Valex's 2nd Birthday

This weekend, we celebrated Valex's 2nd birthday. Before hand, my sister had asked if I would make the cake. Of course I said yes! I love my nephews and I love decorating cakes, so decorating a cake for a nephew was a pleasure. Between myself, and a few friends, we are trying to keep track of what pans we all have. Then we can just share instead of buying one that someone else already has. I let Vanessa know which pans we all had and she chose the 3D train cake pan.

This was my first 3D cake. It was a little bit different to work on, but I love how it turned out. The worst part was getting it from our home, 25 miles down the road, to the party. But it did fine. It took me a few hours to decorate, but it turned out so cute that it was worth it. I only had a few minor tragedies. I forgot to tie string around my cake pan, so the bottom side had better defined 3D details then the top. Also, I had decided to just buy black frosting instead of making it. I also thought I bought grey frosting, but when I opened it, I found it was white. So I dyed it gold, but I think I still would have liked grey better.

Valex is one spoiled boy, but every child should be spoiled on their birthday. ;) I think the presents in blue where from Vanessa and her family, the presents in black & white in the basket were from me & Josh and the other presents were from Chris and his family. The later Alden added some sand toys to the pile.

One of the first presents he opened, was from his dad. (I will say now, that I thought his dad got him the COOLEST gifts.)

His own drum set! Valex loved it! John started putting it together while we kept trying to open presents. But Valex was over there between every.single.present playing with the drums. Then when we'd get his attention to open another present, he'd bring the drum sticks with him.

This was the last present he opened, also from his dad, and it was just as cool! His own guitar!

He was so excited. For a minute, he just stood there and pointed at it. Then he tried to play it while his dad got it out of the box for him.

To make it more fun, I decided to wrap his gift into four different packages for him to open.

We got him several different books, including to scanimation books, and a wood block set.

I love this picture my sister took of John and my dad assembling presents while Valex opened the rest. I think we were all just as excited as Valex was that day.

His grandma great (aka great grandma, on my mom's side) got him a swimming pool. Even with out water, he loved it. John was a good sport to blow it up when we couldn't find the foot pump.

After opening presents, we brought the cake out. Both of the boys have recently had strep throat, so we decided it was better to not do candles this year. Valex was pretty excited about his cake. So was his mom. ;)

I'm not sure what we were thinking. We got a picture of me with his cake, but not a picture of Valex with his cake. I felt so bad when I realized it that night.

He was rawring at his dad.

 

After cake, we filled up the swimming pool and let Valex play.

 

June Tuck Swap

This month, our theme for Swap group was summer. I decided to do a flower idea I had seen on Pinterest. You can see the original tutorial HERE. It ended up being quite a bit of work; I didn't want to give it away. But I told myself I'd just have to make myself one now that I've done a trial and error version. Its hard to see in the picture, but its just a smaller pillow, I think about 7 inches. When (and if) I do one for myself, I might have to do a larger version.

Here is the picture of the tuck I gave to Angie.

Here is a picture of the tuck I received from Naomi. I LOVE it.

Most every one in the group is big into Primitive looking stuff, so must of the ladies coffee stain their tucks. I loved the tuck, but I also love that it wasn't coffee stained. I also found out one other girl doesn't like that look, so when I have her name I can skip that step.

I got kind of frustrated with my tuck and decided I need to drop out of swap group. But after getting suck a cute tuck, I decided to stick it out for another month. (And maybe scale back to not such a complicated design that takes so much work.) Next month is Patriotic stuff for July 4th, so I'm busy thinking of something red, white & blue.

Book Club - "For Cryin' Out Loud" by Dianne Blaine Hardy

This month, it was my turn to pick the book for book club. I had originally chosen a different book, but then my grandma announced that her book would be coming out in May. Of course I had to choose her book. 1) She's my grandma and I love her and 2) I read a rough draft a few years ago, and loved it!

I could not put the book down. Every time I had even a spare second, my nose was buried in her book. She wrote her memoirs of growing up, as a means to heal from her youth and different things that happened on the inside of her home. Her parents were outstanding members in the community, but inside her home, they were less then ideal parents. For example, my grandma practically grew up on tuna fish sandwiches. Her mother would not cook for her. But to make it worse, when the younger kids were born, she put more effort into feeding them food, but still left my grandma and older sister to fend for them selves. 

In preparing for book club, I thought it would be fun to cook a dinner based on my grandma's favorite foods. I emailed her to ask her what she suggested and this is the email I received back. 

"Thank God  my tastes have grown to include more than the tuna sandwiches I was raised with.  What a creative tribute to me to have you all eating what I like.  Wish I could be with you.  Favorite meal is Clam Chowder with bread sticks, a green salad with the veggies cut up small like your mom makes, and cherry pie or cherry cheesecake.  I also love meatloaf and those funeral potatoes your mom makes.  Asparagus is great.  Hope this gives you a choice.  I love you, Savannah and thank you for all the help you have been in promoting my book.  Grandma".

Because we were out of town the weekend before, time was kind of tight to prepare a meal. I had wanted to make bread sticks, but was at the zoo instead. Monday night, I got a meat loaf put together. Then Tuesday, I got off work an hour early. I raced home to throw the meatloaf in the oven. Then I prepared asparagus and a green salad. I also wanted to do potatoes, but just ran out of time. Dessert was cherry pie (thanks to Marie Calendar). 

I also decided to invite my mother and sister up since they had also read the book. Which was a good thing, because Jessica was the only other person able to come. I knew Jessica loved the book, because a few days before book club, I got this text from her. "Finished reading your grandma's book last night. I liked it! Such a cool genealogy  book for you. Most people don't know much about how their grandparents were raised... including me." 

We had so much fun talking about my grandma's book, made even better with my family adding in other family memories. When I read the rough draft a few years ago, one part reminded me how each summer we would go spend a week at my grandma's house. One of the highlights for us kids was grandma would let us put sugar on our cereal. (Which we of coursed shoveled on!) 

Jessica was shocked to learn that my grandma didn't know what a muffin was until she was in 11th grade! I'm just grateful that after being raised on tuna fish sandwiches, she turned out to be a really good cook. I can remember when she'd come to see us, she would make chicken noodle soup that was to die for! Which I thought about making for book club, but knew I wouldn't have enough time to do. 

Thank you grandma for writing your book and sharing it with family and friends and now every one else. 

You can purchase a copy of her book HERE. After reading it, be sure to leave a review. 

Weekend Fun

This last weekend was a blast. Saturday morning, we drove to American Fork to celebrate my cousin adopting 3 kiddos. But before going to the party, we first had to go to Cabela's. Josh must have caught me at a weak moment because I let him buy a new gun.

After Cabela's, we drove to Heather's house in American Fork for her BBQ. Someone forgot to tell the wind it was NOT invited. Everything else about the party was perfect, except the wind that was HOWLING! I didn't even get my camera out because the wind had me so miserable. The party was across the street from her home in the park. (How cool is it that they literally live across from the park!) 

After the party, we headed to Salt Lake City. My mom had gotten us a hotel room so we could all go to the zoo the next day. Our hotel was only a few blocks from The Gateway, so we decided to walk down there and see what movies were playing. We bought tickets to "Snow White and the Huntsman" but had an hour to kill before the show started, so we decided to walk around and see where to eat after the movie.

After the movie, we went to Tuscano's. It was DELISH!  Our movie ended around 10:20, so when we got there, it was pretty quite. Our waiter was awesome and the food was amazing. I told Josh that the pineapple was so good, it did things to me I thought only he could do. We were so full after dinner, we didn't even have room for dessert.

The next morning we headed to the zoo to meet up with my family. Unfortunately, Valex woke up with a fever that morning, so he wasn't feeling completely like himself. I think he had a good time, but you can tell in all of his pictures that he wasn't feeling well.

  Waiting out front for everyone to show up. Josh had found some pennies for him to throw into the water.

Watching the train drive by. We decided to ride it just before leaving the zoo.

Valex did NOT like the lion water fountain. I did NOT like that it was the only lion in the zoo.

I have wanted to go to the zoo for YEARS. I have such fond memories from when I was a kid. My family went just about every summer, but I hadn't been in YEARS (like even a few years before I was married.)

Going with the boys was the only magical part of it. I was actually really disappointed in just about everything else. The first thing we saw when we walked in was..... a free roaming chicken. My in-laws have those too. Then the rest of the zoo felt like 60% monkey's and 40% everything else, with only like 10% of that being cool. For me, that was the bears. I was going to take a lot of pictures,  but then it was "oh, its just more monkeys and look, they are sleeping, just like the last monkeys." I guess the zoo is one of those things that is cooler as a kid. Although, I told Josh that I would still love to go to a HUGE zoo, like San Diego. Maybe someday....

Riding the carousal with Daxsen. 

Valex riding with his uncle Alden, next to his mom.

Okay, maybe it was 15% cool. I also enjoyed watching the sea otters, as seen in the picture above, and the seals, which I didn't get a picture of.

The polar bear was really fun to watch. His living habitat was one of the biggest in the zoo and he was very active. From the seal habitat, we could get glimpses of him diving in the water. Then when we got close, he was putting on his own personal show. He would swim under water and come out right at the glass. Then he would fall on his back and back peddle for a bit. Then he would dive under water and go to the glass again. I think he likes all the attention. 

Here he is back peddling away from the crowd. 

Then he would swim back for his close up. 

They also had a grizzly bear habitat that I really liked. It had three bears. One was inside the enclosed part, but the other two were outside "playing". It might have looked like fun for them, but I'm pretty sure if one of them had "kissed" me like that, it would have taken my head off. 

Just as we were finishing up, Heather arrived with her three kiddos. So we decided to all ride the train together. 

After that, we all parted ways. Josh and I stopped at Red Robin for lunch then headed home. It was a busy, but also very fun, weekend.