Artsy Fartsy

The camouflage cake was a hit.  I used this cake (yum, like a big, moist brownie), with this frosting.  Add about a gallon of food coloring, one tank and several army men, and you get birthday perfection.

I frosted the cake the night before the party and had a terrible thought when I woke up that what if all the green frosting colors melted together in the refrigerator?  I was so worried that the mixing and blending and smoothing of camo shapes with various palate knives would be for nothing and we’d have a big nasty green blob cake!  Luckily that wasn’t the case.

Here it was the night before just before I found that it was almost too big to fit in my refrigerator and almost had a breakdown on the kitchen floor.

And here it is just before the candles were lit (sorry it’s a bit washed out).  I made the army guys look like they were holding the candles.  It was such a fun cake to make.  Now if only Charm City Cakes would open a Connecticut branch…

Have I mentioned yet that I’m celebrating two big birthdays this weekend? Probably, but hey, you can never mention someone’s upcoming birthday enough times, am I right?

Here are the two special people who are having a birthday this weekend, and I thought it might be fun to play a little game about them. It’s a guessing game. Ready?

One has a birthday on July 5th, but a party on July 4th. The other has a birthday on July 4th, but a party on July 5th

They both don’t like bugs, doggie kisses, and going barefoot.

One is left-handed, the other is right-handed.

One has a shoe size of 1 and a clothing size of 7. The other has a shoe size of 7 and a clothing size of just about 1.

One likes Pokemon, the other likes Snoopy

They both like to ride bikes, one just learned to go without training wheels.

One likes blue, the other prefers yellow.

And last but not least, one is turning six this weekend, the other is turning FORTY.

CAN YOU GUESS WHICH IS WHICH??

Extra credit bonus question: which one of them do you think would like to kill me right about now??

Maybe I’m being punished for taking two vacations back-to-back, maybe I’m destined to catch a nasty, mean head cold every June, who knows, but I’m back from my double-the-fun vacation and I feel like I rode underneath the car the whole way home from Maine.

We had an awesome time and I took a ton of pictures, so while I lay on the couch and die of agony, please enjoy some shots of my week.

First, Airheads at the Aerodrome - camping in Milan, NY at the beautiful Wilcox Park…

A beautiful morning over our tents.

Waiting in line for dinner.

Friends and music.

Molly’s long-lost twin. She rode in a sidecar!

Now, switch gears to Maine with my mom, my sister, and her boys…

We fell in love with Old Orchard Beach.

And took about 140 pictures while we were there, it was just so pretty!

We splashed and played.

We even had fun on the cloudy days.

And I’m especially going to miss the sunrise view from my balcony.

Despite the evil plague that I’m under at the moment, it was a fantastic week and I’m not looking forward to getting back in the groove of work and responsibility and laundry and all that. But I am glad to be home again. I didn’t see Molly for a week and I was seriously missing my puppy contact. I practically stalked the poodle at Airheads, she was so cute, and yesterday when a sweet pointer-looking dog wandered over to the stand where we were having ice cream, I practically forced her to sit at my feet so I could scratch her ears and look into her sweet doggie face. Speaking of sweet doggie face, someone’s making powerful eye contact, trying to get me to step away from the computer.

If you want to see some more shots from the week, all the Airheads pictures are here.

And all the Maine pictures are here. (Beware: many, many Old Orchard Beach shots.)

In advance of Mother’s Day, I thought I’d say hi to my mom and wish her a happy day.

I may complain (jokingly) about the things I’ve inherited from you - hypoglycemia, double-jointed fingers, an excess of freckles, etc… but really I’m so thankful for everything you’ve given me.  (Well, maybe not the spider veins, but everything else I’m grateful for.)

The analytical brain, the love for learning, the high tolerance of annoying things, the great big heart… that’s all you Mom.  And you’re right, I don’t take many pictures of you for some reason, but I still have this one on my desk.  That one’s my favorite.

Happy Mother’s Day Mom!  I’m so lucky that you’re my mom.

I saw my mom at t-ball last night and she told me that yesterday’s post was a big drag.  Sorry, I’ll try to focus on the positive today.  T-ball last night was a blast.  I can’t believe how much better they’ve all gotten in the past three weeks.   They’re still distracted, slightly mixed-up, five and six-year olds, but they’re starting to get the hang of the sport and they’re so CUTE!

Also, my camera?  Still awesome from the mystery accidental button pushing incident.  Look, I caught Cameron’s home run ball in mid-flight.  Nice swing!

This little bugger was there, too, being adorable.  I wore a hat to shade my lily-white skin from the sun and he wanted one, too, so I gave him this extra one that I had in the back of my car.  Grandma supplied the chocolates and he asked both of us several times if we could go get ice cream.  He’s definitely related.

Alex found another little boy to play with and we turned around at one point to see the two of them trying to move the goal.  They were pulling so hard, it was painfully adorable.

Now let’s see… how about some other positive news.   My car finally broke past the 38.5 MPG plateau yesterday.  I was getting 38 MPG for a few weeks and yesterday after a fill-up I calculated it to be 38.54 MPG.  I love my car.  Get up from your desk now and go buy a Yaris, you won’t be disappointed.

Last night I saw 27 Dresses (very cute) and now I know what I want for my birthday: James Marsden.  Pretty please?  I don’t think Luke would mind.  Also, after months of waiting I bought P.S. I Love You on Tuesday.  Sigh… I love that movie.

OK, I have to go yell at someone now, all this happiness on a gray rainy day is just too much for me.

I’m tired. My weekend was spent surrounded by boys. Saturday morning, my favorite boy pried me out of bed early to get coffee so he could head to the river and go fishing (it was opening day).

Nice waders, huh? I took one look at Luke and Roland in their fishing get-ups and thought: Frog and Toad! Am I right?

Roland caught one big trout and Luke caught two smaller ones which we cooked on the grill that night. Look how pretty they were.

After the fishing, my nephews came over for a few hours while Andrea was working and their dad was at a hockey game getting his nose broken (that’s another story). Luke was working on the deck and I was trying to spread mulch in my gardens and it was a struggle to keep the boys outside with us. They begged and pleaded and kept sneaking inside. They wanted to watch TV and play video games and do anything but be outside. Weirdos. It was tiring, but we managed to distract them and keep them busy. Cameron and I played cowboys and indians in the sand under the deck:

And Alex followed Luke around and eventually convinced him to pull out one of the motorcycles so he could sit on it:

I think he liked it. They begged some more to go inside and so I made a deal with them. We’d take a walk down to the river and then come back to the house and if they still wanted to go inside, they could. Let me add to this story that these two boys refused to put shorts on when they got to my house, even though it was about 80 degrees out, and Cameron asked for gardening gloves while paying in the sand. OK, let’s continue. So we went down to the river to do the thing all kids seem to love - throw rocks in the water.

Cameron’s wearing a headlamp because… well because he’s six and he doesn’t have to make any sense. We moved down river to look for more flat rocks (we were all practicing skipping them) and we found a nice sand bar that the current had made.

I took off my shoes to walk on the sand and something odd happened. Cameron wanted to take his shoes and socks off. Alex did, too. The boys who previously didn’t want to be outside, now wanted to touch the sand. Hooray. From shoes and socks, we ended up taking off Alex’s pants after he sat in the water, then Luke went to the house to get their shorts and not long after that, we witnessed this:

And this:

And (who the heck are these boys?) THIS:

And let me tell you, that water was COLD. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I still can’t.

After we recovered from watching the boys on Saturday, I got to see them some more on Sunday for Alex’s third birthday! Three already, where has the time gone?

I was glad he liked sitting on the motorcycle so much since this is what we got him for his birthday:

A new quad!  Yay.  Maybe next year we can get him a real quad!

Well anyhow, it was a full weekend and I am pooped.  We also did plenty of yard work and gardening and Luke made more progress on the deck, but I’ll have to tell you about all of that later because if I type any more you’re all going to fall asleep at your keyboards.

Is it t-ball, or s it tee ball?  I think it’s t-ball and the “t” sands for TOTALLY AWESOME.  Yesterday afternoon I met my sister and family to watch Cameron’s t-ball practice.  The team is made up of 5 and 6 year-olds and they’ve been practicing for a couple of weeks now.  Cameron is number 6 (because he’s almost six, duh).

It was so much fun to watch these kids.  All team sports should be like t-ball.  Everyone was excited, everyone got a chance to bat, and everyone got a home run.  The kids cheered each other on and no one got mad if you missed the ball, if you decided to play air guitar rather than watch first base, or even if you were running the bases and decided to run after the ball and carry it yourself to home plate.

The coach is a saint and must be on some sort of tranquilizers, he was so patient and calm.   He didn’t even bat an eye when one of the players repeatedly swung the bat wildly and almost took out his kneecaps.

What a perfect afternoon, the weather was gorgeous, the sun was setting in our faces but we didn’t care, we were having fun.  I think I might have to go back next week and watch, too.

Go team Carvel!