Happy Birthday Katie!

Katie turned three! I was instructed to have a pink princess birthday party. Nothing less would do.

Here is Katie's birthday table, complete with a princess castle, and very large size Cinderella's in the background.

The tower of princess cupcakes.

Katie with her birthday presents, looking very much like a three year old.

Grandma gave her a Dora microphone....she loves it, mommy on the other hand....verdict is still out on whether or not mommy loves the Dora microphone, lets just say it can be loud...

No help necessary for this girl in opening presents.

Can you have a princess birthday party without a princess trike? I think not.

She really wants to get her hands on those cupcakes....

And once she did get her hands on those cupcakes, I was lucky I got a picture while one candle was still lit.

She had a great day.

When it rains it pours....

On the heals of my oh so wonderful encounter with my gallbladder and Cheetos,at the beginning of last week, I felt I needed more drama to end the week on. On Friday, I was out picking up birthday balloons for Katie, and Lauren called to inform me the basement was full of water.....not much I could do over the phone, so I told her I would be home shortly.

I arrived home to find a section of my basement, the craft room to be precise, flooded. Flooded as in water had come through the window well, down the counter and filed up several drawers, and spilled forth onto the floor. The carpet was squishy. The sprinklers has run the day before for the first time, so I figured that I probably had a broken sprinkler head or line. First order of business, turn off the sprinklers.

Second order of business, start mopping up water. Good news, home carpet cleaner is just the tool to accomplish that mission. I eventually determined there was so much water that I needed to pull up the carpet, and suck up the water from the pad. I suspect several days of fans to dry everything out. But on the bright side, with the fans running, pushing all the humid air through my house, its just about like living in a tropical paradise.....ok, maybe that's stretching it a bit....

That was painful, round two.

You may recall that about two months ago I had a lovely run in with a bladder infection, that resulted in a late night trip to the emergency room for pain relief. Shortly after that unfortunate incident Arianne suffered a similar fate. So this last week I had to call and inform her what her next medical ailment would be.....

Last Monday night I was kindly minding my own business around 10:00 p.m., and writing legal decisions for my Board on Tuesday. As of often do, (ok, I admit its a really bad, bad, bad habit) I like to much on something while I write. My munchie of choice on Monday, the Cheetos, puff variety. (Crunchy are my first choice, but I was out of those and Lauren and talked me into buying puffy last time we were at the grocery store.) As I was happily munching away, and writing away, I began to feel not so good. It started as an annoying pain my my side, (no, Rick was not here he was at his house....) the pain became more and more uncomfortable until it began to impact my ability to think and write. (Now mind you I have a high pain threshold, courtesy of my prosecution days.) After about 30 minutes I had to take a break from writing, by then then the Cheetos were long gone. The pain kept getting worse and I knew that something was wrong, this was more than indigestion from eating overly processed food.

I wondered if I was having a gallbladder attack. I quickly googled the symptoms, and I met nearly all the criteria. I called Linda, and told her what was happening and she agreed, and we decided that I needed another trip to the ER.

By the time she arrived at my house I was nearly in tears because of the pain. Courtney came with her to stay with the kids, and we jumped in the car.

Somewhere around the 300 north block of center street in Orem I instructed Linda to pull over. I rolled down the window, and deposited dinner and Cheetos. I am sure the Orem City street crew is so pleased with me. Just for good measure I left a few remains on the side of the car....

Once at Orem Community Hospital, (I will let you in on a little secret, if you live in Utah County go to Orem Community Hospital if you have a medical situation that is severe, but not life threatening. You see when people think of the ER they think of Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, which is a fine facility, but the wait time is horrible unless you are dying. No one thinks to go to Orem Community Hospital, and let me tell you BOTH times I have been there I was the ONLY patient, I got LOTS of attention, which is how it should be!) I was promptly admitted, and had a blood pressure of 165/85. Did in mention I was in pain???

Doctor agreed with me that I had all the classic symptoms of a gallbladder attack, and ordered me a lovely IV with my drug of choice, morphine. Within less than 60 seconds of the nurse injecting the morphine, relief swept over my body. I told her I loved her. The doctor came in and I told him I loved the nurse, he mentioned that he ordered the morphine, so I told him that I loved him too. Within 10 minutes no more pain. According to the doctor apparently my color was returning.

I was sent home with the instruction to stay away from Cheetos and other fatty food, and to obtain an ultra sound. Ultra sound scheduled this Thursday.......current diet, sucks....., but better than the alternative.

Oooey, gooey, chocolate carmel tart.

Time for a trim.

Last Monday Rick took Mark up to Salt Lake to spend the night with him and have some male bonding. So the girls and I felt like we needed to have some female bonding. What do females do? We get our hair done of course!

Actually we were all in need of a trim. So to Great Clips we headed. Now the last time Katie had her lovely locks trimmed, was the short bob hair cut I gave her in November 2008. Both the girl and the hair have grown a little since then. This was her first official time getting a professional cut.

Here is the before.

Katie, not a fan of getting her hair wet via spray bottle.

She did however do well with the instruction to look down.

The finished product. About an inch and one half off. Nice and neat for summer.

Mother's Day.

Mother's Day. I really have a love/hate relationship with the holiday for a whole variety of reasons, but that is another post for a different blog.....

So lets focus on what was good and wonderful about Mother's Day this year.

I received these beautiful flowers from a good friend of mine named Darrin, who sent me a wonderful note about what a great mother I am. It made my day.

Rick took the kids to get flowers for me and grandma and came home with this wonderful bouquet that smells divine! The kids were quite proud of the flowers they chose for me, and kept wanting to confirm that I liked my flowers.

Lauren made this fun and colorful hot pad for me at school. I have already put it to good use in the cooking of macaroni and cheese.

Then there were some fun gifts from the kids. Here I am shaking the gift trying to determined its contents before opening

I even tried "pinching" but to no avail. My gift "guesser" was off on Sunday.

What did I get? Some wonderful kitchen items. All for baking. The kids and I have been in a baking mood lately, so I think they are hoping to not only help me bake yummy and delicious treats, but also to be my taste testers.

I also can't forget all my friends and family who sent me such nice well wishes on Mother's Day, everything from cards, to email, to text. I found myself much more on the love side of Mother's Day this year!

The cake boss.

In keeping with tradition, and to avoid bad karma from my mother, I set about to make Mark a birthday cake. This was the third year in a row he wanted a Thomas the tank engine birthday themed party. For the last two years I used a train cake pan to make two different Thomas cakes, but this year I just couldn't do the train cake pan again, I needed something different.....

I started by making a pound cake from scratch. I put chocolate frosting in the middle, and covered the cake with blue fondant frosting. (Fondant generally comes white, and I had to color it Thomas blue, definitely a job you want to do with rubber gloves on, unless of course you think blue hands are charming, or you always had a suppressed desire to be a smurf.)

Next I had to add track, also made from fondant, this time dyed black.

Then it was on to train cars. I used a train cookie cutter to make the initial shape, again out of fondant, and then added other cut out pieces to make the shape look like a train. (Good news, did not have to color this fondant, was able to find a package of pre-colored fondant in primary colors.)

Final product.

Mark was delightfully happy. Ciarran called him on his birthday, and he was telling her about his cake and then proceeded to hold the telephone receiver up to the cake so she could "see" it.

Just some random thoughts on birthdays.....

Now I am out of control on my kids birthday, and I am the first to admit it. But recently as I was working on putting together Mark's birthday I was thinking about my pregnancy with him, the delivery, and aftermath with him in the NICU for a week. It was all quite overwhelming at the time it was happening. Fast forward six years later and I found myself working on all the birthday details, just to make sure he day was perfect.

It made me think, "Hey, I had to do all the work then, and I am doing all the work now! What is up with that??? Why are we celebrating him? Shouldn't we be celebrating me??? After all without me, HIM would not be possible!"

Oh, yeah, its a good thing Mother's Day is sandwiched between Mark's birthday and Katie's, otherwise I might revolt.......

Mark's Birthday, part two...

Mark woke up on the morning of his birthday and came down stairs to discover the birthday fairy, i.e., mommy, had decorated for his birthday. He was most excited.

Yep, third year in a row it was a Thomas the tank engine, birthday. Good news for me, with the exception of the balloons, I have recycled the decorations from year to year.

Mark with his pile of presents, his favorite part.

Mark with his cake.

Finally, he got to rip into presents. I think he thought the time would never come.

What did he get for presents? Thomas stuff, of course.

The best present was Thomas Action Canyon. After he opened it he announced he was going to do the happy dance.

More happy dance.

Finally time to blow out the candles. (But not until Thomas Action Canyon was set up, and Thomas made at least one round on the track. After all a man has to have priorities!)

Mark's Birthday- part one....

Feel sorry for Mark's teacher, I do. For no less than six weeks all she has heard about was his birthday and his mom would be bringing cupcakes to school. You would think it was going to be a national holiday.

When Mark and I first approached the idea of his birthday and cupcakes, he wanted the names of Thomas trains on the cupcakes. Well to a class of kindergartners, I figured cupcakes with names such as Thomas, Gordon, Mavis, Percy, on the cupcake, might be a bit confusing and I could see more than one child demanding that the cupcake have their name, and not the name of a train.....

So we settled on cupcake name tags with the name of each kid, with Thomas stickers for decoration. Mark of course had to have quite the conversation with his teacher instructing her to email me the names of the kids, saying "You had better email my mom the class list." and "Did you email my mom the class list?" (Again feel sorry for his teacher..., although she did say that Mark is the only kid in her class that she could have a discussion about email with and who understand the concept of email....)

Here is the cupcake for one of his teachers.

Katie had to join us for the school party. She was the only girl, in Mark's class room full of boys.

Mark, using his best manners, decided to suck off the frosting, rather than eating his cupcake in a more conventional manner. Good news, many of the boys in his class engaged in similar conduct.

The big reveal.....

Its time. I have been alluding to it for weeks. The reveal of my new living room.

A before...

Another before....

An after, with my new snazzy yellow paint!

Green couch, updated with red and black. (You can see I have a blank wall above the couch, don't worry I have plans.....)

Love seat and chair, again with red and black accents. Also the feet on the furniture were originally a natural wood color, just wasn't working for me. A can of black spray paint fixed that problem.

My curtains....so proud of my curtains, its an excellent example of "re-tooling." The fabric for the curtains was originally a king size duvet cover from Ikea, that had the perfect print that I wanted. I took the duvet cover and cut it in half, and cut it in half again and had four panels to make my curtains. As an added bonus the duvet cover also came with two king size pillow cases, that quickly became two accent pillows for the furniture. Cost of the duvet cover: $39.99. No way I could find ANY fabric cheaper than that!

I had a blank wall.....

In my newly refurbished spa like bathroom, I had a blank wall. That simply will not do in my house.

I am so fancy I just about can't stand myself. I do believe I need an HGTV intervention soon......

Its them or me.

When I first moved into this house 8 years ago, deer siting were few and far between, and always at night. Over the course of the last few years deer siting have been more plentiful, and frequent, and this year the deer have been so bold as to just hang out anytime of day or night. Its not an uncommon site to see them hopping over my fence to see what might be for breakfast, lunch, dinner, a snack.....

Their meal of choice, my tulips. Now normally I don't let the kids pick the tulips because I want to enjoy their beauty as they bloom and grow throughout my yard. This year is different. I gave the kids scissors and told them any tulip was fair game. I decided it was either I enjoy the tulips, albeit for a much shorter time, inside my house, safe from the hungry mouths of deers, or I let them feast away.

I am selfish. I admit it.

Lemon Cream Cake

I love, no make that I CRAVE, the lemon cream cake from the Olive Garden. Last time I ate lunch there with my friends we attempted to dissect what was in the cake. I promptly went home and Googled Olive Garden Lemon Cream Cake, and came up with a recipe that seems pretty close....

You start by baking a white cake, in two 8"or 9" rounds.

The crumb mixture is:


1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup powder sugar

1/4 cup cold butter

1/2 tsp. vanilla


You mix all the dry ingredients together and cut the butter in and add the vanilla until the mixture is fine crumbs


The filling:


8 oz. cream cheese, softened

2 cups powder sugar

3 tbs lemon juice


Mix the ingredients until smooth.

Fold in 1 cup heavy whipping cream, whipped of course!

Place 1/2 to 2/3 of the filling between the two layers of cake.

Use remaining filling to frost cake.

Add crumb mixture to sides and top of cake.

Sprinkle top with powder sugar for garnish.