Degen's Third Birthday Party

Degen with his pal, Chuck E. Cheese!

Another Chuck E. Cheese party! Degen loves them, the other kids love them! A good deal and pretty darn easy! How can we say 'no'?!? Unfortunately, since Monday night was a school holiday, our usually quiet CEC was busy-busy! My first thought when I pulled up was 'oh no' and when I went inside and saw the mayhem I panicked just a little! But I was organized and went about setting up what I had brought and working with the CEC employees. Families started to leave as the evening rolled on and our guests arrived. I had token bags and coupons ready to go and happy kids disappeared into the game room with their friends!

During the birthday show,  Degen & some of his buddies had a little dance party! Chuck E. joined in, too!

We ate pizza and enjoyed the birthday show! Degen loved all the attention he got as the birthday boy: songs, clapping, singing & dancing! Adults and kids laughed and talked! It is great to have so many friends in one place! After we finished up our cake, it was time for the Ticket Blaster! Degen was nervous about this and it took some convincing to get him to agree to go in with me. In the end, he enjoyed it and caught a nice handful of tickets. A few more games and then it was time for our guests to head home for bed. Degen did not want the party to end, but the lure of opening gifts at home got him out the door! Many thanks to all our wonderful friends who came out to celebrate!

Some of our fab party guests!

The Ticket Blaster!

Thanks to our good friend, Robin, for getting this great family photo of us!

He LOVED this balloon!

Degen & pals share a turn on one of his favorite rides!

Opening gifts at home!

Racetrack Cake

Here is the cake that I made for Degen's birthday party! I needed a cake to feed a crowd and wanted something that would maintain the 'Cars' theme of the party. I saw an idea for a racetrack cake on Pinterest and decided that I would do something with that. To make my oval track, I baked one round and one square cake (using one cake mix). I wanted to make the cake a little more special so I colored the batter, but it didn't turn out as well as I wanted because the color was not dark enough. (I am planning on trying this again with Kyrie's cake and hope it turns out better.) I tried a new kind of filling for this cake, which I also found on Pinterest (yeah, I'm a bit of a Pin-head!). The filling was very easy to make because it was only three ingredients: cool whip, pudding mix and milk (1/2 the amount called for to make the pudding). I spread it on the cake and gave the leftovers to the kids who ate it right up!

I made one and a half batches of my traditional buttercream icing to cover the cake. (I did not want to take a chance that I would run out like I did with my last cake.) I used most of the icing to cover the cake, but reserved about 1/3 to dye green. After I had my base on, I spread on my crushed Oreos (I used only the tops of the Oreos and ground them using a Magic Bullet). The cookie crumbs were very fine and pretty messy. I added a marshmallow wall by wetting the bottom of the mini-marshmallows and sticking them on the icing. I finished spreading out the cookie crumbs and stuck on peanut butter m&ms using icing to border the other side of the track. Then I added green grass into the center of the racetrack and used the same tip & green icing to make a bottom border (this technique also did well in incorporating the cookie crumbs that spilled over the side of the cake because it looked like dirt for the grass border). I added Degen's name to the center and then stuck on 3 of Degen's toy cars to the track. This cake was another success, and I got a lot of compliments about the filling from our party guests!

Start Your Engines... for Cake!

After his birthday swim, Degen enjoyed a birthday nap that lasted into the evening. I could not figure out what to do for dinner since we went out for lunch, it was fast growing late and Degen can be a bit of a picky eater. I decided to make things easy and do hot ham & cheese sandwiches...if you want to win my by over, try cheese! The kids weren't much interested in dinner anyway because they knew that gifts and cake were on the way!

Kyrie was as excited for birthday gifts as Degen! She did a great job helping Degen open his gifts! Every year, it seems that there is more excitement for the ripping of brightly wrapped paper! We had lots of fun watching Degen's concentration as he opened his presents and excitement to see what was inside! There was no shortage of trains & cars, and he loved the robot from Kyrie! While Darren & I worked to put some toys together, the kids laughed and played with the new toys!

I love Kyrie's face in this picture! She can be such a clown!

The Lightning McQueen cake was a big hit! Degen loved it! Everyone enjoyed a piece...Kyrie enjoyed two! We had a delicious ending to celebrate our perfectly sweet, little boy!

Birthday Swim

My dread for crowds kept me from scheduling Degen's birthday party on his actual birthday on Saturday, but we still wanted to make the day special. After we picked up Kyrie from school, went to a kid-friendly restaurant before heading to the community center to swim. The kids are regulars at the community center pool, but that is for structured lessons and without Darren. Having Darren at the pool and being able to swim & splash for as long as they wanted was a special birthday treat!

I let the kids enjoy some daddy-kiddo time while I worked out. After I finished in the gym, I joined them in the pool. It was so much fun to watch Darren splash & play with the kids! They climbed on his back as he swam around the pool and squealed with delight when he held them under the water-dump bucket! Kyrie was able to show off her swimming skills and Degen laughed & laughed as Darren threw him high in the air and splashed him down in the water again and again! It is no surprise that neither kid was ready to leave, nor that they both fell asleep in the car on the way home! They can't wait to go back!

He looks so grown up in this picture!

Good Morning, Birthday Boy

It is my hope to make my kiddos feel special on their birthdays from the moment they wake up! It has become a tradition that birthdays begin with a doughnut (sprinkles are their favorite) and candles!

This year, I had a facial scheduled for early morning on Degen's birthday. I would have preferred to schedule it for a different day, but I was using an on-line coupon that was going to expire. That meant that I had to get up extra early to make the birthday doughnut run, and then I might have had to leave before the birthday boy was up. Thankfully, he woke up a little earlier than his usual time and I was able to sing him the birthday song and watch him blow out his candles before I had to leave to make my appointment! A great start to a great day!

Lightning McCake

This year, the theme of Degen's birthday party will be 'Cars.' Almost as soon as I figure out a party theme, my thoughts turn towards cake design. Last year, I made a Thomas the Tank Engine cake that Degen just loved and so I thought that I could do the same thing with 'Cars' by making a cake that looked like Lightning McQueen. I took a look at the toy cars we had and thought that I could use the shape of loaf pan and with a few simple cuts make a reasonable likeness. I was beyond pleased with the shape of the cake with just 3 cuts. Then I just had to hope that the icing would goas well.

The three cuts that I made were for the hood ( __ ) , the windshield ( / )  and the back windshield ( \ ). I took a moment to really look at the shape of the loaf before deciding on how best to make the cuts.

I think that the 2 hardest colors to do for icing are black and red. It is hard to get the richness that you really want with both of those colors (black ends up being gray and red ends up being pink), and you often end up using so much coloring paste that the icing seems to take on the flavor of the dye. I was anticipating this going into the icing process, and had decided that since this was just our family cake I was going to let it slide. I did not have a lot of room for error because I had forgotten to get another bag of powdered sugar at the store, so I only had enough to make a half batch of frosting (thank goodness that this was such a small cake). Then as I was looking in a cupboard I spotted a bottle of red sprinkles and thought that would be the perfect thing to make m red richer and would even give it a shiny, metallic appearance.

Once I got the red icing on, I was loving how it looked. The icing looked great on the shape of the cake and the rough edges smoothed out making it look even more like the animated car. So...I did make one mistake with the icing that I am kicking myself for, and that is the windshield eyes. I used white icing and covered the entire windshield area not paying close enough attention to the fact that in the cartoon and on the toys, the color of the car extends down onto the windshield to creat an eyelid effect. Unfortunately, I had used up every last bit of my red icing just to cover the cake, so I did not have any left to make the change. (Moral: always make a little more icing than you think you will need.) Yes, I know that it was not a big deal, but the perfectionist in me was still totally bothered by the error in such a small (and easily remedied) detail of the decorating.

After all the base icing was on, all I needed to do was add the embellishments. I decided to keep this fairly simple because there were way too many, small design elements for me to try to replicate with icing (if I were using fondant, I could have done a lot more... maybe next year). I had some large, candy "sprinkles" in pastel colors and was able to find blue ones and just added an iris with black icing (this was easier than making blue icing and filling up a piping bag, especially for such a small detail). I added the mouth and the head- & taillights (using some m&ms), the back fender, lightning bolts, side windows and the tires (Oreo cookies). Instead of using McQueen's number, I put a 3 (for Degen's birthday) on the top and wrote his name on the hood instead of the Rust-eeze emblem to personalize the cake. McQueen does have some lines where the back windshield is that would have been easy to do, but I was worried that it would start to look too busy.

The only other thing that I wish that I could have done was add a filling to the cake. I gave it more than one thought, but decided it was too much of a risk with such a small cake. If I was making this cake for a crowd, I would probably put it on top of a layered round or rectangle and use my filling in those. But for our little family, this size was perfect with just about 10 pieces of cake.

Although there is some stress when I decorate cakes, I LOVE the challenge and the sense of accomplishment I feel when I am done! It means the world to me to see my kids' excitement over the cake that is meant just for them! I am already going over ideas and plans for Kyrie's birthday cake....thankful that I have a month and a half before I put it together!

Rose-Colored Glasses

Kyrie got her glasses on Wednesday afternoon! She got the cutest eyeglass case ever- it looks like a little, pink purse! She was very excited for the glasses and that little purse...until the fun kind of wore off and she realized that these glasses were not just for fun and wearing them was a requirement. We are trying our best to ease her into a life of wearing glasses by letting her take them off for a little while each day. Sometimes those little whiles become big whiles, but each day she is getting a bit better at keeping them on her little face. She instantly looks a little older and stereotypically a little smarter! Her piano teacher noticed a difference in her lesson, which I take as a good sign.

Sparkly Valentine

This Valentine's day, Darren surprised me with a beautiful, diamond & sapphire pendant! I am a very lucky girl!

Me "all dressed up" (LOL!) Valentine's evening!

Cupid's Cookie

Our Valentine's Days (as most of our holidays) are casual affairs. Still, it is nice to do something special for the people you love. Darren loves cookies...well, we all love cookies...so I decided to make a giant cookie for his Valentine. Of course, the kids helped!

We made a peanut butter cookie, and I spread half the dough in a heart-shaped pan. Then each kid poured in a scoop of chocolate and peanut butter chips. I added the rest of the dough and then the kids sorted a bag of Christmas peanut butter m&ms to get all the red ones (we will save the green ones for St. Patrick's Day). They topped our giant, peanut butter cookie with the PB m&ms and then I popped it in the oven.

The finished product was yummy sweet, a great Valentine treat!

Colors of Love

I was pretty excited for our Valentine's Day project this year. I first saw the idea on Pinterest (and when I was a kid my mother would sometimes helps us melt down scrap crayons in mini-pie tins). After going through the kids' craft items and finding an overabundance of crayons, I knew it would be perfect. All I needed was a heart-shaped muffin pan.

The hardest part of this project was peeling all the paper off the crayons. Next I worked with Kyrie to sort the crayons by color. We did this in part as a learning activity for Kyrie, but also to ensure that each of our crayons got a little of each color. Then I chopped all the crayons up and had both kids scoop a little of each into the muffin cups. It took about 15 minutes (at 250 degrees) for the crayons to melt and just about as long for them to set in the winter-cold garage.

The kids really enjoyed making the crayons and loved all the colorful hearts that popped out of the muffin cups. The next part of the project, I helped Kyrie make a coloring sheet to go with the crayons. I doubt that most of our Valentine recipients spend a lot of time coloring, but it was my hope that they might get caught up in the whimsy of the moment and have a little fun.

Girl Scout Night at Disney on Ice

 One of the best parts about being involved with our Girl Scout troop are all the great opportunities we get to do things in our city, and often with our friends! Recently, we met our troop for an evening at Disney on Ice!

 This evening ended up being a pretty crazy one. It started when the security guard at the entryway would not let me bring in the candy that I brought for the kids (even though I have brought candy on other occasions and some of our friends brought candy that same evening... anyway...). I was a little flustered after I was called out for my candy violation, and in the following moment accidentally threw our tickets in the entryway trash can (I had forgotten that they were in my hand). I had no choice but to reach into the trash can and blindly try to retrieve them. Thankfully, after a few minutes I was able to pull all three from the trash. If I was not flustered before, I was definitely flustered by then.

We headed into the arena and most prevalant on my mind was finding a bathroom so I could wash my hands and the kids could go potty before the show started. We headed off towards a bathroom when my friend glanced at the kids and asked, 'where's Degen?' We had just gathered him to us a minute before and now he was gone, vanished into the crowd of hundreds of families streaming in to find their seats. Now, I am the mother of a somewhat mischievous boy, so I did not panic right away, but went right back to where we had been near a toy display. He was not there. I walked 10 feet further to the photo op, but still no. Glanced to the next toy display, but he was not there either. Then the panic started to set in a little as my eyes took in all the people, almost all with small children. Somewhere in all these people was a very small boy, and it began to wash over me that I would not be able to find him. I rushed quickly to the escalators at the exit and glanced down the wide expanse of stairs, my one last hope that he would have been lured by the ride, but still no. He does not know my name, his last name, can barely be understood by those who do not speak Degen-ese, what will I do? The first person I could find wearing an Arena shirt and carrying a walkie-talkie I stopped and blurted out, "My little boy is lost." He called security, and when the gentleman arrived to take me back to the security office I knew that this could all end very badly. I blinked back tears and followed the security officer through the crowd. We had gone no more than 10 steps when I saw a woman lifting up a little, blonde boy in a red coat... MY little blonde boy in a red coat. I rushed over, calling to the security officer as I hurried to grab him, "Here he is. This is him. I found him."

No tears, he was calm and talking to the women who had found him wandering. I held him to me and thanked them over and over as relief washed over me. They smiled and said that when they found him they knew to stop and look around for the panicked mother who would soon follow. I smiled and thanked them, including thanks that they were not judging me in that moment. They smiled back, "Oh, we have lost kids before, too. It happens." I do not know who those women are, but I wish them all good things and blessings in their lives for finding my boy and keeping him safe, and mostly for the mercy they showed me in that moment.

 We rushed to find our seats and enjoyed the show. Degen was completely unaffected, but I don't think my heart slowed down until well into the first act of the show. As we were leaving, I was determined to keep a firm hand on Degen. And, as usual, he would have none of it. He twisted about in my arms, crying and fighting to get down. There was no way I could fight him all the way back to the car, so I let him down and kept one step behind him as we waded through the departing crowds.

When we reached the top of the long set of stairs to leave the arena, Degen took one step down and immediately went back up shaking his head saying, "too scary." I turned around and scooped him up in my arms. Then the screaming began, followed by the crying and the hitting. Our evening out had become late and my prince turned into a troll. He threw a royal fit all the way down the stairs, out the arena and halfway to the car (which was no short distance). I held him and talked to him calmly, when he hit I put him down and walked away. Then picked him up again when he screamed after me. I have learned that there are some times when you cannot reason with a child, you cannot do anything to make it better, and so you just have to ride out the fit until they wear themselves out. Thankfully, he was calmer by the time we got to the car and the car ride home was only really terrible in the 10 minutes before we reached home.

It had to be one of the absolute craziest nights ever... and I became very aware that for Degen age 3 was gonna be way harder than age 2 ever was.