Rough Weekend

Wow this weekend was rough.... We were visiting His Royal Highness' parents in Fort Worth and helping his Aunt and Uncle move in Weatherford. Let me tell you, life there is rough....

You know it's rough when you can sleep on the couch in the middle of the day. Look closely and you'll see the curly hair.



Working on hot rods with your dad, just plain hard.....

Drinking Dublin Dr. Pepper while sitting on the porch swing, admiring the view...

loving the world's most depressed dog (who lost her sister earlier this year, which explains the depression).....

Sitting by the pool for hours in the warm sun, eating grapes and becoming only semi translucent white.....

It's hard..... but I've never backed down from a challenge.

Rambling

Conversation with my three year old today:

princess: I want to eat outside

queen: no, you're naked

princess: oh I'm naked?

queen: you didn't know?

princess: no, not really

Three year olds keep life interesting.

In other news, I am packing to head up to Fort Worth for the weekend. We are going to help his uncle and aunt move into their new house. I'm so excited for them and jealous as all get out. Our goal is to leave as soon as His Royal Highness gets hom from work today around 4pm. The bad part of this means that I have to get everything ready by myself before he gets home. It's not a horrible task, I'm just a procrastinator and will be running around like a chicken with my head cut off at 3:45.

So here's just a few things I have to get accomplished in the next three hours

1. Fill up baby pool for dogs to drink from

2. water garden and straighten up the back porch area

3. Give the dogs mass amounts of food that I hope they won't eat on the first night we're gone

4. Charge everything, camcorder, camera, cell phone, laptop... we really don't have a free outlet in this house right now.

5. Pack myself

6. Pack His Royal Highness. He will come home and repack it some but I threaten him everytime that if he doesn't pack the night before, I will do it for him. One day he's not going to check it first before we leave and might not like what he's left wearing for the weekend. Golf socks go with pretty much everything, right?

7. Throw the few last things in the girls bags such as a bathing suit and headbands.

8. Clean downstairs

9. Fold all the laundry that I did to prepare to pack and then put it up.

10. Gather all the trash throughout the house and put it by the curb.

11. Find the funky smell in the fridge, this should be fun.

12. make an early dinner and having it waiting for HRH.

13. Get all the toys, movies, baby dolls, and circle shoes together and in the car

14. curl up in a ball and rock in the corner of the room while reciting dumb movie lines....

15... get off the internet and get started!

So we'll be gone this weekend, not at church, not at home..... And I'm really hoping to get good video of Princess Goofy and a frog. It's hilarious!

Basin of Grace

Four years ago today Grace Kathryn was born at 6:13am. To say that we were in love from the beginning was an understatement. There was a wonderful singer at church today named Kim Walker (look her up). She talked at length about God's love for His children. I didn't really understand that love until I became a parent. There is no way to describe the love that we had for her and still have for her. When she's sick, our heart breaks. When she's disobedient, our heart breaks. When she is sad, we want to cry as well. But when she's happy and full of life, we relish in it. We are so overjoyed that God trusted us to take care of this girl.

I was just going to pick out one or two good pictures and post a short thing about her but we all know that I'm hormonal from pregnancy. So instead you will get a detailed novel wrote on a tear stained keyboard.

Grace is the princess of all princesses. Most know that she refuses to wear shorts or pants because princesses only wear dresses. She loves headbands, especially her new ones with the bows. She is also a true woman that wears her sparkly shoes even though they hurt her feet. Today at lunch I told her that I really liked her new dress, to which she politely replied, "and I like your glasses" back to me. Wasn't that a proper polite response? Don't worry, she has her daddy's side in her as well. She can fart and burp at will and longs to be a nudist. She is a great big sister that is always willing to run and fetch something for Clara. She's also very excited that we're having another little girl. Did I tell you that yet? Just in case not (pregnancy brain), it's a girl. If it was a boy, I think she'd be thinking of ways to sell him to buy more dresses. But she truly is excited that it's a girl.

She's put up with two parents who didn't know what to do, even putting her naked in an easter basket for pictures, and just rolled with the punches. Then when we threw a sister into the mix when she was just over a year, she loved it even more. They are best friends and I hope that never changes. Three dogs, two cats (sorry you didn't last kitties), and a slew of time-out's later, she is the most loving girl anyone could ask for.

If you don't believe me, ask her yourself. Her key phrase in life just happens to be, "I luwv it."

So I'll just leave you with a thousand pictures of her because I love her too much just to post a few of them.

In the near future I'm going to write a post about homebirth because it's something we strongly support. I might include Grace's birth story with that because it's the faster of the two to type out. So watch for it!

We love Austin

His Royal Highness and myself love Austin. It is breath taking. We're not really into the party scene but the scenery alone! It is so beautiful. I had really hoped on a taking a hike through the hill country this weekend to see more of the spleandor but the nasty cold weather kept us indoors. We did stop and take the following pictures but tht's all we stayed outside! We even went out to this great restaraunt named the Oasis located on Lake Travis but didn't want to stay outside long enough to take a picture! We are not cold weather people! We are tigers!

Pregnant

I meant to announce on here two months ago that I was pregnant but you know pregnancy brains! I totally forgot to do it! So here's the announcement... We're pregnant and due in August. I know most of you know by now. I'm at that point where I feel huge. I know I'm not but I feel really huge right now, like any stranger could look at me and say, "wow does she have a basketball under her shirt?" My pants that no longer fit only confirm this feeling.

However, then I see a picture taken this weekend in Austin and I realize that I just look like I ate a few too many donuts. It's ok, I know the huge pregnancy time will come but until then just let people know that I have not been frequenting the donut shop!

My last post was january 13th. eek! I stopped posting then so I could start working on my cakes for the cake show and had planned on casually posting personal updates between now and then. However, 1st trimester tiredness followed by both girls being sick with strep and the flu, then followed by them giving me the flu, prevented all of this from happening. So... Here I am! Back from Austin and the Sugar Arts Cake show. Life can finally get back to normal if I even know what that means. The last week before the show was crazy! I was up until wee hours of the morning every night working on the cakes. Every cake at the show gets a critique sheet afterwards with things that the judges like or what they would have liked you to have done better. The last cake had a critique sheet that mentioned several times that I needed more detail. The bad thing was that I didn't have any time to do anymore detail! I was up until 3 am thursday night working on then worked on it all day friday up until the second we left for Austin. Hopefully if I am able to go next year with a 5 month old, then I will not have the flu the week before and will have more time to get things done!

So today I'm just going to post a ton of pictures! First I'll show you my cakes that I took to the show.

This is the Peacock wedding cake. I did not place with this one and the critique sheet said that my fondant feathers were too thick, I totally agree. The judges also like to see decorations all around the cake for wedding cakes. I personally don't like that look so I do what I'm happy with. I love this cake except for the fat feathers.

This is the Yellow Rose of Texas Cake. I placed second in the adult intermediate division. The bandanna is hand piped and the plaque on top is hand painted. I really enjoyed this cake. All the fondant is hand painted as well. I need an airbrush!

These are my Ruby Red Slippers. You can't see it but they have individual sequins made from fondant covering the entire cake. This is the cake that the judges wanted to see more detail on. They wanted me to shade the bricks on the yellow brick road and add textural grass. This is the only cake that I really feel like it should have won but didn't. Each shoe took 6 hours to place the sequins on. Oh well, I tried my hardest.

Apparently I forgot to take a picture of my last entry. I'll try to get that up in a day or so.

Now I'll show you some pictures from the show. I did not do these cakes and I do not have the names of the people that did. Again, the following cakes are not my work. This pig was in my category with the shoes. It didn't win either but it should have!

This dog won the category that the Ruby Red Slippers were in.

This was a beautiful cake that didn't win anything but it should have! The fishes were all hand painted! This was one of my favorites.

Done by Ruth Rickey, one of my cake heroes. She place either second or third with this in the masters division.
Placed first in adult advanced

This cake placed but I don't remember what place or what division. It is one of my favorites from the show.

The rat cake above is one of my favorites! It is so cute and has so much detail.

The goose only won second place in adult advanced sculpted cake. It was amazing!

The Geisha won first in Adult Inter. special techniques. It was beautiful and the kimono was hand painted. This horrible picture does not do it justice!

This horse head won First in Adult Masters Sculpted cake and also Best of Show! That means she got a huge silver punch bowl and some cash. It was amazing with such detail! Definitely deserved that honor! Below is the silver platters that went to the Best of the Division and Show cake winners. Next year I plan on bringing a few of these home.