Girl Scout Safety Day

This past Monday I got to go with my girls to a Girl Scout activity called Safety Day.  I wasn't sure what it was about, but it was an activity and other than their bi-weekly meetings and cookie booths, they don't really get to hang out with the other girls.  I thought it might be fun so we went.  It wasn't bad, they had more girls than they planned for, so it was a bit crowded, but there were some perks.

 Here are the girls with some friends from the troop.  I can't even believe that Hannah is old enough to be in Girl Scouts, so much so that I didn't even sign her up until that day!  She's been going to Emma's troop, but will be joining her own soon, we are both excited for that.

I just had to get a picture of this guy. This was the first station we were at and this guy is a meteorologist who actually flew through a CAT 5 hurricane!  He's a rock star in my book!  I wanted to get his autograph. LOL!  I've always wanted to be a meteorologist, a storm chaser to be more precise.  It's so weird how excited I get about weather.  I'm not even kidding how serious I am about that.  I remember when I was in elementary school, I think 3rd grade, I checked out a book about weather from the library and wrote a letter to the weather station that helped write the book. They sent me a reply letter and books about weather.  I was so happy, you would have thought I got a letter from some famous person!  That's how big a dork for weather I am, LOL!  It would be a dream of mine to go back to school and actually become a meteorologist....maybe one day.  This part of the presentation was all for the adults, the kids were not interested in watching hurricane patterns as I much as I was.

 At this station the girls got this little pouch to use as a First Aid kit.  They got to decorate it and got band aids and gloves to put in them.  Although I'm pretty sure all those gloves have been turned into balloons by now.

 

 I didn't get pictures of the traveling animal shelter, but they have this trailer set up with kennels inside to hold animals in case you have to go to a shelter during an emergency evacuation.  It was a pretty sweet set up.  The girls then went to another station where they got to make cat and dog toys to donate to the trailer.  It was a good idea, in theory, but the girls are just too young to really figure out how to make them.  Once the ladies called time, and they had to move on I had several meltdowns I had to make better, and I ended up making at least 2 complete toys myself in the name of the girls.

 This guy was the highlight of the day.  He brought out the animals, so obviously the kids absolutely loved this part.  He had a box turtle, snake and a frog.  And if you ask the girls what their favorite part of the day was, they will definitely tell you the animals.

 The snow came and visited us yesterday.  They said it was going to start snowing around 9am and snow all day.  I thought the schools would close down, but they decided to just do a partial day.  Well, the weeny mom that I am, I was afraid that if I sent them to school and the snow started to fall then they could get stuck at the school, so I kept them home.  It didn't start to really snow until around 1 or 1:30, the same time the kids would have gotten out of school.  I should have totally sent them, all they did was fight with each other, but that's just how they show their love, right? Ha...
The picture above is what we woke up to this morning.  I'd say we got between 4 and 5 inches.  Just enough to play in, and dangerous enough when you drive.  Although I did have to drive in it today. 

I got an order for a cookie cake!  I was really happy that I got to do this, it was for a Coastie friend's husband.  This is actually his guitar in cookie form, sort of. ;)  I'm really happy about that chocolate disc in the middle.  I actually hollowed a little out of the cookie and used a cookie cutter to mold the chocolate.  Then when it hardened I just popped it in the cookie.  I delivered it in the snow covered roads, but I have to say, for an L.A. (Lower Alabama) native, I sure do get a thrill when driving in snow.  It can be scary, but it can be such a mad adrenaline rush!  I know, I know...I ain't right. ;) The cookie was fun to make, and I really liked the way it turned out.

December 2013

 I know I'm behind in my blogging, so here is a month in a post.  We started off the month with snow and a birthday!

 Miss Chacha turned 3! She's still not making coherent speech, but she is improving.  She is going through potty training right now, and is a total rock star!  I'm so close to being diaper free after almost 12 straight years of changing them!

 Her sprinkle covered birthday cake, YUM!

 Then it was off to New York City to see all the lights and awesome decorations.  It was a freezing cold day, and there were so many people out it was like walking through a sea of people!  I've never experienced those kinds of crowds, not even at Mardi Gras!

 The tree at Rockefeller Center.

 Some really big balls.

 The Ferris Wheel INSIDE Toys R Us!

 Riding the Wheel!

 The scared-y cats who wouldn't go on the Ferris Wheel...ha!

 Inside Toys R Us, they had awesome toys and Lego statues throughout the place.

 Time Square

 M&M World, green representing Lady Liberty.

 Grand Central Station

 I totally thought of 'Madagascar' when we were here.

 This was a really beautifully decorated building.

 Empire State Building feeling the holiday love.

 Then it was off to Alabama for Christmas!  I don't know if you can see well enough in this picture: Alabama Snow!  a.k.a. Cotton fields :)

 What seems wrong with this picture?  Yes, it's almost Christmas and Theo and Charlotte are outside playing on the awesome fort my Dad built in shorts and short sleeves.  It was really nice weather while we were there!

 Time for the fun to begin!  We decorated sugar cones as Christmas trees with the cousins, so much fun!

 Time to open presents!  How you liking that sweet background?  LOL!  It's a My Little Pony homey fire to help put us in the winter mood for present opening on Christmas Day.

 My parents haven't had Santa visit their house in years!  I was trying to convince the kids that he just might not know to come here in the attempts to get them to behave while we were there, but it barely put a dent in their behavior, ha!  They were still really good, and loved being there with Mimi and Pawpaw!  They were the King and Queen of Christmas this year!

 It was a great visit, and then we had to leave and get back to real life.  *sigh*  Miss you guys!!

This pretty sums up the whole month...Charlotte passed out holding a Moon Pie.  Partied hard and ate to our hearts content! 

Pinterest Pulled Through

I can't believe it's been over a month since my last posting! I've been really busy lately, whoever said you would have more time when you home school?  I feel like I never have a free moment! But I love it, so don't take that as a complaint! :)  I'll just recap this month for you. 

At the beginning of the month Emma turned 7!  She said she wanted a dolphin cake, (I don't know where this came from, except for maybe it was that she was holding a stuffed dolphin right at the moment I asked her what kind of cake she wanted. LOL!) so I went on Pinterest to get some ideas.  I found THIS to be the perfect cake:

Since we have just a small family party on off birthdays, this was the perfect size.  It came with a template that I printed out and used to cut the cake rounds.

It was pretty fun piecing it together.  It took some maneuvering, but this is what it looked like when I finally had all the pieces lined up:

 She didn't want just any dolphin cake, she wanted a PINK dolphin cake.  Which I thought that sounded more like her style.  Did you know that there actually are pink dolphins in the Amazon?  Google it....it's true, and they're really pretty.  Mine was pretty as well, I think:

The bow helps, LOL!  She really liked it, and that's what it's all about. :)  Can you tell she's happy?

She REFUSED to make a decent smiley face, hahahaha!  That's Emma for you!  It was a good birthday.

I got the chance to make another cake for a friend that I did THIS MYTHBUSTERS cake for.  This time it was for her 9 year old.  He was a hoot!  When I asked what he wanted he told me he wanted a statue of himself!  I thought that was too awesome, and I wanted to take him up on it, but then I thought that might be just too much for me, so I suggested a bust.  He liked the idea and I was so excited to do it for him!  I was really proud of this one:

I made the bust out of Rice Krispies and covered it in fondant.  The whole column part is pound cake covered in more fondant.  The disc that the bust is sitting on is foam board covered in fondant.  It was fun and delicious!! (....the cake, not the foam board...) ;)

We've had a few Art crafts this month in preparation of Halloween.  Here are a couple of our projects, both found on Pinterest:

 This one is made of glue and glitter.  You just make the outline of a spider web with glue on either wax paper or parchment paper, cover with glitter and let dry.  I let them dry for a whole day, then I could just peel them off the paper.  I used double sided tape to put them on the front of our screen door.  Mines the top right, all black, I have no creativity...below mine is Hannah's and she went with a Mardi Gras theme.  Emma's is beside hers and went with a Patriot theme, although it could work for Spiderman as well, ha! Then Miriam's is a little more glamorous than mine because she added some silver glitter with the black.  They did good, and I think they look good.  Tobie was too macho to play with glitter, that's why you don't see one for him.

 This was a really easy one as well.  You take old egg cartons and cut out 3 egg holders, paint them black and add googly eyes.  I hot glued some pretty festive ribbon to the top and then taped them up.  Little egg carton bats!  The fun thing with this is, I didn't have any black, so our lesson was learning how to make black out of the primary colors.  Can you guess who's pink bat is right there in the middle?  That's right!  Emma's!!  LOL!

Cute, easy and cheap...my favorite kind of craft!  I love when Pinterest actually pulls through with great ideas! =)