Camping experiment - take 1

Step 1:  Break out the tent you bought on sale last year and never took out of the box

Step 2:

Pick your campsite

Step 3:

Be on the lookout for varmits

Step 4

DANG thats a big tent

Step 5

Keep all non essential personnel out of the work area (yea right)

Step 6

Make sure you have all the right provisions

Good night

Happy 3rd Birthday Ronan

from John Lennon's Beautiful Boy:

Out on the ocean sailing away,

I can hardly wait,

To see you to come of age,

But I guess we'll both,

Just have to be patient,

Yes it's a long way to go,

But in the meantime,

Before you cross the street,

Take my hand,

Life is just what happens to you,

While your busy making other plans,

Beautiful,

Beautiful, beautiful,

Beautiful Boy,

You are my beautiful boy. 

 So funny and daring and loving and ornery. 

You make me laugh everyday and at times make me want to pull my hair out.

Even if I end up bald you'll still be my special, beautiful, loving, monkey boy.

Birthday present

Its a weekend long extravaganza.  Swim this morning then we met Judd at the shop to give Ronan his birthday present.

Lets try this bad boy out

Whoot

Around the parking lot

We ended up riding all the way down the block to where the sidewalk ends, then back then down the side street around the block and back again.

More Misc Birthday

I'm just LOOKING

Whose kids are these as they sure don't look like me.

early morning present from Gramma and Grandpa

Party Party Party

 We headed off to the Childrens Museum for the party today.

As usual Ronan and Logan spent alot of time in the ball pit aka the grape stomp

Cake was a hit

I really hope this stuff comes off

There was alot of pizza baking

Cheryl got to eat all of it.  Glad she came hungry!

Had to tickle the ivories a little

Love the look on A's face!

Some present opening

Then came the crash

Thanks Uncle Clay and Auntie Nikki for the tennis racquet (I hope nothing gets broken!)

There are lots of other photos but I didn't want to be spreading pics of other peoples kids out there even if it is a private blog.  Lots of fun was had and I'm glad that almost everyone was able to make it.

Anatomy of a Birthday Cake

So tomorrow we are having Ronan's birthday party.  So I took today off to deal with all the stuff and make his cake.  Good thing too as it took me all freaking day!

My first thought was to make a Thomas the Train cake.  I soon found out that is much easier said than done.

I have a cool train cake pan so I thought I'd add some blue food color to white cake and viola I'd have a Thomas.  Well....first try was too purple

2nd try came out better

 (not that the lighting is so great you can really tell the difference! HA)
Anyway

Batter looks pretty close!

Time to bake

errrr its green.  So I spent about an hour and a half painstakingly shaving off the outer crust so the blue would show through.  Yeesh!

As you can see I gave up on trying to futher make the blue train look like Thomas as its soo small and I'm just not that good a decorator!  But its cute all the same I think.

I'm sure Ronan won't give two hoots but I had to at least try.

Car show and the Perfect Brownie

After swim this morning we stopped by the car show before heading home.  It wasn't very big which was a little disappointing but the boys were very excited anyway.  Logan couldn't pick one favorite so here are a few of his favorites.  Don't know why he looks so grumpy in most of these considering he was the one that wanted his picture taken.

Love the Tapout pose in this one

One that looks like Doc!

Then we got home to find a package on our door.  What was it?  It was a new bath mat and I succumed and purchased The Perfect Brownie

Logan, everytime the commerical came on, would ask if we could get one.  He was super stoked to see it in the box.  So of course we had to make some

Cocoa, flour, salt, baking powder

eggs and sugar

mix with melted chocolate and butter

taste test first

good to go

They did cook well it was nice to have them pre-sliced

It did take a few minutes to get it correctly on the stand but it didn't stick

Not quite as pretty as the commercial but they still taste good!

(although I did sacrafice half of my thumbprint to make these)