Who needs a dog when your baby plays fetch?!

Zander loves to play with balls. He throws them and then crawls after them. He also loves to have us throw them and then he fetches them and brings them back. This evening he was doing just that, but apparently he was feeling lazy, or thought his arms were a lot longer than they are. As you can see he would go a foot or so, stop and try to hand it to Paul or I. Pretty cute and entertaining. No dog needed for this household!

Parker's Blessing

My nephew Parker was blessed this weekend and his parents had a huge BBQ (that Paul got to smoke 3 pork butts and a brisket for) on Saturday. My sis-in-law Marie has a huge family so I decided to surprise them with a cake! I haven't done a stacked cake in a long time and this was the perfect opportunity. So the bottom layer is chocolate cake with raspberry ganache filling and the top later is white cake with strawberry filling. All frosted in the BEST milk chocolate buttercream and with fondant accents. If I ever do "floating" letters again I will use two wires per letter. I only used one this time and they kept twirling and showing their "backsides." Naughty letters!
All the Arrington clan (we missed Bryan and Emily and their two girls, due to unforseen circumstances.) Baby Parker is in the middle with his parents.
The proud parents. I got to hold Parker in Relief Society for a short while (Grandma had Zander). I got him to smile and even got a little giggle too. Babies are so fun. (And I loved giving him back too!)

Swimming lessons

We have been at the pool last week and this one for swimming lessons. Kiara is becoming really good at it and Kegan is getting there too, and has mastered going down the slide with no one catching him. Payton just loves it. For his age group it is mostly learning to kick on your tummy and back, getting comfortable putting your face in the water and "scooping" water with your hands. He is pretty much fearless in the water and wants to do everything. I wish he did fear it more, but even half drowning and being saved by a life guard didn't help, so what am I to do, except put him on a leash!
Now the story of Kiara. She seems to be afraid of EVERYTHING! So on the first day they took her class to the diving board at the deep end. Well she came running to me sobbing that she was too scared to go to the diving board. So I told her that no one would make her do it if she didn't want to. I then asked her to stay with her class and at least go watch. (I wanted her to see they were not only safe, but having tons of fun.) They were jumping onto a noodle that the teacher was holding and then he took them to the side. Well, you would have thought I told her I was going to go throw her in and then hold her down! She continued to sob for about 3 minutes despite my reasurring her that no one would make her do it. So I stopped talking and marched her down there to just watch. She finally stopped crying, and watched, but as we were leaving she was vowing to never come back and telling me how much she hated swimming lessons! (typical girly drama). Well Paul has some magical touch that I was not blessed with and reasoned with her that night that she needed to at least try and that we wouldn't ever ask her to do something that wasn't safe for her. Sure enough the next time they went to the diving board she confidently strode up and just jumped! No tears, not even a small hesitation! Crazy girl! Now she loves it and told me today that she was thinking about what it would be like if they didn't need to use the noodle. The last picture is of her landing after one of her diving board jumps!

Kegan and Zander stories

I have a large strawberry patch and was picking some today. Well, Zander was almost as fast as I was. He was scarfing them down and spitting out the leaves. Reminds me of when Kiara was the same age and she would pick tomatoes from the garden and just munch on them like crazy! Of course she had sensitive skin and would end up with a rash all around her face.....

Now for the "kids say the darnedest things" moment with Kegan. Grandma A. took the older three kids to paint ceramics and then they got dipped ice cream cones from Arctic Circle on the way home. I sent them outside to eat them and Kegan came in a few minutes later and said "That Grandma is always messing up my life." (yes, an exact quote) I choked down my snicker and asked what he meant as I turned to look at him. Well, he was referring to the big mess the hot sun had made of his ice cream, shirt, face and hands. He said "she just always buys us messy things." So apparently his whole life revolves around his face and hands...... MY life revolves around his messy clothes. We love Shout, and oxy clean at our house! -And Grandma A, he seems to be over it now, apparently you didn't mess his life up too badly! Thanks for being such a great Grandma!

Zander's 1st B-day

I have a million and one things to post, but we are on our way out the door so I'll have to just do one, just know that more is eventually on the way!


Zander had his first birthday on Father's Day! I made a lion cupcake cake. (Put all the cupcakes together and frost as if it were a cake. He had fun smashing one of the cupcakes and devoured it pretty well. His grandparents all came as well as the local aunts, uncles and cousins. Thank you everyone for making his day special!

Bite Me!

My favorite books right now are the Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer. I was hesitant to read them at first, despite rave reviews from friends. I mean, come on, Vampire books??? But after having them forced on me, I love, love, love them! As does a majority of the women in my ward. So when the Relief Society asked me to make a cake for an Enrichment talent show/display night, I came up with this cake. It is a poppyseed cake with Orange flavored Italian Meringue Buttercream. Yummy! The stem and leaf are gumpaste as are the baubles on the bracelet (replica of the one Jacob gives Bella for graduation.) I did make a chain out of gumpaste, but it didn't look so great and then broke, so the chain is metal. I couldn't decide whether to write "bite me" on it or not, as it was a church function, but since I put a little placard explaining the inspiration went ahead and did it. We'll see if I shock any little old ladies tonight.....

Empty the Camera!

So we are heading to Utah this afternoon for National Clogging Competition at Lagoon tomorrow and I needed to empty the camera, so I figured I'd post them while I had a minute.
This is my cute fam in their jammies hanging out. I love our round brown chairs. We all pile on them for scriptures in the morning, everyone fighting over who sits with dad of course!
This lovely injury was my Mother's Day present. The pictures do not do it justice. About 45 minutes before all Paul's family and my parents were coming to dinner at our house, there was a colliding of Kegan's and Payton's heads with Payton's lip caught in the middle. There was quite a bit a blood and it looked pretty deep. We took him to a friend who is in the medical profession so he could tell us if a trip to the ER was needed. Thankfully it wasn't as bad as it looked at first and is healing pretty good. But it still looks really nasty, especially the part that is inside his lip....Yuck!
He thinks he's pretty cool now, but he was pretty freaked out in the beginning.
I was trying to get dinner done last night and Zander was fussing at my feet so I had Kegan take him to play with him for a few minutes. Well about 1 minute later there was complete silence. There are two things that make my "spidey sense" tingle as a mother. Complete silence or uncontrollable laughter. Either will make me envision crayon drawings on the wall, spilled nail polish, toilet stuffing and flushing, you know that sort of thing. So I went in search of Kegan and Zander and this is what I found. A cute sleeping baby on Kegan's shoulder. He must have fallen asleep instantly!
All right. Here is a quiz! What in the world is this? Cake and rice crispies and fondant? What in the world have I done now!? Scroll down to find out!

Sully! And Mike! I had so much fun doing this for my twin nephews. I do question my sanity a little though....
I got to buy a ball pan for Mike. I have wanted it for a while, it has so many possibilities!
I belong to a website called Cake Central and there has been much discussion about doing licensed figures in cake. Apparently it is a huge no-no if you are selling them. Disney has no problem suing the little guy for copy right violations. So let me say that these were a gift and NOT for profit! (Which makes me question my sanity even more! But hey, like I said, it was fun!)