Hams, Malloys, and Watsons invade LA!

did i tell you that my parents are awesome and crazy? they are in their mid-late sixties, and they are adorable. but also crazy. they decided to drive from toronto, ontario to monterey, california. that's a 3,659 mile trek if you draw a straight line from point a to point b. crazy! they left super-early friday morning, and somehow made it to jeehon's house by monday night. many many many prayers were said as they journeyed along.

so my parents hung out in monterey til saturday, and then the hams and malloys caravaned to los angeles, a mere 6 hour trip (in the grand scheme of their traveling!) while we watsons did the same thing.

we arrived in koreatown in LA and had a korean meat buffet. it was awesome. i don't know if you are aware of the awesomeness of the korean food in LA- but it is nothing to joke about. there is a korean mall in koreatown that has a food court with only korean food to choose from. SO AWESOME!!!! mia has never seen that many korean people before in her life.

 

our family vacation was comprised of lots of food eating, lots of catching up (i haven't seen my parents in 9 months and my sister in over a year!), lots of coffee drinking, lots of kids running around, and lots of picture taking. here are a few of them:

 

lily and topher LOVE their imo and booboo! this should be a christmas card or something...:

 

 

my sister and i and all our minions. the age gap between lily and mia is about the same as the age gap between my sister and my youngest brother, with the same number of kids in between. remember i said my mom was crazy?? it's cause she is superwoman:

 

i just love this picture of my sister and lily:

 

can you even believe that it was just last summer than sunha had surgery on her head? you can't even tell at all! she is all healed up and full of sass and magical 2 year old wonderment.

how much have i missed this precious precious face!?!?!?!?:

 

chris + my mom = bffs :)

 

the three girls rocking matching t-shirts. a terrible pic, but a strong effort nonetheless:

 

my dad with mia. he's never happier than when he is with his grandkids.

 

 

quick story about my dad and sungu when they were hanging out in monterey-

my dad walked sungu to and from school everyday that my dad was there. it was his favorite thing to do. one morning sungu asked my dad if he had $5. my dad did not and asked sungu what he needed money for. sungu told him that they were having a book fair at school and that he wanted to buy some books. that broke my dad's heart- his grandson just wanted some books! this was music to my dad's ears. he dropped sungu off and rushed back home. he asked jeehon about the book fair, which she had forgotten about. my dad grabbed his wallet and went back to the school. each student was allowed to make out a wish list. my dad looked at sungu's and bought him every single thing on it. he spent like $40. (so funny- i bet sungu thought that $5 could buy everything on his list) so cute! i know that made sungu's day, but i don't know if sungu realized that that made my dad's day too :)

 

next post- LEGOLAND!!!!!

 

august 2012

had a crazy family-filled week that i will have to post about later. i just want to get all these random things from august down so that i don't forget that they happened!

WOW.

just saw my blog and realized that the above two sentences have been on here since sunday. yikes. between my internet connection sucking something fierce, and my life feeling like a daily upward hike, i have fallen behind on many a things. but i am trying to do and be better, so here we go!

this little stud muffin above. when lily is at school, topher and i hang out. sometimes together, sometimes seperately. but after hanging out seperately for a time, topher will come and find me and ask if it's time for coffee and cookies. and coincidentally, whenever he asks- it always is! his timing is impeccable.

anyhoo, a few weeks ago topher learned a lot about a lot of dead things. his Papa Wes and Kma took him up to their cabin for two days and a night, with his cousin Gabe. (that deserves it's own post!... we'll see what i can do...) one of the adventures that they went on was to a wilderness museum, which essentially was a glorified taxidermy warehouse. chris' dad's explanation of the place was that these animals were "dead. as in they are done with being alive."

then while he was at school, topher learned about vultures: "mom, vultures eat dead things. if we see a vulture, can we give it a dead thing?" i told topher that the chances of us seeing a vulture weren't high, and the chances that we were going to run into a vulture whilst having a carcass on hand was also not likely, but if all these stars aligned, FOR SURE we could feed a vulture a dead thing.

and then out of no where- lily says: "MOM! when i die- PLEASE don't feed me to a vulture!!!"

man i love my kids.

this piece of work. such a gem. she just turned 10 months like 3 days ago, but here are her stats from her nine month appointment: height- 28.5 inches (70th %ile) weight- 18 lbs 12oz (50 %ile) head- 19 inches (80 %ile) she is crawling all over, pulling herself up on her feet, eating EVERYTHING, clapping and waving on demand (unless she just doesn't want to), and she just said "baby" today and it was so cute i almost died.

 

how do i rotate the above picture?!?!... argh. i don't know...
anyway, i am very happy to introduce my newest little nephew Xander Dean Watson.  the second pic is my almost-three-year-old niece Zoe, and her brand new little brother! she loves him so much-so sweet. (these are Justin's kids. Chris' older brother. the guy has lots of siblings! hard to keep staright sometimes)
anyhoo, Xander was born on August 21st, at 1:49pm. He was 8 lbs 9.6 oz and 19 inches long. big boy! the family is doing well in Alaska. thanks for serving this country Justin! oh army families- i don't know how they do it. but they do it and we are all grateful.

one more awesome thing that happened in august- in the midst of all the random cake decorating that i did- we went to a free baseball game! yeah summer reading program! and my awesome friends Cindy and Christin did the reading program too, so lily and topher were able to enjoy the game with some of their adorable friends. i LOVE this picture, cause these girls are so stinkin amazing, and they are the older sisters of their respective lots.

 

LASTLY- my studmuffin husband. i actually have so many hilarious things to say about him, i should devote one post to him. but alas- who knows when that post will get written.

anyway, my hubby is a HARD worker. he goes through a lot of crap, being an undercover po-po in this ridiculous desert. but he does it, he doesn't complain- cause he loves it, and he does it whilst looking GOOD. like, so super good. covet not ladies- this man is all mine!

 

 

 

 

he's a dichotomy. and so is his cake

in my last post i talked about topher's cousin(i forget already! 2nd cousin...?...) cooper.

cooper is a funny fellow. he loves himself some marvel superheros, power rangers, star wars guys, lego anything, and zombies. he likes dressing up and shooting fake guns and doing boy stuff. he is a boy's boy. (equivalent to a man's man.)

 

but dear cooper also LOVES himself some stuffed animals. he loves his stuffed penguin, 'happy', who has his own little personality according to cooper. his mom, elisa, also told me that on a recent visit to barnes and noble, he found a little gray and baby blue panda bear, and walked all around the store with him, and read books with him. when it was time to leave, cooper put the bear back on the shelf, gave it a kiss, and wept with tears of true sorrow to be parting with his new found friend. at the sight of this, cooper's older brother kiefer just looked at his mom and exclaimed: "can't we just buy it for him!?!?!?" what a nice brother. they bought it for his birthday a few days later :)

 

anyhoo, when elisa asked cooper what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday, cooper was torn. cute dog cake? (new obsession: biscuit. the cute little dog. you know what i'm talking about... right?) but he also kinda wanted a zombie cake.

so we did both. cute dogs and zombies.

 

elisa wanted to see how the whole 'fondant' thing worked out, so i brought some store bought stuff (easiest to work with) over to her house and we started making stuff for cooper's cake. elisa made the yellow fire hydrant that is pictured below. pretty great! elisa also baked the most incredible looking cake (and delicious too!)- it was dense and had no dome to cut off or anything! perfectly level. incredible!i was very thankful that elisa wanted to bake the cake for her son. that's just not really my thing, and it was one less thing to do!

 

so, here's cooper's cake. he enjoyed it. so it was all worth it. all the zombies have exposed brain, per cooper's request. (except the worm! i forgot to give the zombie worm a brain!) there were other limbs coming out of the cake on the sides and stuff, but i didn't get pictures of that. oh well. my favorite part of the cake was where the icing wouldn't stick, so i made a zombie face coming out of it. it made the accident look intentional- major score!

 

topher's first day of preschool!!!!!

topher started preschool on monday. he is going to a quaint little lutheran preschool with his sweet cousin Cooper. (well, cooper is chris' cousin's son. what is that then? apparently he is topher's second cousin, and he is chris' first cousin once removed...)

i feel a bit bad because i did not cry when i dropped him off. i didn't even get emotional. i did get emotional about not getting emotional if that counts... i know! i'm a bad mom! i should have been emotional! topher has been by my side without missing a beat for the last 4 years and 5 months! he's my bud! but he's also a middle child. and that's just what happensto middle children. but his consolation prize is that chris and i are both middle children, so our parents probably got equally as unemotional about stuff as we do. who's gonna help us pay for topher's future psychiatrist?!?!?...

anyway, topher is awesome and he handled his first day like a champ. he had a brief moment when he whispered: "i want to go home with you." and for a brief moment i wanted to take him with me. but the moment passed and we all man-ned up.

on his first day, they talked about the letter 'A' and ate apples and sang his favorite song: "i like to eat apples and bananas." AND someone in his class had a birthday to celebrate, so he got to eat cookies to boot. in fact- there was a birthday celebrated on wednesday and friday as well! quite the introduction into preschool! hopefully he won't be too disappointed about his second week when there will be nary a birthday cookie in sight.

hey topher! i don't know if it's the year 2025 and you are reading this post with some serious disdain for your heartless mother. but here's the thing my handsome son- when your sister started preschool two years ago- i REFUSED to buy her a new outfit for her first day of school. but i saw this AWESOME blue power ranger samurai t-shirt for $2.99 and i had to buy it cause (it was cheap!) i knew you would LOVE it and look so superhandsome in it! i want you to know how special you are, and i am really really really sorry i didn't cry on your first day of preschool.

but do you know what's better than tears?

i know you know.

TOYS.

and your dad picked you up from your first day at school and brought you to target and bought you an awesome batman toy! cause you are awesome, and we love you so much.

here's a pic of topher, awake early the day after his first day of school. he is playing with his new toy, and has his samurai shirt on still, and a super-groggy face, cause it's not 7am yet...

interview with a cowboy, and a vampire (looks like a vampire...)

topher started school on monday!!!! but more on that in the next post.

i took these videos of the kids a few weeks ago and haven't gotten around to posting them til now. obviously.

anyhoo, the first video is of topher, who is now four years and almost-five months old. this was just a regular conversation that he and i were having over some yogurt and granola.

and here is a creepy looking video of my sweet lily. who is now 5 years and 5 months old.

i just figured out how to use my video camera, in the dark, on my phone, so bear with me folks.

this story was so good that i decided to record it, what you missed so far is that there once were three little pigs- lily, mia, and topher. the big bad wolf has already blown down lily's house of straw, and then she ran to mia's house which was made of sticks. mia can't talk so lily does all the talking for her. and when the wolf blew down her house, lily picked mia up and ran to topher's house. cause mia can't walk yet.

superniece loves superman

my niece christina is obsessed with superman. seriously, totally, and completely obsessed. (topher's a couple steps behind her. or maybe 13 years behind...;)

she just turned 17, and barb threw her a birthday party, cause barb is a wonderful nana! so i made some superman sweets for the shindig, that my kids were very sad about not being invited to.i told them it wasn't a party for kids. they said: "oh, we like hanging out with old people." and then i tried to explain to them what a 'teenager' is. they didn't get it.

anyhoo, i tried to do something new and awesome. only it didn't necessarily turn out awesome: 

i wanted the cake to be blue and red, with yellow frosting between the layers. as you can see this looks like it should be a cake for a baby shower...

 here's how it turned out- on the outside and inside:

maybe next year i will add a blazer on the outside, and a lot more red food coloring on the inside...

then i made some cake balls- and i know i told you i HATE cake balls, cause i cannot make them look pretty for the life of me. so this time- i covered the cake balls in marshmallow fondant! and they behaved much better! did they taste good?... i have no idea. i'll have to ask barb or christina later.
under the superman symbol are pieces of cake that i cut out with a cookie cutter. then i just put a swirl of buttercream on top. if i had preplanned this portion of my contribution to the birthday party better, i would have made actual mini cupcakes. but i did the best with what i had (which was an extra layer of a cake) when i felt like i should bring more to the party.

the like the little capes :)

so, that's it. i have a little break from cake making and then it's more cakes!

and look! i found a picture of an acorn cakepop that i made for corban's birthday party. like i said, i don't like making cakepops, cause i am not very good at it. these things can't stay upright cause they are too heavy and pierce through the top. will practice make perfect? we'll see...

panCakes

look!

i am so proud of the above picture. ok. look at it but don't inspect too closely...

what does that look like to you?

a stack of pancakes?

why would i take a picture of a stack of pancakes? cause that stack of pancakes is just rolled up fondant arond a chocolate cake that i baked for a five year old who loves pancakes!

i got an e-mail from a super-faithful blog-reader who asked me to make this cake for her son. she did all the leg work of finding a blog that had a tutorial on how to make it and everything! great job kelly and buttercream bakehouse! you can check out the original here 

so this is how my cake turned out and is sitting nicely in it's little box. the original cake has the 'syrup' as piping gel mixed with syrup. the order came in speciafically requesting that the gel not taste like syrup. so i just used piping gel, a little brown gel coloring, and a little hershey's chocolate syrup.

it is AMAZING what you can do with fondant (i used homemade marshmallow fondant), wilton's gel colors, and a paint brush. that's pretty much all i used. so great.

i was gonna post about the superman cake i made from my niece, but i just got supertired. so that'll have to wait til tomorrow...