More Cupcake Pics

For Mom (Grammy)

My Little Cupcake

For my 200th post, I give you the cuteness of little toddler hands holding a cupcake. Gotta love it. (And a big bruise on her forehead. A sure sign that she's now a walker!)

Happy Birthday, Little Miss Sunshine!

Easter Morning

Ah, Easter. I love Easter. It's my favorite holiday. He is Risen! Lent is over! Spring is here! There's so much to celebrate. It's always such a beautiful day. This year was especially wonderful because our first born received her First Holy Communion!

Here are a few pictures of our morning.

We always buy family gifts that the children share and then put their individual gifts in their baskets. This was our table with the family gifts and our Sacred Heart picture adorned with lilies. The kids love this because during Holy Week our picture is veiled.

Morning prayers:
The kids were so excited about it being Little Miss Sunshine's first Easter. It was the cutest thing!


We got her one of those walking toys and she was so glad to have a walking aid.


Growing up, my mom always hid our baskets and I loved that tradition! So I have happily passed it on to my kids. Here they are, finding their baskets.






Then they noticed their calendar. At the beginning of Lent, this poster board was covered with post its. Each day we removed one, slowly revealing the picture underneath. He is Risen! Alleluia!
Sunshine was very excited with her basket!

Pretty Daisies, Pretty Nails

The night before Little Miss Chatterbox received her First Holy Communion, I made sure we set some time aside, just the two of us. We said the last prayer of her 12 day novena and then painted her nails. I bought some pretty white daisy nail decals that I found at the store. They were perfect because they matched the shoes she picked out which had a pretty white daisy on the toe! My Chatterbox just loves flowers. :) It was fun to pamper her a bit before the big day!

Chatterbox's First Holy Communion Cake

Little Miss Chatterbox had big plans for her First Communion cake. She drew them up on paper (which was actually quite impressive!) right down to how many layers, what colors, type of frosting, and cake flavors. It was to be three tiered, each tier with fondant roses around the outside. The top would have Chatterbox kneeling in her dress, receiving communion from Jesus-all made out of fondant. There would be a plaque on the middle tier with her name and the date and lilies to represent Easter. The bottom tier would have a seashell, to represent her baptism. (She received her First Holy Communion on Easter which was also her baptismal anniversary) It sounded wonderful but not quite realistic. I reminded her that making things from fondant take a long time and that we would be busy getting ready for the big day plus Easter. So I looked on-line and found a cake topper of Jesus giving communionto a little girl. I was so excited to find it! It took a bit of effort to persuade Chatterbox to pass up her fondant idea but she finally did.

As the day came closer and closer and the to-do list grew longer and longer, I wondered how I was going to get everything done. Then Chatterbox offered to decorate the cake herself. What a great idea! So I baked the cake (lemon cake with raspberry mousse filling) and frosted it. Then we made the fondant. It was made from marshmallows and came from a recipe that I found on-line. It was not sturdy and every rose we made started melted back into a ball of fondant goo. "It needs more powdered sugar!" suggested Chatterbox. So she kneaded in more and more. It was getting a little better, but still not good enough for roses. I was ready to give up. It was already late in the day on Holy Saturday and we had so much to do to get ready for Easter! But Chatterbox was determined to make this work. She played around with it and made a little rosette. "Look at this, Mom! A little rose! We can just put these around the tiers!" It was a great idea and I was so relieved. We started working together on making the rosettes when she decided that she didn't want the roses to be only pink and white (which was my suggestion). She wanted dark pink, light pink, yellow and purple. "Easter colors! Spring colors! My favorite colors!" I gave her an undiscerning look. "It is my cake, after all." Okay, okay.

We colored more fondant. The kitchen was a huge mess which attracted the boys, naturally. To them, big mess equals big fun. Chatterbox told them they were too small to make rosettes but gave them a little bit of fondant to play with. This made Mr. Tickle very happy. But to Mr. Funny, it was a challenge. He tried to make a rosette but it was huge. "See? I told you that you are too small to help with the roses. Just play with Mr. Tickle." Mr. Funny didn't seem to hear Chatterbox's remark. He made one rose after another, learning from the last and making improvements on the next, until finally he made the perfect little rosette.

He was so proud of himself and we were proud of him too! Chatterbox hugged him and apologized for not having more faith in his abilities (her words, not mine). Then she put him in charge of the purple. It was great to get help! With the three of us making the roses, it moved along pretty quickly. Chatterbox carefully placed them in a pattern along the cake. I truly loved the colors and was so glad that Chatterbox decided on them. We placed the cake topper on top and put on the chocolate chalice. The finished cake looked beautiful.

This ranked pretty high on my Mom-o-Meter of proud moments. Here's what I was proud of:

1. Chatterbox coming up with her own design

2. Chatterbox going with the flow and not getting angry about the fondant not working.

3. Chatterbox dealing with a cranky, exasperated mother and helping me keep my cool by finding a solution to our rose problem.

4. Chatterbox being nice to her brothers when they asked to help.

5. Mr. Funny's determination on figuring out how to make a fondant rosette.

6. How nicely and quietly Mr. Tickle played with his fondant and left us to finish our job.

And last but certainly not least,

7. The cake! She did it! Chatterbox decorated her cake and it turned out just lovely.

Big Sis is here!

(The kids giving Aunt Jan the cards they made for her)

Classic Spaghetti Shot

Where Are the Pics?

It appears that I'm just terrible at keeping up with this blog. I'm not going to have time to write about all the things that have happened in the past few months. Which makes me really sad because this is where I'm suppose to be putting everything down so that my kids will be able to look back on their childhood through their mother's eyes and words.

We had Easter. Little Miss Chatterbox had her First Holy Communion! Mr. Funny played t-ball this year! Mr. Tickle is potty trained! Little Miss Sunshine will be one next week! The kids are growing and changing everyday. The days go so fast. Oh, how I wish I could document it all. This beautiful life God has given me. My amazing husband. My wonderful children. Our loving extended family. It's a crazy, busy life. But I am oh, so grateful.

Since I don't have time to catch up with long, individual posts, how about some pictures? I promised you some pictures and you have been so patient. Thank you.

I will start with the most recent picture I have of the Fantastic Four. ;) And I will try, REALLY HARD, to come back and post at least one pic a day. But life happens so I'm not making any more promises. And my big sis is in town so I plan to spend lots of time with her! See you around. God bless you all.

Holy Thursday 2011

Holy Thursday

Alice Gunther from Cottage Blessings is quite infamous for her Teatimes. Two years ago the kids and I had a version of Alice's Holy Thursday and Good Friday Teas. Little Miss Chatterbox loved them and requested them this year and last. But preparing for two teas back to back is more than I can handle right now so we had an extremely simplified version for Holy Thursday. We always have sparkling grape juice to represent the wine that Jesus and the Apostles drank at the Last Supper. And we ate pita bread as the unleavened bread. We had a "mount of olives" on the side ("And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives." Mk. 14: 26.) and "Fig" Newtons because figs grew in Gethsemane. We talked about why Jesus is the Lamb of God and read about the Last Supper from the Bible. I knew this "meal" wouldn't fill them up so we also had pizza for the only reason of it being very easy! After our meal, the kids take turn washing eachothers feet just as Jesus washed the apostles feet.