The Cake is Done.

It's a good thing I have talented friends. 

It it weren't for my friends Ali and Maryanne Chase's birthday would have featured a very unattractive heap of cake crumbs and frosting. But luckily for me I know a whole slew of extremely talented people and I called a few of them to help make Chase's cake.

This was my first foray into fondant and it turns out that fondant isn't hard to make if you have Ali on the other end of the phone very patiently answering all your questions as you make it.

But its even easier to sit and watch as Maryanne makes and figures out how to apply tire treads to your (not quite) life-sized tire cake.

I love my friends and Chase loved the cake. 

Seven

Happy Birthday Buddy.

Gilbert Dies

On Monday my mom and I took Madison to see a community theater version of Anne of Green Gables. We stopped at a new Peruvian restaurant for dinner first.

Madison ordered a Root-beer and I ordered a Diet Pepsi. When our server brought the drinks she told Madison that they didn't really have Root-beer so she got her a Dr. Pepper and told me she didn't really have Diet Pepsi so she brought me a regular Pepsi. I wasn't about to drink a Pepsi when Dr. Pepper was an option so I asked to switch it out and she obliged.

I took one sip of my Dr. Pepper and found that it was actually Root-beer. I took a sip of Madison's half empty Dr. Pepper and informed her that she was drinking Root-beer too. Do you see why I don't normally let her have Dr. Pepper? Something that good shouldn't be wasted on someone who can't tell the difference between it and Root-beer.

As we ate our dinner I told Madison about the first time I saw Anne of Green Gables.

I was in elementary school and my sister was put in charge of watching me while my parents were at a dinner party. My mom had spent the previous weeks taping Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea off of PBS so we decided to spend the night watching it. We loved every minute of it and watched until Gilbert was dying of typhoid fever. Then, unexpectedly, the tape ended. We were freaking out! We had NO IDEA if Gilbert died. This happened pre-google and pre-cell phone so we only had one option--to call my mom at the dinner party and ask how the show ended.

We called. I am sure my mom thought something was wrong and was less than thrilled to discover we were just calling with a question about Anne of Green Gables. She said, "Gilbert? Gilbert dies." Yes. my mother told us that Gilbert Blythe dies.

Fast forward to when I was in High School and my friend suggested we watch Anne of Green Gables.  "Are you kidding me? I refuse to watch that show. I think its stupid that Gilbert dies." My friend, very confused, said, "I take it you've never really seen the whole thing."

So I found out that Gilbert doesn't actually die. I told my sister and we confronted my mom. "Mom, so does Gilbert Blythe die in Anne of Green Gables?" "What? No. What would make you think that?"

13 Years

As of today I have been married 13 years. It has been 13 years full of surprise music mixes and funny things like this on my door-- 

How can you not love that?

Cut Me Some Slack

Davis: "Mom wanna come watch a show with me because you don't have anything to do now because you got fired."

Me: "I didn't get fired. Its more like I got laid off."

Davis: "Well you used to have a job and now you don't. I'm pretty sure that's called fired."

Birthday Cake

After a lot of thought Chase finally decided what kind of birthday cake he wants.

He announced that he wants a life sized truck tire cake. "Don't worry though, it doesn't have to be a monster truck tire--a regular truck tire will work."

New Toys

In October and old friend asked me if I was interested in a part time job at her company. I said yes and happily became a working mom. I worked with great people and I was able to work most of my hours from home. My job was awesome.

The Wednesday after Christmas Michael found out that the company he was employed with was shutting its doors. He was officially unemployed so I talked to my friend, became her new marketing manager, and switched from working part-time to working full-time. I loved my new job so much that I continued to work full-time even after Michael got a new job in January.

Unfortunately two weeks ago I found out that my boss had to sell the company and I was no longer employed. It was sad, but I have decided to do my own thing--more on that later. To put my new project in action I needed a great camera. I've been wanting one for years.  YEARS I tell you. I did a little research, talked to a few people and finally bought a Canon 60D. I absolutely love this camera.

You may want to click on these picture to see them larger.

I had no idea Kai made such serious faces when he was playing baseball.

Aside from cropping, I haven't done any editing on these pictures. They would look even better with some color correction.

Of all the pictures I took, this is my favorite. I'm thinking this boy is not meant to be the goalie.

IvIg

Today is our first in a series of monthly IvIg infusions.  So far so good. Kai even got to paint one of the ceiling tiles. We'll be here for about 8 hours but the nurses are pampering him so don't feel too bad for him.

Update: The whole process took almost two hours longer than they thought because of some problems putting in the IV and a headache he developed half way through. It was almost 10pm when we left the hospital. But all in all things went really well and next month should go off with out a hitch.