Emma lost her first tooth!

Emma lost her first tooth on Lindsay and Nathan's birthday (Aug. 4th)! She was so funny about the whole process. As soon as the tooth started feeling loose she wiggled it like crazy and spent all her time for about 3 days wiggling away, but then when she finally has it hanging by a thread she starts to get scared it will hurt when it falls out, so she spent the next 2 days trying not to touch it or bump it or eat on it. Finally it was so loose she kept having to push it back into her mouth (it was just hanging out), and one of the times she went to push it back in, it just fell out! YEAH!!!

Here she is holding the precious tooth!!

Now she has a very difficult problem. She REALLY wants to keep her tooth, but we told her the tooth fairy won't give her a dollar unless she gives her the tooth (I want to keep it with all her memory stuff), and she REALLY wants that dollar. So, for now, she has decided to keep the tooth until she has another one fall out, then she can sell this one to the tooth fairy!

Birthday Cake . . . again!

So, after my previous post, I have to show the final product. Here is Lindsay and Nathan's birthday cake. Since it was for both kids, I decided to make it really big! Then as I got going on it I realized it was a HUGE project! I used two cake mixes and made two 11X14" cakes and stuck them together on a huge piece of cardboard covered with tinfoil. Then, I frosted them with the blue and green background frosting. After that I traced this picture (off our 32" TV) of Dora, Boots, and Backpack onto wax paper with a permanent marker.

Then I traced the wax paper picture with white frosting and turned it over onto the cake, pressed down gently, and then removed the wax paper. It was supposed to trasfer the tracing onto the cake . . . it kind of did, but it took me so long to trace the whole picture that about half of the frosting was dried before I could turn it over, and the dried frosting refused to come off of the wax paper. So, then I re-traced/outlined in free-hand the whole design onto the cake again. And then I got to the hard part!

I filled all of the tracing in with stars in the appropriate colors and finished the cake of with blue and green shells along the bottom. It was a TON of work and took me at least a few hours (probably more) to finish. But it was the design that Lindsay and Nathan really wanted (they were adamant that it have Dora, backpack, AND Boots! And I have to say, I was pretty psyched about the finished product. By far the biggest cake project I've tackled, and of course it was all worthwhile because . . . Lindsay and Nathan LOVED it!

Here I am filling in the traced outline.

And here is the finished cake!

And here are some pictures from the actual birthday party . . . it was Dora the Explorer themed.

Painting Dora the Explorer pictures

Playing musical chairs

Pin the tail on the Donkey

Blowing out the candles

Eating Pizza and cake and icecream

Gathering up the goodies after breaking our hand-made piniata!! I forgot to get a picture of the piniata before it got smashed to smithereens, but it turned out pretty cute and we had tons of fun making it!!

Opening the birthday presents!

Pictures with the whole Coleman Family

We went down to Fresno at the end of July to spend some time with the Coleman side of the family. Jerry had a ThomCo meeting he had to go to on Friday morning, so we all tagged along and spent a few days swimming and playing at Grandma and Grandpa's house. I, of course, completely forgot to take any pictures, but Saturday morning we had a photo shoot with the whole Coleman family and ended up with some really cute pictures!

Jim and Carol, their four children and all their families!

Grandma and Grandpa with all their grandkids!

Jerry with his brothers (Mike and Scott) and his sister (Kristi)

The Jerry Coleman Family

Our five munchkins!!

This is the best group pic we've gotten of the kids so far . . . it's unbelievably hard to get them all to sit still for more than two seconds and even harder to get them all to look at the camera at the same time.

A cute picture of Noah!

He was the only one of the kids I didn't have a recent picture of . . . they grow/change so fast at his age!!

Birthday Cake Anyone?

Okay . . . true confessions??? I LOVE birthday parties! Not the actual party which tends to be a lot like babysitting a visiting troupe of monkeys. I love the buildup and the prep work and the excitement. It gives me a much-needed vent for my creative juices! I love all the little details like matching tablecloths and plates and napkins and party hats and decorating the house. I love coming up with outrageously difficult cakes and spending inordinate amounts of time making them turn out better than I could have imagined (sometimes better than others, but always a pleasant surprise)! I like coming up with games that match the theme and that I know my kids will be excited to play. I love planning menus that don’t include a single green vegetable but are filled with my kids’ favorite foods. I love spending hours making a piñata that they will break in a few minutes. I love the excuse to give in to my children’s every whim and buy them at least some of the things they’ve been asking for for months. I love wrapping the presents up with bows days in advance and giving silly hints about what they might be. I never get tired of singing happy birthday or watching them blow out their candles. I love their enthusiasm—I love my enthusiasm.
I know, I REALLY need a hobby. But I guess in a life that is mostly filled with chauffeuring and playing referee in inane arguments and cleaning up messes and cooking and tears and tantrums and laundry and poop and slobber—any diversion is welcome! Plus, I get to lick the frosting when I’m finished decorating the cake!!