Happy Mother's Day

To all of the amazing moms I have in my life, those of you who I met because I became a mom, those of you I met because we are both moms, those of you who I watched be moms and taught me along the way, and most importantly to my mom, thank you for all of your guidance and support over the years--whether worrying about one of my two children and something with them, showing me how moms can be fun and create memories for their children, celebrating some otherwise mundane accomplishment but when it is one's own child it's the most amazing thing in the world, or most importantly being my mom when time and time again it's been demonstrated how important a role model a mother is in a young woman's life.

Addie and Ben are excited that today is Mother's Day. Addie is convinced that today is MY mother's day and tomorrow is another mother's day, etc. They are busy writing cards right now.

We're heading off to Chanticleer for our annual pictures. I look forward to that each year. Imagine how the four of us will look all huddled in that tree trunk when Addie and Ben are 16 and 17 years old! Awesome. Surely will post pictures when we return.

Oh, and to celebrate what I've accomplished as a mother myself, I did what I couldn't do for 3.5 years before...I have finally thrown out the remaining frozen breast milk from when Ben was first born...literally dated November 12, 2006. I decided it was time to let it go.

Mission accomplished

Major accomplishment was achieved today. She is SOOO proud of herself.

Special Video Message

Addie "made that her own" all by herself. :) Happy birthday! We love you!

Ben's big surprise

Saturday marked the biggest surprise for Benjamin. We're talking as monumental as Addie getting surprised to see Annie-big. I have actually had the tickets since before Annie even happened! They had no clue where we were headed. After lots of guessing all they could figure out was it was something like going to a movie, because "you go inside and sit down." Little did they know....

Happily posing before it started.

Posing from the balcony looking down on the stage. They still weren't quite sure what it was based on the stage setup. I have a video I'll try to post later with the actual reaction.

There he was!! The actual Buddy Valastro, aka the Cake Boss from TLC! He was very family-friendly. He called people out from the audience to come on stage and learn how to decorate, etc. Very nice man, nice show. He answered questions from the audience. He seemed genuinely interested in helping people learn how to be better decorators and bakers.
We were up in the balcony and all of the audience people who got to go on stage with him were seated on the ground area. So Ben was mad he couldn't go decorate. I told him we'd go home and decorate our own cupcakes.
This is what we did yesterday.

I tried to make icing the exact colors that Buddy had, so they could try to replicate what he had the audience members do.

Talk about focus.

The finished goods. I'm working on making the rose, so disregard the variation in size. Addie did tell me though, "Those are best roses I've ever seen." So there. If you look directly in front of Ben, you can see two in a row of his. Impressive. The purple one with the yellow in the middle, third from the right in the row closest to you is one I made. Directly behind that is one that Addie made trying to replicate mine- she did pretty darn well, don't you think?
Overall it was really fun. I think we'll be making cupcakes every weekend. We're ready to start taking orders, so just let us know too ;)

St Helena's Carnival

It's the time of year again, the St. Helena's Carnival. It's located just up the main street that we lived off of growing up. To me, it was always something to look forward to each year, and by the time I was old enough to be able to walk up there by myself with friends--well that was just priceless.

Here's some pictures from our time last night.

This is my new background on my laptop.

Typical Addie. She was mighty content with Benjamin "driving Miss Addie." At least I don't have to worry about if she has any comedic predisposition. Ben, as is typical, is very serious and concentrating on driving.

Again, big shocker, Rock Star Addie living it up on the motorcycles.

For real. She even colluded the little girl next to her into making random hand motions.

Meanwhile, Benjamin was focused on steering and keeping that motorcycle going around in a circle. He loved it, obviously. Behind him you can see Addie whooping it up. All of the parents around us were laughing.

My little swimmers

The very end is the best part, once the teacher tells them stop back floating and swim back. Watch Addie. She is soooo incredibly proud of herself; as we are too.

Annika's birthday

We went to celebrate our friend Annika's first birthday on Sunday night. If you recall, last time they were over Addie got to hold Annika and Ben didn't. Well he was determined to play with her. They had a lot of fun together. Ben wasn't thrilled with the concept that an almost-totally walking toddler isn't interested in sitting still and being held. He soon realized that if he would lay on the ground, that she'd be all over him in no time flat.

He was so willing to have her smack him, squish him, sit on him, etc.

Meanwhile Addie was busy entertaining the adults.

This picture actually happened before the one above it. When I said "say cheese" Addie reached around Ann and Terri and pulled them in close. That of course made Terri laugh and turn her head to look at Addie...so we had to take another one.

Such a typical Addie pose. She was excited to wear her new Hello Kitty dress and headband, both from H&M.

Ben very strategically positioned himself next to the bowl of gummy bears...hmmmm.

Annika's mother is from Germany and her father is American. Annika is being raised with both English and German as primary languages. It's really cool to watch/listen to, knowing that soon she'll be talking in both languages. Her mom and some other German friends sang the traditional birthday songs (yes, apparently more than one) after we sang "Happy Birthday." Really cool!