Live Long & Prosper

Happy birthday to my husband! Jacob wanted a party so we had some friends over and I made a cake that I thought was pretty cool. The day I made it though, I had some mega pregnancy brain... I ran out of icing sugar (to make the icing) so we walked to the store... They didn't have icing sugar but they had canned icing, that'll do. Anyways, locked myself and the children out of the house. No big deal, we only had to wait 40 minutes for Jeff to get home from work and it wasn't too cold and the oven wasn't on. Later on, Jeff found 3/4 cup of butter in the microwave... I don't know how but my devil's food cake turned out just fine with no butter in it at all!
So here is Jeff's 31st birthday cake:

All ICED and almost ready to serve...

Bet you didn't guess it was going to be a Star Trek cake! 

SURPRISE! 

Jacob is even wearing his "rocket ship" shirt.

Daniel put all the ships on his piece of cake.

Alleluia!

Happy Easter!

We made some great crafts to help decorate and celebrate.
We did beaded pipecleaner clothespin butterflies, which you can see hanging from the curtain. I tried to control a little too much and finally gave up and accepted that the boys didn't want their butterfly wings in any kind of pattern or even matching colours.
Then we did marble painting. I happened to have two cardboard boxes saved that perfectly fit an 8x10 paper in the bottom. Then I put blobs of paint randomly on the paper (their colour choices) and let them put some marbles in and then shake, shake, shake. Next time I might try dipping the marbles in paint instead of the blobs. Then I cut out all our marbleized butterflies and stuck them on our willow branches left over from Palm Sunday.
I just love butterflies at Easter!

"Can I Play One of Your Games?"

Jacob just loves playing our games, his way of course. Ticket to Ride is a favourite and also Zooloretto. So when Daniel was sleeping I thought I'd let him try Settlers. He loved it.

A Warning

So remember that big baking soda and vinegar "volcano" we made recently? Well, the boys wanted to do it again. Of course they did, it was awesome, it was fun, it took up a lot of time and all I have to do is a load of dishes and a load of laundry afterwards. I was feeling brilliant and creative so I thought they could each have their own volcano... One yellow and one blue and then when the bubbles came together it would be green. Good plan. I also thought "hey, I have half a box of baking soda in the fridge that should be replaced so why don't I just use that up, instead of the brand new box I bought at the store last week?" Sure, I know baking soda is in the fridge to absorb weird smells, but the baking soda doesn't stink... Right? WRONG! Mix that old fridge baking soda with vinegar and now all of a sudden your kitchen is filled with all the aromas you didn't want in your fridge. Seriously gross. But, the boys didn't care, they had a total blast, spilled stinky vinegar-baking soda-food colouring-water all over the place, and used up most of a cold boring morning. Now I am wondering... Should I sanitize my kitchen from that stinky mess, or is it okay because it is vinegar?