cold.  We did sit around and drink a lot of wine...fun!

For Christmas this year, I asked for an iPad.  I didn't actually think I would get one, since they had just come out, but I figured it was worth a shot.  Shockingly enough, my sweet husband got me one and had it shipped to Turner for me to open there - needless to say I was shocked and thrilled!  Ever since then I've been hunting for a cover, that fulfills a few of my requirements:

1. Covers the screen - I let my kids us my iPad to play kid games, so I needed something that would cover the screen to protect it from them
2. Auto on/off - it would be nice if the screen cover could turn it on/off
3. Keyboard.  As much as I like the onscreen keyboard on the device, the fact that I don't get any tactile input drives me crazy...I can't really type with two hands with the onscreen keyboard.  And if I'm going to use the ipad as a tool I need to be able to type
4. Easy in and out - I currently don't have any movies on my iPad, but in the foreseeable future I see the need to be able to pop the iPad out of its case and put it in some sort of car case so my little darlings can watch movies in the car.  The life right?
5. I thought it would be nice for there to be some sort of hole/area to hold a stylus - I think taking notes on the iPad could be handy in some of the meetings that I attend at work (instead of having to type)
6. Slim form as much as possible - the iPad air is lighter and slimmer than it's predecessors, why would I want to bulk up with a huge heavy case?

Shockingly enough, I have been having a TERRIBLE time finding a cover that does all this - I didn't really think it was THAT tall of an order!  To get a fully enclosed cover, you can't have a keyboard.  To get auto on/off you have to have some sort of portfolio type cover.  NO covers have a stylus holder.  Easy in/out...all dependent on cover type, but definitely not an option with a fully enclosed cover.  Lots of covers cover the back, but not the front screen.  Not a single cover had all of my requirements.   

I decided then I need to re-prioritize my list.  What did I want the most?  After thinking it over for quite some time, I decided I wanted a keyboard the most...I may find that I don't use it that much, but I'm really terrible at typing on the screen...like REALLY terrible.  #2 was automatic on/off, #3 was easy in/out. #4: something that still allows my children to play with the device

I went to the mall today because Matt told me there was new store that carried covers. They had 2 options, a Griffin Cover, and a Zagg cover.  The zagg cover was heavy and couldn't fold back out of the way for the girls to play with the iPad.  So I ended up with the Griffin.  I put my iPad in it - which was tricky (it was super tight and didn't acutally sit in there completely centered), set it up on it's kickstand, connected the keyboard, moved it slightly closer to me, and BAM.  The iPad part flipped down and banged against the desk.  Awesome.  I figured I had busted my iPad right then and there.  This kickstand on the back of it for typing mode is held by 2 ribbons to keep it from folding completely out, nothing stops it from folding back in when moved, thus the iPad flops down.  AND it was a B to get it in and out.  I decided that I wasn't satisfied and took it back to the store.

I wasn't sure what to do next, and decide to check the Apple store if they had any covers.  The actually carried one cover - a Logitech cover that has a keyboard - it wasn't quite the one I was looking for (that I had seen online), but also didn't cost as much as the one I was looking for.  I ended up with a Logitech Ultra Thin Keyboard Folio - or something like that - in the only color that they had, a sorta dark orange.  The keyboard is great.  The keybard can be folded away so that the girls can still play on the iPad, and cover causes auto off on the iPad when it shuts!  It is also easy to put the iPad in and take out and the iPad snaps right up to its typing position with magnets. 

Drawbacks:  If you forget to shut off the keyboard and fold it up for iPad only mode, the weight of the iPad will activate the buttons, which was a little tricky to figure out when I didn't realize the keyboard was still on.  Another: there's nothing to cover the screen.  I'm ok with this, since Matt has had an iPad for 2 years and had had a screen protector on it for a while, but then we decided it sucked and hasn't had one since - and his screen is still beautiful.  The same goes for my sister - she doesn't have a screen "protecter" on hers either...so at the moment, I'm not as worried about the screen especially since the cover closes like a book and will cover when I transport the iPad anywhere I go.

At the moment I'm sitting in my living room with my iPad on my lap typing this post - feeling techy and pretty excited to say the least!