Super Mario Bros. Success!

After having such success with BabyGirl's birthday at the Y Pool I was luckily able to convince BabyBoy to do something similar for his 7th birthday party. The Y has what they call and "inflatable" party where they set up this huge inflatable obstacle course in the gym, let the kids play for an hour, and then send them up to the party room for food and cake. Easy, right?
BabyBoy being the budding computer genius that he is was determined to find the perfect cake to go with his chosen Mario Bros. theme. So, he googled "super mario bros. cake" and here's what he came up with...

Ummmm. Yeah. Mommy can bake a little but Ace of Cakes I'm not. I had to bring him back to earth just a bit. We did end up with a pretty cool cake, though. I actually ran out of time and the option became I could EITHER bake the cake or ice the cake. Sooooo, I headed off to Ukrop's and purchased the largest sheet cake they had, scraped off the oh, so delicious icing, colored my purchased icing bright blue, and went to town with the pre made fondant I had purchased. Here was the result...

The fondant was actually really easy to work with. I wasn't really doing anything 3D or crazy like that so it went pretty smoothly.

For the favors I found some cute ice cream cups at the dollar store and filled each with crinkly shreds and a gift card for a kids cone at Maggie Moo's.

The invitations were purchased from a seller on Ebay and I have to say I was really pleased...you simply send them the info and they send you a pdf of the invitation that you print out yourself. You can find them here.

I purchased all of the birthday supplies from Celebrate Express. This was the only place I was able to find them. They had really cute blue balloons with white clouds and I added yellow balloons with white stars and solid red balloons. It was definitely a cheap way to add to the theme. Overall...another successful party and very low stress!

And Just as Quickly as it Came...

It's gone again! Christmas, that is!
We had a great Christmas this year. Christmas Eve was very laid back (for everyone except me, that is) with Dr. Daddy's father for dinner and an early bedtime for the kids. Dr. Daddy had to head to the hospital at 7:30am on Christmas morning and stay the night so we got up early, opened presents, and the kids and I headed off to Richmond.

The kids decided that this year Santa would be putting their presents under the trees in their rooms. No small feat for "Santa" to sneak into the rooms of two very excited kiddos and slide some presents under their trees. I finally finished wrapping gifts around 1am and headed off to bed. No sooner did my head hit the pillow and it was 5:30am wake up from the little darlings. The kids had too much fun running up and down the steps bringing their loot downstairs.




Happiness all around with the gifts. American Girl Doll, pink Bratz guitar, "girl" Legos and some doll accessories for BabyGirl. Legos, Legos, and did I mention Legos? for BabyBoy. BabyGirl also loved her Tiffany earrings...and I loved reading the sweet card Dr. Daddy wrote for her on the lovely stationery Tiffany so "generously" provided.





Mommy got new jackets for her diamond studs and Dr. Daddy got framed portaits of the kids. He even managed to hang them last night so I could post pictures. (kind of a weird angle since they're hung going up the steps)




The trip to Richmond was uneventful...which is good! We're two for two on the well behaved kids in the car thing. I'm knocking on wood as I write, however, since I know they'll turn on me eventually.

We got to Mimi and Papa's house and got to open even MORE presents! BabyGirl had fun helping everyone open gifts. BabyBoy cracked us all up when he exclaimed "Look Mommy, it's the sweater I've always wanted!", after opening a sweater from Mimi that he had picked out two weeks ago.

We tried unsuccessfully to get a family photo with Wags the dog. I think we got more of his rear end than anything else.







Mimi and Papa got a new calendar that I made from pages created on How Fast They Grow.com. Mommy got a new Marc Jacobs purse (thanks Aaron!)

We had a delicious dinner that evening and Mimi and I watched "The Women". Good, not great movie.

Friday evening was spent at Aunt Bobbie's house with all the cousins. BabyGirl and Sophie had fun pounding on the piano.



BabyGirl and BabyBoy displayed exactly why we DON'T have a Wii and never will...



Can we say Zombies?

And Sophie sported her gay pride pajamas (photo taken expressly for Aaron)



Saturday we headed home to clean up the aftermath. And clean I have! All the decorations are down and I'm getting ready for a super fun supper club this evening. The great thing about our supper club is that I don't have to cook...everyone brings a dish. The not so great thing...my cleaning lady hasn't been here in over two weeks. Aaaahhh!

Merry Christmas!

Sippycup Snippets

Spoken to one of his classmates' parents at lunch last week:

Parent: BabyBoy, I had lunch with your sister today. She is so cute!

BabyBoy: That one...she's got the face of an angel...but she's pure evil inside.

Hmmm...been watching a little too much Star Wars perhaps?

Ye Olde Christmas

This past weekend I schlepped the kids four hours to Williamsburg so we could spend some quality time with Mimi and Papa at a time share. I was a little hesitant to take the kids (ie: tried every imaginable way possible to pawn them off on someone else) but had no luck finding any childcare relief. Soooo...off to Williamsburg we went.
The four hour ride there was completely perfect. I NEVER thought I would be able to say that about my kids in a car but they were truly angels. BabyGirl even SLEPT part of the way. (for all you people out there who have kids that sleep in cars I'm happy for you...really (fingers and toes crossed) but my kids just don't ever seem to be willing to cut me a break)
We got there around 8pm on Friday and the kids (very begrudgingly) went to sleep. Saturday morning BabyGirl woke up at 6am (TOTALLY out of the ordinary for her...girl can SLEEP IN when she wants to) after not having gone to sleep the night before until 11 pm. Hmmm...this can't be good. Seems she was so excited to get up and make the gingerbread houses we had purchased the day before that she just couldn't sleep. Lucky me.
So, we got started. I think our effort paid off pretty well...








By the time we finished it was 11pm and BabyGirl was fading. I was seriously worried that we were in for a LOOONG day. Mimi and I packed them up in the car and headed over to Colonial Williamsburg. We had lunch and waited for Papa to arrive. (his arrival was slightly delayed by the fact that he locked his keys in his car in Richmond)
While we waited we shopped around and the kids LOVED petting the many dogs they met. BabyBoy also loved seeing all the babies. The kid LOVES babies. It's hilarious.





Finally, Papa arrived. Yay!



We set off in search of hot cider and Christmas eye candy. We weren't disappointed!








Despite BabyGirl's exhaustion she persevered in her attempts to get us to take her to the indoor pool after our tour of Old Williamsburg. We picked up some Barbeque from my FAVORITE place, Pierce's, and headed back to the timeshare. We scarfed our dinner, spent an hour and a half at the pool and finished the evening off with bedtime stories read by the "elves" at the resort. Too cute. BabyGirl didn't quite make it through the storytelling. Once we got back to the condo her eyes were closed as soon as her head hit the pillow.
Overall, the perfect end to a perfect weekend!