Losing

Some days I feel like I am losing at this whole parenting thing. You know the days-when the kids decide to draw mustaches on their faces with marker, you are continuously cleaning yet the house looks worse than when you started, the kids decide to break all the rules they should (and do) know, they break their toys for fun, they refuse to nap anymore, and the one being potty-trained learns just how uncomfortable it is to poop in her underwear which requires lots more cleaning and an unexpected shower (though not fully unplanned for since there is still marker all over her face).

Even the dog wins. She has gotten used to being on the couch and days like this only encourage her since I don't have the energy to shove her off and, admittedly, it is kind of nice at times to cuddle her though she really is far too big to be a lap dog.

Then throw in taking care of 11 chickens, 2 goats, 2 cats, 2 dogs, and 4 alpacas; shoveling several inches of snow; decorating a cake and 24 cupcakes. It makes me kinda tired! Oh, and I think I may be allergic to snow since my sinuses were hurting today. 

That was yesterday. Today dawned bright and clear and cold. A new day. A fresh start. And guess what. I am still losing. This time the goats won. I was unable to close their stall door (which I do to keep them from stealing the alpacas' food) because of all the snow we received. Usually when this happens, they never realize the door isn't locked. Today though, Tulip jumped against the door and it opened. I ran back in to shove them back into their stall so my alpacas could eat. In doing so, I forgot to latch the other stall door and they jumped against that and escaped into the barn  Unfortunately, the outer barn door was also open and they raced toward freedom. At least I was able to reach the door first and close it. Then I had to herd them back into their stall. Thank goodness for Cheerios!

I Mustache You a Question...

Who forgot to put the markers away after the kids were done coloring?

Cake Craze

I volunteered to make a cake this Thursday. There were two orders for that day and I had a difficult time deciding which order to choose. One was a dirt bike cake and the other order was for flower cupcakes. The flowers sounded fun but I decided to pick the dirt bike cake so I could use up some of the chocolate frosting I had acquired from Birthday Cakes 4 Free. Besides, I figured another volunteer would likely pick up the order for flower cupcakes.

Well, when I returned home from getting my needed cake supplies, I found an email waiting for me. I was asked if I might take on the cupcake order as well since both were for the same facility. I agreed and here are the results.

I am pretty happy with how the flowers turned out. I haven't actually done a lot of flowers in all my cake decorating so I wasn't sure how it would go. I decided to make roses, hydrangeas, sunflowers, daisies, zinnias, mums, and some random petal flower. My favorite is the blue hydrangea. It was the easiest but looks so pretty! (Plus, I may be partial to the color!) I did make 24 of these cupcakes but just took a picture of a small sampling.

If you are interested in volunteering to a make cakes, we could use help. All levels of decorating skills are appreciated! And if you aren't in this area, there may be a chapter near you where you could volunteer! 

Check out their Facebook page here!

A Lazy Sunday Afternoon

                 

                     On Sunday, Bella decided it was a good day to nap on the couch.

Jon thought it looked like a good idea so he joined her.

The first attempt was not comfortable so he tried this. Bella, however, did not appreciate the company and promptly kept off the couch!

Playing with Their Food

Hmmm...maybe this is why my girls always want raspberries!

I was taking too long to get a picture so her fingers were getting cold. Thus, the funny face!

Flowers

My husband surprised me with flowers this morning. Both of my girls were excited to see the flowers and thought they were beautiful. As I began to arrange the flowers in a vase, my husband told the girls that the flowers were for Mommy. Hearing this, my youngest shouted, "Where's mine!?"

Fun Fact Friday

Usually, if a chicken has red ear lobes, it will lay brown eggs but if it has white ear lobes, it will lay white eggs!

Valentine's Weekend Fun

On Valentine's Day weekend, my in-laws offered to come visit and take care of our girls and the critters so we could have a weekend to ourselves. Of course we agreed to that! We had a fun weekend of eating, relaxing, making jewelry, and shopping.

Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory. Oh my goodness, so good!

I forget the name but it was cheesecake with caramel, peanut butter cups, butterfingers, peanut butter, and chocolate. 

My husband and I made rings for each other on Valentine's Day. Check out the concentration I have while I am practicing stamping on a copper piece before I stamp the silver which will become my husband's new ring.

Not sure why I am holding a file while showing off the cupcakes from Scratch Cupcakery we had as a snack while making rings. But I am, so there.

Husband hard at work stamping a silver strip (which was to become my ring).

Fire! We had fun using a teeny tiny little torch to solder our rings.

The finished rings! (After a bunch of shaping, filing, sanding, and cleaning)

Such a fancy Valentine's dinner. It has been tradition since we met to have heart-shaped pizza for Valentine's Day since neither of us are interested in braving the crowds for dinner. At least this year it was also relaxing to eat in our hotel room without the kiddos!

Chick Days!

It is Chick Days at Thiesen's again! That means it is time to buy more chicks! Or at least it will be time once the breeds we want are in stock.

Home!

I think Bella missed us! Either that, or she was just looking for an excuse to crawl up on the couch and play lap dog!

More "Love"-ly Hair

Happy Valentine's Day! Since my girls started wearing hearts in their hair earlier in the week, I had to use a new hairdo for my daughter's Valentine's party. I certainly couldn't repeat her earlier styles! Mostly because I get bored doing the same thing and like to try something new. So here it is.

Fun Fact Friday

A group of turkeys is called a rafter or a gang.

I wonder if it is bad luck to have a gang of turkeys fly over you. I say this since last Friday when we had a rafter of turkeys fly over us, we were driving to the trampoline park where my youngest was injured, requiring a trip to the emergency room.

Blaze!

I just love this picture of Blaze. He is just too darn cute!

Valentine's Day Hair

Valentine's Day is coming up And my girls LOVE this holiday. We began celebrating early by doing some heart hairstyles. I did a set of two hearts on my youngest and my oldest daughter loved it so much she just had to have the same done to her hair. Throughout the day, we were stopped by a bunch of people who wanted to look at their hair and figure out how it was done. I expect there will be a bunch of little girls with hair hearts out and about this week!

Happy Birthday!

My youngest turned three today! Happy Birthday, Sweetheart! We celebrated by eating out at Chick fil A and having cupcakes for dessert. Normally, I would make my own cupcakes but I expected to have some leftover cake from her party so I didn't make any. The leftovers didn't last a day. I usually hate buying cupcakes because I am very picky about them since I like my own so much more. However, I have discovered a cupcake place that meets my standards. And they just opened a store near us. So dangerous! It is called That One Cupcake Place. Thanks to them, I could make my life easier today and just buy yummy cupcakes. And the girls really enjoyed picking out their own flavors. Of course, they enjoyed eating them even more!

Presents!

Silly, happy, birthday girl!

She picked out the Happy Birthday cupcake, complete with sprinkles in the cake on top.

She picked out a lovely pink Valentine cupcake.

Time for a Game!

One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong.Can you guess what doesn't fit in?

Play?

Bella is really hard to get a picture of sometimes because she is always moving! Here she just seems to be saying, "Play?" And she apparently had trouble making up her mind about which toy to play with. Or perhaps she was giving me a choice?

Party Time!

Today we celebrated my youngest daughter's third birthday. Her real birthday isn't for a few more days but we had her party today. We surprised her last night with having her cousins over. Around Thanksgiving, they had come for to our house for a visit and we celebrated their son's birthday with presents, cake, and swimming at a hotel pool. Ever since that party, my daughter has insisted that her cousins would be at her party and we would swim at the hotel. She was devastated when I told her that wasn't going to happen. Well, the cousins heard about her great distress so they came and we did had that hotel party last night and she was thrilled. Her cousins also came to her party this morning and we ate lots of cake and homemade purple ice cream (with sprinkles even!).

Yesterday didn't go quite as I had planned so I had been a bit worried that I wouldn't get the house clean, get the decorations up, or finish the Sofia the First cake. You see, my birthday girl ended up in the emergency room yesterday.

We were at the trampoline park with some friends when my daughter started crying. Her arm had been hurt. I was standing right there but didn't see what happened. We weren't sure if she fell on it or if her little friend pulled on her arm. She didn't recover quickly like usual so we went to sit down for a bit. The workers brought us ice for her arm, as well as snacks and a juice drink, which helped calm her down. We sat for a bit, hoping she would feel better but when I tried to look at her arm, the screaming began again. The Titans (a fourth year professional indoor football league) were practicing in the gym next door so their trainer kindly came and looked at her arm. He didn't think it was broken but said we should get it checked out if it didn't get better.

It didn't get better by the time we left. I couldn't get her coat on because she screamed whenever I moved her. Getting her in her car seat was torture. We went to Urgent Care where they told us it was a two hour wait. I couldn't let my baby wait for two hours in obvious extreme pain. We went to the Emergency Room instead. While there, they calmed her down by taking her to look at the helicopter which had just landed. During that time, the doctor felt her arm and determined it wasn't broken but rather she had dislocated her elbow which they were easily able to pop back into place. The crying stopped immediately and she began acting as though nothing had happened.

I was so happy that we were able to relieve her pain quickly and that she could get back to feeling like herself again and that she would be fine for her parties. Of course, I was a little worried that I wouldn't have enough time to finish her cake but I think the cake turned out just fine. Both of my girls liked it so that is all that matters! (Oh, it tasted good, too!)

Sofia the First castle cake

Blowing out the  candles

Trying to figure out how to cut the cake. (I refuse to cut my own cakes so I make him do it!)

Fun Fact Friday

Alpacas "hum". This vocalization can mean they are stressed, interested in something, or just bored.

I have heard my alpacas hum. Huxley seems to do it the most, usually when he is worried about something, such as getting his toes trimmed. Alpacas also have a warning cry that I have heard only once, when we first brought the alpacas hear and they saw the horses next door. It is a high-pitched screech but it is hard to describe. You gotta hear it to understand!

A+ Student

Well, my daughter's preschool is going through the alphabet again and I had time this morning to do her hair so I tried making the letter A in her hair.

 

Meanwhile, her sister went to gymnastics class and this is what she was up to:

 

I stepped out of the room for one minute...

For the record, dogs are not supposed to be on the couch! And kids are not supposed to sit on the dogs!

Hello, Kitty! Again

So I have done quite a bit of cake decorating but today was my first attempt at decorating cookies. I don't mean just slapping some frosting on cut out cookies and then letting the girls generously coat them with a layer of sprinkles or chocolate chips or the like. No, I have done that. This time I piped outlines of royal icing on the cookies and then filled them in.

It is my oldest daughter's turn to bring birthday treats to school so she requested Hello Kitty cookies to go with her party's theme. It was more time-consuming than I realized but both girls were thrilled with the results so it was worth it. I think I will stick with cakes though!

It Is Snow Beautiful

Ah, the sun was shining on our freshly fallen 11 inches of snow. So my husband and I got up early to snow plow and snow blow the driveway. It had really drifted over night due to all the strong wind so it really was a team effort. The sunrise was gorgeous, with its pinks and yellows reflected on the white snow covering all the tree branches. It made up for the hard work and early rising.

Snow!

This was the view we woke up to this morning. And it is still snowing!

The girls are trying out their new snowshoes!

The snowshoeing could have gone better.

Bella had a blast in the snow!

Jon plowed the driveway.

I used the snow blower up by the house while the kids worked on perfecting their snowshoeing techniques. Afterwards, we drank hot chocolate and watched Frozen! What a good time!