4th of July and birthday festivities

hAppY 4th oF JuLy!  

Thanks to all who have made, and continue to make, the USA a free country.

This weekend was a busy one for us.  On Sunday we had a wonderful church service in the park and then enjoyed barbecue, games, and fellowship.  I love how out-going our new church is, it reminds me of the things I did as a child and I am really looking forward to this next weekend's camping trip with our life group.  I'm sure I'll blog about it and post some pictures. :)

Later, after church-in-the-park, we went home to celebrate E's birthday since we had not been able to do it the previous weekend with Tom and C out of town.  Our good friends also celebrated with us since we were marking their son's first birthday as well.  I made cakes for both kids, so it was fun to diversify a bit and make both a "princess" cake and a "dinosaur" cake. Admittedly, it was a lot of work, but we have such wonderful friends who re-paid us with a delicious barbecued chicken dinner...complete with a spinach and strawberry salad straight from their garden.  Wonderfully worth it.

BBQ chicken, garlic mashed potatoes and spinach/strawberry salad.  Yum!

the birthday kiddos

E's princess cake.  I used "ballerina barbie" since she had a molded top already.  The cake was a 4-tier french vanilla with strawberry and butter-cream filling, and of course very pink butter-cream frosting.

Dinosaur cake.  This was a 3-tier chocolate cake with buttercream filling & frosting.  Delish!

the carnage.

Today we headed to another barbecue for 4th of July...which was hot, hot, hot.  I think it got up to 96 degrees or something this afternoon.  I was happy to return home to air-conditioning for a bit and then head back out at 9pm to watch the variety of fireworks across town from the park across from us.  It's a fun way to see everything "from above" and yet not have to deal with hordes of people (and traffic) afterwards. :)

Hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July weekend as well!

{we were just happy to not be re-living last year's July 4th fiasco}

p.s.  I had so many problems getting this post to format that I am now considering the "Big Move" to word press. Not to mention my pictures have been disappearing from old posts. Frustrating!

:: C's Birthday Party

To celebrate C's 7th b-day, he invited a few friends from his class to come over. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I quickly found that 5,6,7 year-olds have very strong opinions! It is amazing how 4 of them can quickly exhaust you.

2nd Birthday Party Highlights

The kids had fun in the inflatable deflatable pool...

and an attempt at eating lunch was made...

but ultimately birthdays are about cake!

It was a fun day, but it tuckered us all out.

 

Happy Fathers Day!

To my awesome, incredible Dad...

and to the other Fathers in my life...

 love to you all and thanks for being there!

(that "object" in front of them is my first attempt at working with fondant on cakes...
don't laugh.)

TeeVee Shmeevee

Ok, so big changes coming in the Recke household. Actually, they will be minimal for outsiders but huge for us. We have made the radical decision to end our cable subscription and move away from the hypnotizing pull of TV. Tom wants to throw the TV out with the garbage, but I've manged to coerce nudge him into at least getting a converter box to keep the local stations. What led us to this radical decision you ask? Well, lots of reasons. Number one is the permeation of Hollywood influences in which traditional family values are slowly being eroded by "new normals". Those new normals are slowly de-sensitizing us to what God wants for us, and actually leads to us convincing ourselves that those things are not harmful as long as our faith is strong. What?! I speak of TV, but I have long held this policy for movies too. I never got into the frenzy of "Harry Potter" and am very leery of "Twilight"...things of the occult just scare me, even if they are "fiction". Same goes for anything with sexual or violent over (or even under) tones. I guess this all means less movies too...

The second reason is that we see C becoming less creative in his activity. If the TV is on, no matter what is on, he is literally zoned out. It's a scary thing when we can look back at 2 years ago when he hardly cared about TV. We feel guilty for having anesthetized him with cartoons for so long now. And I guess we also see that it is dividing our family. Instead of doing things as a family, we are all retreating to our separate corners and either watching TV or playing on the computer. Not very constructive and it breaks my heart that my kids might grow up seeing more of Spongebob Squarepants than of Mommy & Daddy. So, from December 1st and on, 6-9pm is family time with no technology...except for the ipod if we have to resort to dancing contests for entertainment (E loves to dance)!

The upsides to all of this? Probably too numerous to even guess, but mostly I truly believe we will be a stronger family unit. I hope that C will develop a stronger desire to learn and read, and that will trickle down to E as she matures. We will also commit to regularly using local recreation centers (this will be more than covered with the money we save in cable bills) for exercise and developmental activities. It also will get me off my butt more since daytime TV has become somewhat of an anesthetizer for me as well! Not to mention, I will get more "me time" since the rec center offers babysitting services while I work out. Why didn't I do this sooner?!

Speaking of "me time", I have been taking cake decorating classes. I finally have my creative outlet...with the only downside being we have weekly cakes to consume. This week I downsized from the 8" round to the 6" round so that hopefully it disappears faster. What I'm finding though, the taste and smell of buttercream frosting gets old really fast. I can actually frost a cake now without keeping a spoonful for myself. Progress! I will post pictures of my most successful creations when I get a chance.

Have a great Thanksigiving everyone! Hug your family and BE THANKFUL!!

Let Them Eat cake...er, frosting!

Today was a day of creativity for me. I spent some of it re-designing my blog for no other reason than it's just fun to experiment with HTML's and templates. I'm happy with the result (facebook friends can see it by clicking on "view original post" at the end of this entry), so perhaps it will stay put for awhile.

Then it was time to make a cake for me the kids. I've been on this cake-making kick since getting hooked on the TV show "Ace of Cakes". I'm going to take classes in September for cake-decorating...mainly because I am so bored with staying home and not honing my creativity in kitchen design anymore. Actually, I'm still not sure which hobby I want to pick up: photography or cake decoration. Photography is kind of out for now because the camera I want is a Nikon DSLR and it sells for upwards of $1k. Cake decoration is cheaper, but then I know I will eventually find my kitchen too small and my oven too inefficient...which will make the camera seem cheap in comparison. I feel for Tom as he will bear the brunt of this vexing issue.

Anyway, I made a traditional white/yellowish cake with chocolate butter frosting. Not too complex, but I focused on technique more than anything. Dare I say it turned out quite nicely..?
The kids enjoyed it too...