Rewind: Happy 4th of July {in photos}

Fireworks Cake I baked for our church's 4th of July Festival!

FREEEEEEDOM!!!!!!!!

BBQ Chicken cooking all day. Good thing. It was raining most of the day.

Hanging out on the should of a bridge in Downtown Birmingham read to see the show!

With every "boom!" from the sky there was a "wow!" from the little guy

A nice and cozy 4th of July. Just perfect!

Oh, and this is perfect, too! 

Lindsay Letters - In God We Trust Print

That will definitely be going up somewhere in the new house next 4th of July!! Though, I may get the blue version. Either way, it is perfect!

Hope y'all had a great 4th of July!!

7 Quick Takes: Book and cakes, and dirt - oh, my!

 1. A slight change to my mornings...

The little stinker. He calls for me around 6:30-ish some mornings. I get him his drink (which...as of 2 days ago, we have now gotten rid of the bottles!! WOOT!) while he yanks a book out of his basket. We snuggle on the sofa, for what seems like just moments, before the boys come out after waving goodbye to the school bus.

After everyone has breakfast and their clothes on for the day, they get their reading time out of the way. And, I swear... Andrew could point at Woof's Tail all day long... I will never be able to find it again. Those Waldo books are HARD. But he finds EVERYTHING. Every character, every missing item, every note to get to the next page. I have no idea how he does it... It's amazing.

 2. McWane Center

We have once again entered this crazy place...as members. But, it is so much fun now that Austin can play with the boys. And, super fun since we have some pretty awesome friends we talked into becoming members, as well!

3. Presents

Austin (and the bigger ones) got 2 surprise boxes in the mail the other day from Nana and Papa! Austin now has his own Batman/Gotham City and a Knight! Which meant, that Mama got a BUNCH of stuff done that day. I didn't care how messy the living room got... We had the castles, Pizza Planet, and Batman stuff all over the place, along with every person and accessory thrown all over the floor by the end of the day. Good times! 
 

4. Oh, the weather outside is frightful (and sometimes delightful)!

This may have been our coldest day of the week - around the 38-degree mark, I think.

 While this day - just a few days later - was much nicer at around the 65 zone.

5. Silly weather...and boys!

They just love rolling down this hill! I can't wait to watch Austin do it one day!

 

 

This guy thinks he's one of the big boys now... I refuse to believe such nonsense. Dat's my baby boy... Sigh... 

 

 6. The Art Museum is awesome - if you ONLY stay in the kids zone. I don't have money to pay for a gazillion antique chair they just place out in the open because preschoolers would never touch such a thing... 

 7.  My Cake is the "coolest" cake around! 

So, I made this one last week for a friend's daughter's Frozen-themed birthday! How awesome, right?! I wish I had gotten a picture of the inside!! It had 2 layers - one purple and the other a brighter blue than the frosting. Fun!!

 So much fun! What another great week!

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Last Week

I'm catching up! I'm almost there! Just a few more photos...

Last week was CRAZY busy! But it was fun, for sure!

We did a little bit of painting with Duplo blocks and Q-Tips. 

We did a little end-of-the Halloween candy snacking.

 

We did a little playing outside no matter how cold it is... We have these things call jackets and hats and extra layers! (Hey, it was 40-something one day. Another day, I think, it was only 30...). By the way, I have no idea what they are talking about. But they were laughing up a storm about something hilarious! After a while they went off to play some soccer. Love those guys!



We did a little hot chocolate drinking to warm up those little tummies. Also, sprinkles make everything better.

We made some crayons. That's all the rage on Pinterest anyway. Maybe that was last year.... Well, we did it last week anyway!

And while all that was going on, Mama baked some cakes! A 6-layer chocolate and red velvet Cat in the Hat cake. Complete with Thing 1 & 2 "smash cakes" for our sweet little twin friends! It was so much fun baking and decorating those cakes. I'll have another cake to share soon. It gets delivered today! Woot!

 

Thanks Lori for the photo!!

We even did a little fox trotting! Ha! Don't you love that hat?!  

It was a great week at the House! Now, off to take an awesome cake to a little princess!!

Ash Wednesday {Lent}

Welcome to the season of Lent! This is the season in which Christians prepare themselves for the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I found a great book that helps teach children about the importance of this season of the Liturgical calendar. Jen Steed on CatholicMom.com posted a review about this book last year. I loved that I could use this for my boys this year. It is hard to teach this season to such a young age, but it is possible!

 

  The link to purchase the book on amazon is in her review. But, if you need it now, find a Family Christian Bookstore near you - they carry it (and, if not, they can also order it)! 

 

Earlier this afternoon I cut out spring time shaped (I traced cookie cutters - there are patterns at the end of the book. But, they are very small, so you will need a scanner if you want to use those shapes. These shapes will be used for our Easter tree - this is sort of like a countdown to Easter, but it is not done every day. When Easter is here, the tree will be filled with these flowers, butterflies, bunnies, etc that have been colored/painted/written on and such. I know, not super boy-themed, but for now they still like the bunnies and want to color the flowers for me.

After nap/quiet time, we started making pretzels from the recipe in the book! YUM! There are lots of pretzel recipes on Pinterest if you do not have this book just yet. 

Quick story behind the pretzel: A monk came up with this special bread long ago since fasting was MUCH stricter in those days. He twisted them into a shape that resembled folded arm (in prayer). More about this monk here.  

Also, I remember when I was younger, my mom taught me about the Holy Trinity using pretzels. There are three spaces that make up the pretzel which is like the three parts that make up one God: Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. 

 Andy thought that was a fun story. So while I was getting the rest dinner made and they were working on their pretzels, I overheard him telling Alex the story all over again. So cute!

All done! How fun. Andy got one pretzel twisted pretty well. Then he made wheels...LOL Alex just made a bunch of blobs. It was cute.

They were really yummy, too!

Dinner is served! Today is a no meat day, so tonight's feast - Shrimp and Corn Chowder! YUM!! And, it was even better since today was also a fasting day - meaning, no breakfast or lunch. But, we could have a "meal-ette" as Father W would say!

This is the book that I am working through this Lent. I found a review by Sarah Reinhard, a contributor of CatholicMom.com, on this book last year (here). Basically, this book gives you a task to complete each day that is complimented by a meditation and a how to keep this habit going with practice. For Lent, I am going to learn to simplify.

Today's task was to clean out a junk drawer. Why do we have a junk drawer? We are too busy to put whatever the item is away. We get sidetracked with another task and sweep it away into the junk drawer to take care of at a different time. It's time to slow down and take care of the things that need to be taken care of. It's time to stop hanging on to material items and figure out where our focus should be placed. Do I really need to go to Target tomorrow? Do I really need this or that? Do you? What about those 500 USB cords you have stashed away? How many do you really need? I found out that we had 10 (about 4 of those were different on the opposite ends). Why we had that many I have no idea...but I've taken it down to 5 (the 4 that were different plus and extra that went to out cell phone). The rest are in a box in the garage. I have a bit more space in that drawer now. 

So, what are you doing for Lent? Any good reads? Did you give anything up or are changing any habits?

Mardi Gras!

Woot! Happy Mardi Gras!!! Ok, just pretend yesterday is today for a bit while you check out my little baker man. Andy is such an awesome helper in the kitchen. He's a lot more hand on now that he is claiming he is a "big kid." 

 

We make Paula Deen's King Cake Cupcakes yesterday. They were delicious!

 I had to share this sprinkle picture... See, for whatever reason Publix wasn't carrying yellow and purple sprinkles. They weren't sold out. There wasn't even a spot for them on the shelf. Boo. Lame. So, I headed to the bakery. How weird will it be to ask to buy sprinkles? I wasn't even sure if you could do that. But, yay! $3 later and I have LOTS of sprinkles! Cheaper than buying each color in whatever brand name. Yay, Publix!

My sweet little helper man. He loves putting the liners in and organizing the ingredients on the counter for me.

This was the next job he had to do. I unrolled the crescent rolls and he added the spoonfuls of  the brown sugar, cinnamon, raisin, and pecan mixture. He did a great job, too!

All rolled up and ready to go into the oven!

All done! Don't they look delicious?!