Celebrating a Birthday

I think Betty Crocker would be proud. My daughter's sixth birthday party. Finally, a birthday held in my very own backyard.

A balloon wreath: 

Her Happy Birthday banner:

Her cupcakes, complete with melting icing. Not one of my proudest baking moments:

The backyard setup. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

The theme was "rainbow," which made it really easy to decorate. Mutli-colored plates and silverware. Different colored streamers (several found at a resale shop!) plus rainbow balloons.

Kids had a scavenger hunt, did "sand art" drawings on sandpaper and decorated t-shirts. Okay, most of the girls decorated shirts. The boys just reinacted Lord of the Flies with swords and anything else they could use as a weapon.

Overall, a great party. Low-key...and didn't involve Chuck E Cheese or a bouncy castle.

Demons

When I was in Junior High, I'd get hung up on the idea of "good" and "bad" days. As in, oh no, I dropped my pencil and it left a mark on my white shirt! BAD DAY BAD DAY BAD DAY!

Abort! Abort!

I finally got to the point where I stopped doing that as constantly labeling a day "good" or "bad" is really setting yourself up for something.

But, I'm serious here...I'm having a BAD DAY.

But, what can I say? When you spend your days at home with Moody and her little brother, Whiny, what do you expect? Usually, Moody sets it off. She has a bit of a controlling personality at times and if I decide not to give in to whatever demands she has at that moment, you can forget it.

All Hell breaks loose. The world will no longer spin on its axis and, also? All of the fire and damnation of 1,000 beasts is aimed right at my head.

I've been getting over being sick. So that puts me in a bit of a down mood. I'm planning a Halloween party that has quickly turned to s-h-i-t. (Spelling it out, mommy-style.) People can't come! Other people are showing up late! I can't get invitations to some people because they have stopped attending homeschool events while other people don't respond to emails.

Also...how exactly do you find someone in the phonebook when all you know her is as "Audrey's Mom?"

So with the pressure of a Halloween party that's turning to crap, the sickness that won't end and my child acting as if she's posessed by Marilyn Manson, I'm starting to lose it.

A glass jar is dropped on the floor. In that moment, every single "you're not allowed to say that" word came out of my mouth. Stupid, hate, dumb, idiot...plus a few more "choice" words that won't make it to the Internet. (No they weren't used to describe my children, but the whole situation.)

What I'm realizing about this whole "experiment" of sorts is that it gives me control. I LIKE control. Control makes me feel steady, makes me feel accomplished, even if all I accomplished is sweeping under the kitchen table after lunch.

All these little bumps in the road are taking away my control. The sickness, other people's commitments,  my child's complete and total inability to just CALM DOWN ALREADY...it just gets to me. And when I feel as if my goat is, in fact, gotten, I start slacking in other areas.

I have to learn that when things don't go right in one area that it doesn't give you a "get out of jail free" card to let it all go.

I need to turn that lack of control into a mean, lean cleaning machine. Or at least someone who can put the laundry into the washer.

Overcomitted Betty!

The past few weeks have gone by in a blur. One of my big goals when I moved here was to meet more people. I'm slowly but surely doing that...though I'm still working on the whole "follow-up" issue of turning people I meet into friends.

Such as, it is hard to follow up when that potential friend stops attending the event we met at. Do I look her email up on the group website? Do I send a carrier pigeon? Do I show up on her driveway, a la "Say Anything" with a boombox over my head? And what, exactly, do I do if I don't have a boombox? I don't even have an iPod.

I guess I shall bring my laptop and aim it at her house.

I offered to make a cake for my friend's son's 4th birthday party. Here's the deal: It was a Star Wars theme. Knowing better then just to wing it at the last minute, I spent every waking moment Googling "Star Wars cakes" and testing them at home.

My life became one big fondant covered cake wreck.

Finally, with the clock ticking down, I had a "Hail Mary" moment and discovered marshmallow fondant and the concept of kneading the dough until it was not sticky anymore.

Just after I finished that cake, I had to start in on lesson plans for my daughter's homeschool co-op. A co-op basically is like school, but you only go for one class and all the kids are homeschooled. I offered to teach the lesson on Texas for this geography class...which quickly turned into a lesson on Texas, Oklaohoma and Arkansas.

It was so hard for me not to say "Arkansas! It is where the Duggars come from!"

Gah, I love me some Duggars. Mama Duggar is my hero. How she manages to stay sane and still have time to boink Papa Duggar is beyond me. I'd love to spend a day with them...though it probably won't happen know that I said "boink Paper Duggar."

By the time the co-op class came around, I was sick. As much as I kept waiting for it to turn into Pig Flu, all I got was a sinus infection. Unfortunately for these kids, when I get sick, I totally lose my ability to think. I'm like "Uh, Texas. Um...oil? I have no idea what oil is! I'm sick! Wanna hear about that?"

I hope to never speak of Arkansas again. Really. I'm still recovering from the dismal failure that was my ability to teach anything worth learning.

If I've learned anything these past few weeks...it is that anything worth doing is worth covering in fondant. Speaking of doing things, this Spring I'm teaching a class on the Holocaust for the co-op. Now, if I could just figure out how to combine that with fondant...I'd be a happy lady.