Samantha's birthday cake

Chalk one up in the "It seemed like a good idea at the time" category. On Friday Samantha turns 8 (eight - are you kidding me?!!) and I had this great idea for a birthday cake that I just had to try. Two 8-inch round pans with Betty Crocker made-from-scratch cake, put together to form the numeral 8 and covered with homemade icing (enough of the boxed stuff around here!). I was a bit overzealous and tried to turn the cakes out of the pan before they'd cooled enough, and they literally fell apart. Looks more like a pretzel if you ask me.

Samantha, of course, saved the day with her comments. "Homemade cakes are much better than the ones from the store. Because homemade cakes are made with love."

Have I mentioned lately how awesome this girly is? :-) Love her. Happy early 8th birthday Sammie.

Fierce!

Some photos of Megan in action at her soccer game last Saturday (6.30.07). She owes her natural soccer skills to her Grandpa!!

Notice the tongue which seems to have a mind of its own! :-)

Show me those pearly whites!

Good grief, are they posing for an ad for Colgate toothpaste???!!

Actually, they were beaming over the rainbow cake that we made over the Memorial Day holiday (yes, I know it is almost July 4th; evidently I'm not the most organized blogger). Samantha and I had planned to make this cake for a cake decorating contest at her school at the end of the school year (May 29)...but because I can no longer remember anything unless I write it down and put in on the calendar in our kitchen, the silly event didn't cross my mind again until I saw the cakes lined up in the cafeteria.

In spite of it all, we had fun decorating our rainbow cake. And eating the leftover Skittles that made the rainbow was bad either.

Losing my mind...

I'm going crazy. CRAZY, I tell you. This recent loss of insanity is due to my attempt to wean Megan off of her daily naps before she starts Kindergarten in August. (Kindergarten already??? Just thinking about it makes me all teary-eyed. August 16, 2007 is going to be one very tough day for me. But that's another story.)

Anyway, the past few weeks of the no-naps experiment have literally been H-E-double hockey sticks at our house. Tonight was the worst, with Megan having a complete melt-down over the bagel and peanut-butter she requested for dinner (too hard), then another melt-down over the chicken with rice and peas that I gave her instead, followed by sobbing because her shower was not warm enough, then more tears because she was afraid to go upstairs to get dressed since the light in her bedroom was off.

Sigh. I'm praying for patience.

Meanwhile, her tears continue to flow because she is over-tired from not napping. I know that we'll all adjust with time, but today has been a difficult day. Tomorrow I'm launching Operation Bedtime At 7 PM for Little Girls Who Haven't Napped. Wish us luck!

Happy June!

Welcome to the month of June. It seems like January was only a few weeks ago. Time flies when you're having fun...or when your boss expects you to deliver $2.5M in savings by year-end and have only gotten $25K so far. The pressure is on! But that's another story for a different time.

I have to share the most touching card/presentation that I've seen in a while. My Dad sent it to me on Mother's Day but forgot the link. He finally re-sent it today. Check it out at:

Awesome Mother's Day Card

Definitely worth forwarding to all your Mom friends.

What day is it anyway?

What a strange week. With the holiday on Monday, I spent all day thinking that Tuesday was Monday...yet by Wednesday I was thinking it was Thursday...go figure.

We had a very relaxing Memorial Day weekend. Ben and I took the girls to the Grand Canyon on Saturday. It was a nice trip, except that this is the first time we'd taken the girls to the South Rim...nerve-racking! Last time we visited the Canyon we went to the North Rim...somehow it seems there were less of the unprotected overhangs on the North Rim than on the South. I kept envisioning one (or both) of the girls spontaneously leaping over the edge of the South Rim - yikes! We ended the day with a visit to the Grand Canyon IMAX which was the highlight of our trip. It was awesome to get a different view of the Canyon from down in the Colorado River. I would love to do this in person some day.

The rest of the weekend was spent at home. We enjoyed the weather and grilled out on the back deck on Sunday and Monday. All in all, so very enjoyable to spend some quality family time together. I live for days like these.

Genetic reading

I love to read. Ben loves to read. Samantha’s favorite thing to do is read. So I wonder, is a love of reading genetic?

I fondly remember going to the bookstore with Mummy & Dadz on a Saturday morning in Guyana. What a treat it was to pick out a book and take it home and spend the rest of the afternoon exploring the world of Enid Blyton or Nancy Drew. Even in my early teenage years, I can recall lazy Sunday afternoons where I sat in the hammock I’d rigged high up (very high up) in a tree in our house in New Providence, doing nothing but reading. Pure bliss.

What a treasure and legacy to have passed on to Samantha. We go to the library weekly and she picks out a stack of books – always with a theme. One week it was all dinosaur books. Another it was all about trees. Here she is reading a stack of Magic Schoolhouse books…

And today reading one of several Roald Dahl books (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) that she borrowed from the library.

I think that her Auntie Rach is going to love this!!!