Happy Birthday to my Blog!

It has been a year since I did my very first blog post. Happy Birthday bloggy blog!!! (To be 100% accurate my blog's birthday was 5 days ago but I'm not organized enough to get it exactly on the right day).

For my kids I usually make a cake based on their latest love - like these (kids cakes) but what kind of present do I give my blog?

1) More attention?
2) Better writing?
3) Less inane ramblings?
4) A clean out of the 1,422 blogs I started but never finished?
5) More readers so it feels loved?
6) A stronger grasp of punctuation?

I'm thinking all of the above wrapped up with a pretty bow is the least I can do for it considering what all it has done for me in the past year.

I guess I can't say I wasn't warned.

Saturday we held my daughter's 5th birthday party at our house. I have spent weeks planning, purchasing and organizing for this event. She wanted a "flower"party. I had no idea what that meant but since that is what she wanted, that is what she was getting. I'm a believer that birthdays should be special for children and it is a great way for them to see what it is like to be selfless and do nice things for others in your family.

On Friday night my husband was nice enough to take the kids out of the house so I could flower myself out. I made flower shaped sandwiches, a flower cake, a pin the petal on the flower game and much more. I left the cleaning of the house and decorating for the next morning.

In the morning I asked my husband to please clean off our front porch. We have humongous trees in our front yard and they have been dropping their leaves with a vengeance the past few days. Our porch had a good 6 inch layer of leaves on it and actually posed a danger as it no longer looked like a porch and 6 steps.

Dutifully my husband went out to work on the porch. 3.5 hours later he still had not reappeared as he had trimmed the hedges, cleaned out the gutters, mowed the lawn and Lord knows what else. How do you get upset with someone who has worked so hard? I truly appreciate all he did, but I was wrangling, feeding, bathing 2 children all the while trying to get the party decorated and organizing the 4 craft stations I had planned for the 11 little girls that were coming to my house.

30 minutes before the party was to start I went out to ask the hubs if he could finish up his project and please come in and shower. I was greeted with this scene of a much dirtier and smellier porch than we started with!



Apparently the porch right in front of our front door was the landing pad for all the gutter gunk he had been knocking down - and we had people coming over any moment! Really??? Men!

I must say he did get it cleaned up with seconds to spare and with several nasty comments muttered under my breath.

Unfortunately I can't say I wasn't warned. I distinctly remember an incident from when I first started dating my husband. His parents were having a Greek Easter feast at their house and we were about 1 hour out from the party starting with 30 of their best friends showing up for a day of food/cooking/drinking in the beautiful backyard. As my mother-in-law was running around cleaning, cooking and arranging table settings, my father-in-law decided it was an opportune time to power wash the back of the house and roof, spilling black goo onto the back patio right where the party was to occur. Again, a great task that should be taken on at some point but just not moments before a party is to begin. My mother in law's head was to a point as was mine yesterday. Clearly this is hereditary.

I've Ruined My Child's Face

When my daughter turned 1 we had a huge birthday party and invited about a million people. It was ridiculously over the top. We had custom invitations, a super expensive cake made, entertainment, etc. Since we had just moved back to Kansas City, she didn't really have any friends yet so we invited like 3 kids and 1,000 adults. I now look back on the guest list and laugh about all the friends we invited who were 1) single guys or 2) married couples with no children. Those people probably thought we were insane - and rightfully so.

Since that time I have normalized how we do birthday parties. In fact, I have gotten so laid back that my son just had his 2nd birthday celebration 33 days after he actually turned 2. Poor kid.

In my defense I had to leave town for work on his actual birthday and we did do cupcakes and candles that morning, but that was it. 2 went by barely noticed. Finally I told my husband we had to have a celebration of some sort because the gifts had to opened. I am a thank you letter fanatic and have been really stressing about waiting so long to send out the thank yous to aunts and uncles, etc. - but I could not send them out since the gifts had not been opened yet. Nice, huh? The reason we finally celebrated my sweet little guy's birthday is because of a need I had. Great parenting.

I decided about a year ago the "thing" I am doing for my kids is making their birthday cakes. It is something I would like them to always remember that their mom did for them. It takes a boatload of time and I am TERRIBLE at this, but I really enjoy it and I do plan to take a few classes so I can get better. Currently my cakes look like a 3 year made them blindfolded, but I figure by the time the kids can really pick them apart, I will be much better. Here are a few of the ones I have made so far:


The one I made for my son's birthday party this past weekend was a race car.


Let me tell you all the food coloring in the world does not make a true red. I know this because I tried. I'm not sure the icing was made up of anything other than food coloring by the time I was done with it. I must say though it sure does a great job of completely staining your child.

Not sure if you people watch True Blood or not - but my son looked very much like a vampire who just had a meal of a human's neck.


Yeah, ignore the bib that says "I'm a little PRINCESS" - it is just one more of those things he will tell his therapist about one day.

The next morning, still stained, he ate some red yogurt and again got more of it on his face than in his belly. A meal two days later that consisted solely of Cheetos (they are a food group, right?) hasn't helped the matter. He now has a red ring of Saturn around his face. No amount of scrubbing has fixed this. If it doesn't correct itself, I'm thinking maybe he can have a career as a clown.