These cupcakes are the same color as my sunburn. Well, not really. Not only is the picture a bit out of focus, it really doesn't do them justice. They are so extremely bright pink that nestled in the bright blue cupcake holder, if you look at them from above and squint just a little they look like an unfortunate sweater from the 1980s.

These beauties will be devoured by Katie's classmates tomorrow afternoon. The last day of school is Wednesday and her birthday is Friday so we're taking treats early. I really love that her school allows homemade treats, I would break my heart to have to spend a small fortune on bakery cupcakes when I can make two dozen of them in my very own kitchen for about $2.50. And, I just love food coloring paste, it gives you the brightest colors without adding any strange after-taste to the frosting.

Our weekend was good, but as usual it just flew by. Filled with grilling, sunshine, soccer and cupcake baking. The sunburn on my arms has faded quite a bit already and is not nearly as sore as it was last night. You'll be happy to know that I added a small tube of sunscreen to my purse today, now if I can just remember to apply...

4th Birthday

For Gretchen's birthday dinner we took the grandparents out to eat at our favorite pizza place in Norwalk and went to our house for cake and ice cream. Here are some pictures from the evening.


The birthday girl and her Incredible Hulk cake.

Gretchen insisted on chocolate chip cake so this is a yellow cake mix with about a cup of mini-chocolate chips added. The cake was pretty good but check out how thick the frosting is on the cake, it was a bit much.

Our girls.

Unbelievably, Gretchen will celebrate her 4th birthday on Saturday. She requested an Incredible Hulk cake and informed me that means a chocolate chip cake and green frosting.

Since there are no chocolate chip cake mixes, I added mini-chips to a yellow cake mix and about 1/2 a teaspoon of 'juniper' food coloring paste to get the frosting this green. It looks like Hershey's syrup but the writing is a tube of brown gel. I found a 5 inch Incredible Hulk figurine (action figure, I guess) for the middle and I'll add four candles tomorrow night at dinner with the grandparents.

There will be more pictures to come of the event, I just had to share the interesting cake choice.

Outta Sight Retro Night

Sunday night programming on WGN is Outta Sight Retro Night. They show episodes of I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched or some other similarly-aged show back to back for hours on end. Our girls love the shows and have all sorts of fun comments -- is she really a witch? what is she wearing!? Makes for a fun night of family tv. The last time we watched it was The Munsters, which spurred the following questions -- what is wrong with his head? why is that one lady blond? -- in my opinion The Munsters are not nearly as entertaining as The Addams Family.

Lately, it's been Outta Sight Retro Night in my kitchen. I have suddenly had a lot more time to cook and complete other household duties, which means I actually cook and my kitchen floor is clean! Italian casserole, tuna casserole, lemon pepper chicken, cucumber sandwiches, vegetable pizza, yum-yum bars. It's not as if I haven't had any of these dishes since 1980, but growing up, most of them were staples at the King house so it just kind of takes me back.

By far the best part of this recent domesticity trend is the fact that the girls have eaten it all (well, I don't know anyone that doesn't like yum-yum bars) partly due to fact that when the face twisted up as I describe tuna casserole, I pointed out the jar of peanut butter and told them they are on their own.

Katie hit a milestone on Sunday, First Communion. She was well-behaved (if reading over my shoulder she'd say 'of course!') and looked so pretty in her satin dress. After mass, we has brunch at our house for the grandparents and godparents -- scrambled eggs and bacon, Katie's favorite.



A rather windy family picture.

A close-up of just the girls.

Katie with her godparents: my sister Jill and Erik's brother Keith.

Our Little Dare-Devil

Gretchen is unstoppable. She routinely jumps instead of walks down the last two or tree steps on any staircase. She will happily climb up ladders, unable to see the top. She loves to hold on to your fingers, climb up your legs and flip over.

Lately, her favorite heart-attack inducing activity is to pump the little two person thingy on the rickety swing-set up above the fence line, all by herself. She is physically unable to slide down a slide like a normal child. Her favorite method is exactly backward, preferably in a dress.

Today, this back-fired slightly. I don't think any of us realized how much it had rained. She slid down the slide into a puddle with quite the splash. Mom, Erik and I hadn't laughed that hard in a long time. This picture is from the "hey, go do that again." While there was not much splash left the second time around, her hair has been caught mid-flip.

It is so nice to top off a busy weekend with a quiet evening. Gretchen's daycare is closed tomorrow so she is spending the night with Grandma Rena, Katie is sleeping soundly and Erik is at work. I am sitting on the couch. Ahhh, peace and quiet.

It was rather strange though, just me and Katie and it hasn't been that way for a long time. We folded laundry, she painted her toenails, I grilled a couple steaks for Erik to have tomorrow and we watched "Bedtime Stories." It was a really cute movie and ended with a Journey song -- can't go wrong with that.

We checked out Jill & Todd's new house, Erik helped Dan & Sara load furniture to move to their new house, we made pork roast, cheesecake and cupcakes for our family Easter dinners, went to church, had two egg hunts and zero naps. No egg hunt at our house this weekend, but the Easter bunny did drop off bubbles, sidewalk chalk and nailpolish along with a few pieces of candy and some quarters.

Tomorrow kicks off another busy week. While I would have preferred more sunshine and less wind, all in all it was a nice weekend - too short as usual.

Random pictures

Here is a picture of Erik's motorcycle - his new favorite thing. He has already been taking apart pieces and customizing it. Those are new tail pipes and new handlebars, re-positioned the turn signals and says he's done for now. Next up, the helmet should be here any day now and he'll be signed up for class as soon as it fits on our calendar.


One of the new hamsters -- Dasha, Mika -- pick a name, they are identical and very hard to get on film. The girls just love them, I'm quite happy with the super-absorbent, odor-free bedding.

This was found on the bookshelf in the living room, rather coated in dust. It is Erik and me taken sometime in the spring of 1997 in front of my dorm room door at Kresge Hall by my dear neighbor Becky Manchester. His shirt is bright green, mine is either red or blue, I had the same shirt in both colors. I look at it and think about how it's pre-everything. It's one of my favorite pictures of us.