Number 10

This is always such a busy time of year for our family as it is the season of vacations, holidays, and birthdays. Daylor's 10th birthday is at the end of September. It gets harder as the kids grow older trying to pick out themes that are age appropriate and still fun. Daylor has been playing the piano for a couple of years and absolutely has a gift for it. He's written multiple songs and insists on practicing at least an hour a day. So, in light of his enjoyment of it he chose to have a piano/keyboard theme.


Now, we are not the type folks that go all out for parties. I have some friends who throw their kids AMAZING parties for their children. They make extraordinary invitations and party favors and games and decorations - every detail is thought of and it is so beautiful! Me, well, I have learned to accept that I might be in the minority of my buddies who throw birthday parties. Pretty much my kids are lucky if they get birthday hats! That doesn't mean we don't plan and put an emphasize on their birthday's because we do! Our parties are just a bit more (OK, a lot more) understated, but we still have a blast!! At our house, the party is ALL about the cake!

If you will remember this post from earlier this year about my relationship with the confection, I challenge myself each time to make something creative and beyond what I think I can do. This year I made my largest cake yet! A 3 foot 3 inch keyboard cake. Probably one of the most fun I've ever done!



I found a picture on line where someone had used Kit-Kat's as the black keys on a regular 13x9 sized piano cake, but it looked funky and off-balanced. So, I borrowed their idea and put 3 sheet pans together to make it life sized. This made the Kit-Kat keys look much more realistic. I iced the chocolate first after I marked on the cake how far to come down, then followed with the white icing. After waiting about 20 minutes for the icing to harden up some, I took a kabob skewer and using a ruler, I measured the keys one inch apart. I used the edge of the skewer to make the impressions of the spaces between the keys on top and in the front of the cake. Then, I placed my Kit-Kats down. For the decorations, I used several flavors of Tic- Tacs, upside down Hershey's Kisses, and white Mentos for blinky lights and the knobs. The volume had to be ten, of course for Daylor's age, but it took some serious self control not to bump it up one more to eleven (for those of you who have no clue what I talking about, you would have to see the movie Spinal Tap to understand. And yes, I am THAT old.).



Because we had just come home from vacation we decided to have a family only small party where Daylor got all kinds of great stuff he loved!

The cake is always a surprise for them and Daylor seemed to get a kick out of seeing his keyboard in edible form.

After gift opening and cake and ice cream, Daylor gave us a concert of some of the music he has been writing and Perri did a little interpretive dancing for the family.

Then the kids got thier worship team together and sang a few tunes to end the night out.

We had a wonderful time and Daylor had a great birthday!

DisneyWorld - Finally!

Yay, me! Two posts in a week! Trying to get back into the swing of things! So, today's pictures are of the Magic Kingdom. This was the day I was most looking forward to! I wanted to see the kids eyes as we first saw the castle and watch them be bewildered by the front gates and beyond of Main Street. I have to say, my little fairy tale of what it would be like never happened.

We woke up that morning in plenty of time to get ready and get to the MK. I had envisioned Perri all dressed up in her Cinderella gown that her grandmother had made her with her hair swept-up and encased in her tiny tiara. After all, we had reservations to have breakfast with the princess herself at 9:40. I thought we would have loads of time getting pictures of the kids as they walked through the gates all wide-eyed and innocent. Blah, blah, blah.

Instead, that morning when we put on Perri's gown and she informs me (after wearing it for almost the entire week before we left) that it was now "itchy" and she really would "prefer for it to stay home this time." Her exact words. Alrighty, then. Let's just put your hair up and wear your crown. "Ummm. I think I just would prefer for Cinderella to see how long it is, so I would like to wear it down." Translation - "Mommy, it hurts like h. e. double hockey sticks when you put my hair up so I will officially throw a fit if you so as much show me a hairpin." (Deep sigh of surrender. ) So, not wanting to upset the morning, I decided that it could be her choice and went with just the crown. Whatever.

Well, the little altercation cost us about 30 minutes, so we had to book it to the park. Our reservations were at 9:40. We walked, umm, ran through Main Street pushing photographers and tourists out of the way to get to the castle on time. Fortunately, we made it just in time. Not exactly how I pictured it, but that's OK. It was still wonderful.

It was such a great day. The kids were so well behaved and precious to watch. So, here are a few shots of our first day in the Magic Kingdom. Day three will be coming soon!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Hello!

Wowsers! It's been awhile, hasn't it? It's not that I don't love you anymore, it's just I have been sooo busy! I have so much I need to catch up on with you, birthdays, pumpkin patch stories, tons-o-stuff, but it's probably going to take some time!

First, I know I still owe you some Disney World pictures. I have SO MANY, so it's been a bit overwhelming trying to figure out how to show them to you without boring you to death and also trying to get the time to edit all of them. I think since I know some of you will not want to scroll throw a ton of images on my blog I am going to show them in a slide show format. And don't worry I just picked out my favorites. I won't make you suffer through all of them!

Doing a slide show kinda sucks though because the slide shows sometimes boogers up the pictures and distorts them, but what can you do? So, I am going to divide our vacation days up and do a show for each. Please feel free to skip them if you get tired of hearing about Mickey Mouse!

The first set of photos is of Sea World. Again, sorry the some of the photos of fuzzy - it makes me vomit in my mouth a bit, because I am a perfectionist when it come to my pictures and they don't really look like that, but again, trying to get over it.

So, enjoy! I will post day 2 of of vacation soon! Miss you guys and hope to get caught up soon!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Happy Birthday 6th birthday to our precious princess. You are a joy and are ever so loved!

Double Digits

September 29th, 1999 at 3:26 in the morning my life changed forever. I went from being a daughter, wife, and sister to a daughter, wife, sister, and now, mother. Four weeks early, the tiniest baby I had ever seen, much less held, was placed in my arms and forever the make-up of the Balentine household was repurposed. I remember packing up the 4lb. 10 oz. sleeping bundle and putting him in his carseat thinking what do I do now? He's so tiny. He's so fragile. He's so perfect.

The days following were exhausting and scary, but amazing and wonderful.

Now here we are entering the double digits in age, an official "tween", and how the time has flown. He's no longer that tiny little bundle as he stands taller than my shoulders. He no longer is fragile as he can "throw down" with the best of 'em. And although he isn't perfect in character, he strives everyday to please his Maker and that makes him perfected in Christ. I adore this boy and the past 10 years has been the best of my life.

I am grateful for the gift of you, Daylor. We are so glad God chose us to be your parents. We look forward to what God has planned for your life. Happy birthday, D! We love you so much!

I Heart Disney World!

It's great to be home!!! I'm having a hard time believing we have been back almost a week. We had such an amazing time and it flew by in a blink of an eye. In fact, I have been feeling a bit off kilter because we have been planning and saving and planning and saving for almost two years and now that it's over, I am not sure what to do with myself. But with two birthdays in the next two weeks, Trick-or-Treat, Thanksgiving, and Christmas around the corner, I am sure that feeling won't last long!

I REALLY love Disney World! Everything about it is completely over the top and fabulous. The kids had such a great time, but I think it's the most exhausted they have ever been in their lives.



We were also able to visit Sea World and head to Sarasota to spend some time with some precious friends of ours. It was a wonderful, amazing, and busy trip! I ready to go back!

I took TONS of pictures. As in 1000's. I will try not to bore you with all of them, but I will be posting several as the weeks go by so you can get a taste of all we were able to do and see! It's going to take me awhile to get them up, so I am just going to spread them out over several posts.

So, until I get caught up here are just a few pictures!

I look forward to sharing more with you in the next couple of weeks!

"Lack of Planning..."

"...on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine." One of my favorite sayings. And truly, lack of planning, for the most part, is not something I struggle with. You are talking to one serious control freak here. Planning is an essential part of my life. I am learning that if planning ahead is not done I go completely nuts and have nervous breakdowns with temper tantrums following to cope with the fact that others are not nearly as obsessive compulsive organized as I am and that is really OK. But for me, I am built to plan. I think that's why I was a wedding planner for 20 years and I had my entire wedding planned by the time I was 13. It's in my bloooood.

There are 3 general rules for the subject of planning.

1. Planning must begin several weeks if not months, even better years, prior to an event. Don't even try to come to me the day prior to an event. I can do it, but you're going hear about it.
2. There MUST be lists. Lots and lots of them.
3. Everything must be entered into a Excel spreadsheet.

See? TOTAL control freak.

And our vacation to Disney this year has been no exception. We booked and started saving for this trip in February of 2008. That's almost two years ago. I had the tickets a year in advance and our reservations for meals 3 months in advance (only because they wouldn't let me do it any sooner.) I had a house sitter booked (my sweet brother), my dog sitters booked (my parents) and had a the "Big Reveal" for the kids planned by last Christmas. I've gathered books, bought a Disney planner folder and typed out itineraries. (Do let me interject and say I have not planned out our days minute by minute for this trip - just what parks we will be at on each day and where our reservations are. We are on vacation, ya know!)

AND I started packing two weeks ago. I absolutely LOVE packing! I know. I need therapy.

Here's just some of the stuff we are taking. Oh - and see that white tee with the red polka dots in the middle of the pic and the Children's Place bag in the photo below? That's what I can't wait to show you. It's my latest "craft crush!!" Can't show you yet, because I am not finished with them, but I can tell you I am absolutely addicted!! You'll have to wait!

See that cute little smocked Cinderella dress? Love it!! Picked it up at a sweet consignment sale here in town, another obsession of mine. Perfect for breakfast with Cindy!

Here's an image of just a few of my brochures, books that I am borrowing, maps, and my cutie- patootie folder where I keep the most important thing -MY LISTS! Oh, and other minor things like reservation confirmations and tickets and stuff. Just minor things.

So there you have it. I hope you still love me despite the fact you have just found out that I am a planning maniac! We are just about ready to hit the road.

We leave in just a few days, so I may be offline for awhile, but I will try to post when I can. I'll miss you guys and will be back soon! Mickey Mouse, here we come!!