Sickness and Injury

It seems we are plagued in this family with issues.  On Sunday, middle of the night, Jenna woke me up and was hot all over.  She had come down with a fever.  She slept all day Monday, and by Monday night, Mackenzie had it.  Today, Tuesday, Mackenzie has been sleeping all day and Jenna, who seemed to be on the mend, is also sleeping, with a low fever.

Then, while preparing dinner, Alan had run down the street to recruit a neighbor for something, when Sierra decided to play with a couple bees swimming in a bucket under our hose out back.  She was stung.  At that moment, Mackenzie was no longer under the influence of medicine and started crying hysterically. 

Thank goodness for big sisters, because with Sierra on one hip, Mackenzie pulling on me and crying, and a pot of boiling water and noodles on the stove, I needed help.  Mason ran down the street to bring Alan home.  What will I do when he goes on travel in a week????  Calgon, take me away!

Mackenzie is asleep again.  Sierra is still requiring attention.  Dinner is off the stove now, but who will even eat, when half the household is asleep or in pain?!

A day in the life...or rather, a 5-minute stretch...

Cakes for Everything

So, Alan and I have gone back and forth over the idea of someday having a bakery.   In this bakery, we thought we would make fancy cakes, German style bakery items, vegan pastries, etc.  We were hoping for a real specialty kind of line.  This all stemmed from our creative genius when it comes to the girls birthdays.  We keep learning new techniques and improving on our skills.  That is why we volunteered to make the graduation cake for Jenna's preschool graduation this year.  There were 44 kids graduating.  That means we had to plan for upwards of 200 mouths to feed.  We've never made so much cake!  There were three classes involved: Baerengruppe (Bears), Loewengruppe (Lions), and Tigergruppe (Tigers).  We wanted a way to represent all three groups, and have enough cake, and not be too difficult, AND be delicious to boot!  Well, after scouring the internet for ideas, I drew up some rough sketches, showed them to the preschool director, and we were off and running.  The cakes cost a small fortune to make, because we used almost all organic ingredients, and we used Valrhona chocolate, which is quite expensive, but excellent tasting.  We also bought five new cake pans, a large fondant roller, a special spreader for the dirty icing, posts and divider plates for multi-layers, and the learning curve continued to expand.

Day 1: Make fondant in several colors and different amounts - white, black, orange, gold, yellow.  Start cutting out pieces from fondant.  Time so far - 4 hours.  When Alan came home from work, baking commenced.  Baked six 12" rounds, six 8" rounds, and four ramekins.  Time for baking - 8 hours.  A nice long 12-hour day.  Cakes were stored unstacked in our fridge and our neighbors.

Day 2: Make Oreo cookie buttercream filling for cakes.  Retrieve all cakes and begin stacking layers.  Make regular buttercream frosting for dirty icing.  Dirty ice the cakes that needed fondant.  Roll out the fondant and cover cakes.  Time - hours!!!  When Alan came home, he rigged up the posts and plates.  Made chocolate and orange-colored buttercream frosting.  Put small stacked cakes on top of large cakes.  Continued with icing decorations, and began applying all the details.  Finished most of the details.  Time - 7-8 hours.  Another long day.

Day 3: Redo tassels I had done a week in advance, because the licorice snapped from being bent.  Reengineered a solution for graduation tassels.  Rolled out gold fondant and made mortarboards for graduation caps to rest on cakes.  Put everything back in refrigerator, with plans to assemble mortarboards and tassels at graduation site.  Time: roughly 3 hours.

Pre-delivery pictures:

Post-delivery pictures:

End result: Most of the bottom tier of the lion remained, but that was all.  The mortarboard, tassels, and everything but the posts and divider plates were devoured.  The feedback was that they looked fantastic and were delicious!  We even captured pictures of people taking pictures.

Our prognosis:  Way too much time and money for this effort, although it was fun.  It would not likely be a lucrative business.  Better we just stick to doing it for our kids.  Sigh...

Birthday Season Has Come to a Close

So, we've finally wrapped up birthday season.  Mason just turned 9.  Mackenzie turned 6, Jenna 5, and Sierra 3.  It is amazing to us how far the girls have come.  Here are pictures from their respective birthdays, as well as their cakes.

 Mason ordered a brownie pizza with pepperonis (ingredients: brownie, red buttercream frosting, white chocolate cheese, and smushed Starburst pepperonis)

 Mackenzie and Sierra celebrated age 6 and 3 together at Pump It Up.  Glorious fun!

Mackenzie picked a vampire bat cake, and Sierra obsessed about having a crown for her birthday, so we made her lots of crowns on cupcakes.  Aren't they a good match together?  Bats and crowns?

Jenna celebrated 5 years in ladybug style this year.  The cupcake was her school treat.

The tiered ladybug cake was from her party, and was heaps of fun to make!  Lots of fondant!

The Cats Live On

Back in June 2009, we bought a home in San Diego.  We thought this would be a positive move for us.  In many ways, it has been.  But in other ways, we have endured terrible sadness.  A couple years ago, we lost our youngest cat, Blaze, to a busy street.  It was unthinkable, and sometimes unbearable.  This past spring (2012), Molly, our beautiful, long-haired black cat succumbed to old age.  She woke up Mason in the morning, who then came and found us.  As a family, we all gathered around Molly, who had crawled under Mason's bed, where we talked to her, pet her, comforted her, and comforted ourselves, as she heaved her last sigh.  In less than three years, we had lost two of our pets.  We buried Molly in our backyard, way up on the hill, in a very sunny spot that we know she would have loved. 

Today, we said goodbye to our remaining cat, Tom.  Within a couple of months of Molly's death, Tom started losing weight, and just didn't seem like himself.  We've watched him slowly wither away.  We have lavished him with love and affection.  Even the girls have jumped in on it.  But, the pain became too much for us to watch, and too much for him to endure.  We had a vet come to the house today, to help us say goodbye to Tom and give him the peace he deserved.  It has been an emotional and heart wrenching experience, but we know it needed to be done. He was suffering greatly.  Tom will be buried later today, near his friend, his sister, and sometimes his enemy, up there on the hill in our backyard.  Together again. 

The girls, Alan, and I will continue to share our fondest memories of the cats that we have loved so dearly, as we experience a new phase in our lives.  A life without pets.  May the memories of our well-loved cats live on forever!

(Pictures from top to bottom: Tom, Blaze, Molly)

Molly and Tom - Together Again...See the Love?

Tooth #6

Okay, so it's been a year since I blogged.  I need to try to do this much more often.  There is so much going on in our lives that it would certainly be worth sharing tidbits!

Anyhow, today's post will be a recap of...today only.  Mason and Mackenzie are out of school, while Jenna and Sierra are in their last week of preschool.  After taking M&M on some errands, we came home and decided to play a game together.  They picked the new Angry Birds card game we received from a friend.  We successfully played the game a first time.  They asked to play again.  While I was looking down, shuffling the cards, they were wrestling over a piece of the game.  Next thing I knew, Mackenzie was standing there screaming hysterically.  There was blood in her mouth and on her hands.  Mason was very subdued on the floor.  All I can say, based on what they told me, is that Mackenzie might have leaned forward as Mason's thumb or other finger tried to push her away, and somehow pushed the front left tooth (which was loose, btw).  Mackenzie thinks she swallowed it.  We couldn't find it anywhere.  We looked.  She was so scared.  I told her not to worry.  It would come back out in her poop.  That shifted her sobs to giggles.  Thank goodness!  Hours later, no tooth has been found, but a nice letter was written to the tooth fairy, in hopes that the tooth fairy would understand and still make a visit.  :-)

To date (June 27, 2012), Mackenzie has lost six teeth!  Mason has lost seven.  Hmmm...

A Tooth Story

It has been a long, long time since we posted anything. Jenna turned 4, Sierra turned 2, Mackenzie turned 5, and Mason is just nineteen days from turning 8. But, in keeping true to trying to post an occasional big event, we wanted to write about Mackenzie's tooth. On June 5th or 6th, she showed us that it was loose. This was shocking, considering Mason didn't get her first loose tooth until almost the end of kindergarten! Anyhow, Mackenzie has been wiggling it a great deal. Today, she wiggled it so much that she was afraid she would swallow it. For dinner, we had to make soft food, and even that was not enough. She was so afraid of swallowing the tooth, because it appeared to be hanging by almost a thread, we told her to grab hold of it and lift it up. When we tried this suggestion with Mason, it was usually met with panic, drama, and whining. Mason never tried this. Mackenzie, on the other hand, grabbed the tooth, lifted it, and that was that! The tooth was between her fingers and no longer a disturbance in her mouth. She lost her first tooth on June 9th, 2011, just nineteen days after her 5th birthday, and months before starting kindergarten. Wow! Will post a picture soon (if we remember)!

Funny Interaction

Jenna (3) and Mackenzie (4) are conflicted about whether or not they can be friends when they're sisters, too. We've told them that they can be both. Often, we hear them arguing, "you're not my friend!" Thank goodness they haven't tried to not be sisters yet! :-)

Anyhow, today, they had a most amusing interaction. Mackenzie came running to me, all upset, and said, "Jenna said I'm not her friend anymore!" I assured Mackenzie that Jenna would change her mind shortly. (She usually does.) Mackenzie must have gone back and relayed this message to Jenna, because a few moments later, Jenna came and found me. She then said, "Mommy, I won't change my mind!" Alan, who was nearby, and I had to stifle our laughter. One of life's amusing and short-lived moments in a household full of drama! (From left to right: Mackenzie, Sierra, Jenna)