Pink Princess Castle Cake

One of Alyssa's best friends was having a birthday party and I jumped at the chance to be able to make a cake for her. The best part was that she wanted a princess cake and this would be a challenge for me. I searched the net to find ideas and finally the day before this was my vision and I created it! I woke up early this morning as I had to have the cake ready by 11:00 a.m. I like my cakes to be fresh.

A few things I learned when making this cake. Since it is a two tier cake I really should have bought a plastic insert the the second layer could have sat on. Not having this insert caused the weight of the second layer to make it lean a bit. If I would have had more time I think I would have frosted the cones white and decorated them with sprinkles. Time was down to the wire and I finished decorating it at 10:30 so I knew I had to cut something to have enough time to get it done.

Over all I was pleased. Both of the girls love it and now Aly wants one for her next birthday......we will see when the time actually comes. She always changes her mind throughout the year.

I am officially a SOCCER MOM!

Five years in the waiting and I am now officially a soccer mom. I had hopes that my daughter/daughters would want to join soccer. Aly loved it and so did KK. Yeah I know KK isn't on the team but she doesn't agree. She thinks she is a big girl just like them and she sat and stretched, and tried to do drills with them. She wasn't really able to do drills because she didn't have her own soccer ball. I promised her that I would buy her a ball.





Aly has a great team of all girls. There will be 8 girls in all. They will play 3 on 3 for games and will play two games at a time. So the coach will run one game with four of the girls and the assistant coach will run another game with the other 4 girls. I guess the theory is that this gives them more time to touch the ball and learn how to play.



At least four of the girls on her soccer team will be in kindergarten at her school so I am really happy about that. I am looking forward to her meeting more girls that live near us. Soccer season will run until the end of Nov. with our first game in Sept. You better believe I will be posting about that!

Bedtime Routine last post

I just have to tell how what happened Monday night. Now that we have the bedtime routine in place KK decided she didn't need me anymore at all. No, she didn't want me to sit in the chair in her room while she fell asleep. She wanted me to leave the room and she told me so! I was in shock but readily obeyed since I was going to start this process anyway in a couple of weeks.

It was really cute to see her thinking and manipulation skills. She came to the door and peeked out many times. I put her back in bed a few times. At one point she didn't want me in the hallway so she told me to go downstairs. I decided to try it and do the dishes. I heard her a few times upstairs peeking out the door. I was thinking I bet she told me to go downstairs so she could sneak in my room and sleep in my bed. Sure enough, in a couple of minutes I heard her feet walking across the floor and I found her tucking herself in my bed! What a riot! I put her back in her own bed and this time she fell asleep on her own.

Bumper boating, a new, fun, exprience

I didn't get all of the pictures from our camping trip uploaded and I promised to post about bumper boating which was pretty fun. We went to Thoasand Trails Lake of the Springs and they had peddle boats, bumper boats, canoes, and one person kayaks for rent. We rented the peddle boats the first day. Grandma Gloria, myslef, and KK went in one boat. At first I found it quite hard but once I adjusted my seat and had my legs in the proper format it was much better. Aly, Ed, and Grandpa T were in the other peddle boat and they were slow, slow, slow! In fact at one point we towed them. At one point they towed us too but we were just doing it for a good laugh!

The bumper boating was just Ed and Aly in one boat and KK and myself in another. They were quite fun. They didn't go that fast but the girls seemed to enjoy it. In fact, 15 minutes into the ride KK fell asleep. I guess it was the hum of the motor. I think had we not had the girls on the boats with us we could have gotten really crazy in the bumping department. The boats did 360 quite well so we did as many of those as we could handle. That was what the girls liked best.

Check out our new pics of the girls!

Yesterday was a very long, fun day. The day started out with Aly's Kindergarten assessment at 9:00 a.m. Then it was off to try and buy her soccer uniform but the store didn't open till 11 so we will have to put that off until this weekend. After that we went and picked up Grandma T so we could spend the day together and go shopping.

I decided to dress the girls in matching dresses with the hopes that I may just be able to get their pictures taken at the mall. We arrived at the Picture People shortly after 12 and put our name down to get our photos taken. When it was finally our turn we were lucky enough to have the best photographer in there! She did such an amazing job that I wanted to buy like 15-20 different shots. Yeah, well, I don't have that much money so I had to compromise to 5 pictures. I may just buy 5 more next month too. Buying just these 5 pictures cost $75.00. Ouch, that really hurt my pocket book but the pictures were great! I bought 10x13 pics and forgot that my scanner would only scan in 8x10's so many of the pics have feet and heads cut off that aren't really cut off in the original photo.











We spent a good portion of the day going back and forth to the picture people to pick out photos and have them printed. Their printer kept having a problem with printing so we did get a credit of two free prints for the future.

We really only shopped in a couple of stores at the mall. The girls loved the Disney store and Grandma T bought them each a Dalmatian dog stuffed animal that they picked out. they were thrilled. I bought a few things on clearance at Sears for the girls for next year. They had some shorts as cheap as $1.50 and swimming suits at $6.00.

I think we left the mall around 6:00 p.m. but were not done yet. I had to buy Aly a pair of soccer cleats before our first practice on Wed. night which left me like 24 hours--yeah down to the last minute which isn't like me. After going to two stores we found a pair that was her size at Sports Authority.

Our last stop was Target. Grandma T wanted to buy the girls another toy and she knew Target had a great selection of Littlest Pet Shops. So Aly picked out two Littlest Pet Shops and KK picked out a Horton Stuffed animal and a toy shark. The girls are very happy with their new toy lot!

We finally got to Grandma's house at 7:30. I helped her clear some memory from her computer and by the time we left it was 9:00 p.m.! Since we live an hour and a half away we got home at 10:30 last night!!! Crazy huh! What a day! Amazingly the girls did great.

My brother painted the coolest car!

My brother is so talented and creative. I didn't know he had it in him. He purchased an old VW bug and has been fixing her up. He calls her Gretchen. He has painted her to look like a bumble bee! My girls loved the picture when they saw it and immediately knew it was a bumble bee car. I personally think my brother should go into business painting cars in unique designs kind of like what the cake maker does on reality tv. Would be a cool job.

Sure would love to see this in person. Since my brother lives two states away I doubt I will see it for a very long time! BTW he painted really cool hubcaps too but hasn't installed them yet. He painted the hubcaps yellow with a black VW sign. Way cool!

Our new bedtime routine nights 4,5,6

Things are going quite well with our new routine. This will probably be the last time I talk about it. I am still shocked at how well it is going. My wise friend has told me on multiple occasions that you can change anything you want about parenting whenever you are ready to change it. You just have to make the commitment to doing it. She is so right and I always thing of this advice.

Night 4 had KK crying just two times for just two short minutes. Her crying was mostly because I would interact with her on a conversational level. She wanted me to look at the glow in the dark stars with her and talk about what we were going to do tomorrow. I stuck to the rules though and didn't respond. I knew I had to do this otherwise our bedtime routine every night would take an hour due to her wanting to talk and avoid going to sleep.

On night 5 the manipulation really began and it was apparent that I had a whole new problem to deal with. KK didn't want to go to sleep and I had made the mistake of letting her have a 45 minute nap. No more naps here I will tell you that. It took me over an hour to get her to sleep and she didn't fall asleep until 10 p.m. During the whole hour she tried everything she could think of to get out of bed. She tried asking to go to the bathroom multiple times, getting out of her bed to get a stuffed animal, asking for water, asking for a different stuffed animal from another room, etc....I only let her go to the bathroom once and I didn't get anything for her that she requested other than the water.

Night 6 still brought some forms of manipulation. However she didn't cry and she didn't keep asking to go to the bathroom. I am sure over the next week she will continue trying to get out of bed etc. but I will stay firm. I am already happier with our new routine and I look forward to a month ahead when I can leave the room while they fall asleep on their own.

R.I.P Squeekins

Poor Squeakins, the past 24 hours have been a long hard fight for him. He had a long life for a rat and his time was up. He began heavy, labored breathing yesterday afternoon so we knew it was a matter of time before he was gone. I expected to wake up this morning to see that he had passed but he was still alive and still had heavy, labored breathing. It was so sad to watch and I truly felt so sorry for him. I prepared the girls yesterday telling them that Squeakins was sick and that he would probably die.

At around 2 p.m. this afternoon he lost his life and will be resting in peace. We had a burial service for him in our backyard and put flowers on his grave. This has been our first loss of a pet and Aly is learning about life and death and what happens when you die. She seems o.k. but does say that she feels a little sad. KK just keeps talking about Squeakins being in a hole in the backyard.

Squeakins was unique and we have no intentions of replacing him. We will cherish the remaining pets we do have such as fish, frogs, a cat, and two dogs.

PLEASE HELP ME CHOOSE!

I want to enter a photo contest over at 5 minutes for mom to win $500. The photo is supposed to represent summer fun. I can't decide which of these three photos to enter. PLEASE EVERYONE that reads this blog, it would help me out so much if you vote and let me know!

#1 Aly and KK eating ice cream

#2 KK running on the beach.

#3 KK throwing sand

The third night of our bedtime routine

After having the second night go so well I was anxious to see how the third night would be. There was only one problem in our plan. We went to the movies to see Space Chimps and didn't get home until 8:30. The girls were wound up so I knew I couldn't start the bedtime routine right away. I waited until 9:00 to begin. Things didn't start out too well as both girls wanted only me to read to them. We got KK to read with Daddy and then Aly decided she was jealous and wanted Daddy to read to her. So we compromised and Daddy read a story to Aly and one to KK and I read one to each of them as well. Once this drama was over Daddy was kicked out so that I could start my new routine. Lights out and the music on.

The girls were still a bit hyper and protested having to go to bed. KK said she wanted me to sleep with her and I reminded her that she was a big girl now and would be putting herself to sleep. I put the music on and sat in my chair with the lights off. KK squirmed about for awhile. She then ask me to look at the stars. I didn't respond. She was very angry that I wasn't willing to have a conversation with her so she began to throw a fit and cry. The fit lasted all of two minutes. She came out of bed, I placed her back in. She was quiet for a few minutes and then tried to talk to me about the stars again. When I didn't respond she threw another little two minute fit.

She calmed down again and then said she had to go to the bathroom. Once she finished she ran into her room and said, "o.k. Mommy I am going to go in my bed and go to sleep all by myself!" That is exactly what she did. I never hear a peep from her again and she was asleep in five minutes.

This is really working for us and I am so glad! I plan on spending at least the next week in the room sitting on the chair. One step at a time. After that I will transition them to me not being in the room at all.