no words just pics... maybe words later ok, words now

Snow at the party Brian's work put on for kids. You can see Stephen in the upper left corner in brown if you look.

Here's Stephen, he loved the snow.

Sassy on a rare visit into the house.

Ethan riding a duckie in the mall.

More snow.

Giant yard penguin

Stephen riding motorcycle in the mall. He has told every single person we have seen sense then about this ride.

Your attempts to resist the cuteness are futile.

This missionary made Stephen his companion. He even got Stephen to share his testimony.

Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh.

love is in the air.

Ethan fell in love with the baby girl in front of us in line at the grocery store. She fell for him too. Luckily their love affair got plenty of time to blossom because the line was LONG and SLOW. She was blonde and he called her "Baby" and she giggled and he giggled and threw his head back and, I'm not lieing, winked at her! Stephen said, "Ethey you are silly, dat girl" and the girl laughed more. There was no one else on earth besides each other. Then her mommy paid for the groceries and her daddy carried her out of the Winn-Dixie and it was over. Thankfully the joys of the park were just what Ethan needed to get over his lost love.

here is an unrelated pic of the loverboy:

Look at those blue eyes, how could the grocery store girl resist?

juice

S: what is it mommy?
M: What is what? *not really paying attention*
S: This? *points to pic in magazine I can't see it from where I'm sitting*
M: mmm?
S: Maybe it's fart juice?

Yesterday's cake...

Um.. I hope you didn't write down yesterday's instructions for cake.

1. that is too tall of a cake recipe for how moist it is.

2. with just pudding in the layers there is nothing to hold it all together.

3. ganache doesn't dry fast enoug h to form a shell around the rapidly crumbling cake and hold it in a cake shape.

4. it's a MESS.

here are photos: before any icing, just falling apart in the fridge

some of the mess I got to clean up

More mess for me

The cake after being iced with the ganache

Final disposition. I scraped it all into that 9x12 pan and put it in the fridge, it tastes awesome, so I'm going to serve it with bowls and spoons.

See the cupcakes in there? The cupcakes came out just fine. I will definately do this recipe again but as cupcakes only. Now on the cupcakes, I couldn't get the andes chip pudding to go through my bizmark tip (which I use to get filling inside cupcakes) so I slipped one andes mint candy into each warm cupcake, then spooned ganache on top. This worked fine. I would probably put the candy in when the cake is hot next time so it melts into it more.

Did I mention that it all tastes awesome though? It's really very good.

Today's cake

today we are making an andes mint cake.

Get ready to be tempted:

chocolate cake, 4 layers, they all have andes mint baking chips stirred in.
filling is chocolate pudding with, you guessed it, andes mint chips stirred in
All stacked up, following along?
Then instead of sugary frosting...
chocolate ganache poured over the top.

whole thing goes in the fridge, it's served cold.

garnish with a few andes mint candies if you are so inclined. Go ahead and stick them on when the ganache is still warm and soft.

notes: I used cake mix (cheater!!), two mixes will fill 2 8inch pans to the 3/4 point (can't go much over that or you will get ugly cake) AND make 9 cupcakes. It's good to make 9 cupcakes because you can eat them without cutting into your cake.


photos later, cakes are in the oven right now.

feeling better.

My tummy is still tender, but I'm feeling MUCH better.

We have a big Christmas party this weekend. I have tons of cleaning to do before then. ARRGG. Do you think our friends will love us just as much if I don't clean?

Anyhow here are some photos:

Afriad of Cake

We hear Stephen crying in his room.

He has nightmares so we go in.

He never opens his eyes for this conversation:


S: I hate it.
M: What do you hate?
S: I hate cake. (sounds scared)
M: Don't worry, I won't let the cake get you.

He falls back asleep as I give him his puppies.


Oh and on an unrelated note Brian and I have food poisoning and I think we may die.

New format and tags

Ok, there is a new addition to this blog

Stephenisms. If Ethan starts putting more than one word together and making sentences he will get his own tags. The tags are the lables at the end of the posts. I will type, "Stephenism" when that's one, then later you can click that and get ALL the cute things together.

These posts will be WAY more frequent than my normal postings because they come up almost every day. I tell my friends and they all say, "Erin you HAVE to write this down". So instead of that I'm gonna type them here and we can all enjoy them.

Ok, Stephenism number one:

Stephen is eating goldfish crackers in a bowl and comes up to me.

I want one of course (they are like crack)

I say, "Can I have a cracker?"

S: No

M: Please

S: I guess nope

M: Well then you are a stinker fart

S: Well then I'm a sninker fart, but you no have crackers


I guess he told me

More soon...

We are all sick here. I will write more later, but for now enjoy this photo:

If you don't know this is my step-mom Sue, Brian, Stephen, Santa, Ethan, Me, and my Daddy.

Short cute story:

Stephen wants some play doh for Christmas. I have it on good authority that Santa will bring some to the house. Stephen is not totally pleased with this. I told him when we went to see this Santa that he can tell him about the play doh in person. Stephen marched right up to him and when Santa asked what he wants he said, "Play doh!" Santa said that sounded very nice and he would try to bring some. Stephen looked around... Then we took the pics. Then Santa gave us nice puzzles out of his bag. Stephen said, "No Santa, I want Play Doh!" and then tried to trade out his puzzle for Play Doh. I had to explain that Santa will come to our house and bring the play doh there.

Ring around the Rosies

For your viewing enjoyment.

Have you been ELFed?

Check this out


http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=9509310109

It's Brian, Ethan, Me, and Stephen as elves dancing for you. :)

sorry it's been so long. *hangs head in shame*

Our camera is on the fritz, we are refusing to admit that we need a new one. We insist we just need new batteries, they keep loosing charge in like two minutes. So the point is that we are not taking the camera anywhere and we are a run around in our bed clothes all day family so we don't take lots of pics here at home.

But I do have some I had not shown you and here they are:


This next photo Stephen took, he's taking up photography.
In other news me and the tots got colds last week. No shocker there we always get colds. We are pretty much over it.

Stephen can open all doors now even with those child proof thingies on them. It's a problem, like this morning at 8 I hear something and go look and he's unlocking and opening the FRONT door! So we are going to put a latch lock at the top of that. It's super classy like we live in a NYC apartment or something. Also we are going to put a baby gate up on the hall so Stephen can only get in his two rooms. It's like he's on lock down but I'm sure you can imagine the trouble he gets into when we are still sleeping. He's sneaky too, he doesn't even try to wake us up.

Ethen is sweet and growing and cute as usual. He's a super wild monkey child though and we are considering getting him that kid leash you see around. Because he's always getting away from us in stores and stuff. (remember that video I posted where he makes a break for it)

I taught a class at the Local Stamp Store yesterday that went really well. It was a huge involved class, I was worried that would be a problem, but it was good.

Well Stephen is at the computer now and he thinks that the computer is just an animal photo generator so I guess I'd better go google some cute animals.

Halloween Party at Brian's work.

We took the boys to a Halloween Party at Brian's work tonight. Here's photos:

That's Ethan doing a sack toss game.
Stephen checking out his "loot".

Ethan is a very scarry lion! :)

Stephen with Captian America

Me wrangling the boys. (took off the super hot costumes to reveal these outfits)

Video of Ethan escaping... as usual:

random:



Stephen lables all his burps as "Yummy" or "Yucky". Yesterday we had Xander over and for some reason Xander was burping a lot. Stephen kept asking, "Xander, dat burp yummy?" But Xander never answered.

House of Cold

Me and the boys all have colds today.

here's pics:
Stephen took the above photo, pretty cool shot.

Trip to the Zoo

They are stinking cute!

Bath time!

Look at the filth! This is what happens if you don't take the banana away from Ethan the second he's done.

Stephen is having fun today playing with magnet letters. He will take one letter and come up to me and say, "Mommy what IS this thing?" "That's an "M" baby" "oh.... I love it "M"!!!"

But right now because Ethan is on the prowl Stephen can't stick them on the fridge like he likes, because "The Brother" will pull them off, so he's playing fetch with his little brother. Throwing a letter and saying, "Go get it brother" then playing really fast until Ethan gets back with the letter. Do I allow him to treat his brother like a dog? I mean, everyone's enjoying themselves...

Now I just wonder if I can get them to pick up all these letters before bath time. Which we need to have very soon before Ethan turns into a banana.

Seminole Pride! And a hug too.

I had the boys in their FSU shirts so I thought I'd better take some pics.

And a little video too!

Space Cowboy

We have taken to calling Ethan a "Space Cowboy" because he gets his luvin on the run. If you've spent time with him you know just what that means!

And I cut Stephen's hair last night. SHORT. *sick of cutting it all the time* He looks older to me, I think I like it though.

He likes it so that's good.

Cruise News

The cruise was good. I missed the babies tons. I will not take another vacation without them. We will just wait a few years until they are old enough to go and enjoy it.

Our ship. From Marcia's car as she was dropping us off.
Going under the Dames Point Bridge, seemed like we barely made it!
Brian after snorkling in Freeport. At formal night dinner. We had great couples at our table for dinner.
Brian in Nassau.
Our ship doing a boat drill. Brian took this pic, I was trying to nap but kept hearing, "This announcement is for crew only, CREW ONLY, now lower life boats 1, 2, 4, 6, and 7" or whatever. I am glad they drill it though, good to know those suckers work.
On our "Fun Ship Day at Sea" which was Sunday we had REALLY bad waters, the captian said it was 45 mile an hour winds with 10-15 swells. Our room was really far forward and also low and we actually dipped below the wave line at times! We had to get up higher because it was just too tippy down there. A LOT of people were sick on that day. Even a bunch of the crew. And they canceled the evening dance show it was so bad. There were green people laying around on the decks and everything. Thank heavens Brian and I didn't feel too sick. Our friend we met Allison who was at our table was 3 months pregnant and she didn't make it through the dinner.
This is what our room looked like. (yea, dat's the cheap room!)





Here is a video of me learning a Hip Hop Dance. I'm in the red shirt with the denim skirt. (there is no sound on the video)

Stephen is so cute, they were both happy to see us home, although they had a great time with their Gramma, but Stephen knew we were on a cruise ship. I told him I missed him and next time I'd take him with me. He seems to think JUST he and I are going next time and that we are leaving tomorrow or something! teeheehee. Apparently while I was gone they were fine except two times Ethan found a picture of me and cried and carried it around for a bit. That's sad, but heart warming too. OH this is funny apparently at one point my mom was trying to get Stephen to pee on the potty and while she was fussing with him Ethan peed on her foot!