End of an Army Era

Today was my husband's last Army drill.

The official retirement date on his orders is the 15th, but today was supposed to be his retirement ceremony. That bit of formal recognition of 21 years of military service was canceled by the current pandemic along with everything else. It was supposed to happen between 11:30 and 12:30 central time, as our handy online calendar notified us this morning.

Cakes and Cards! (2019)

We don't start doing holiday-specific things until all the kids' birthdays are over. From mid-November through mid-December, life is a lot of cakes. Then we immediately switch to cards. I ask my kids every year if they really want to crank out a hundred homemade cards again, or if we can just take a picture or skip it. They always want to make cards.

Lots of creativity and construction in our house! Here's the recap of how all of it went. (And no, we haven't dug out of all the mess yet, but at least our tree is up before Christmas.)

First cake of the season was for Quinn just before Thanksgiving. He didn't want a party with friends, but liked the idea of doing something new with the family, so we took him axe throwing. That was a blast. There is a great place a few blocks from our house where they have bouncy houses for all ages, air hockey, pinball, laser tag, and axe throwing. Made for a great day! But there wasn't much of a theme to build a cake around, and Quinn didn't want an axe cake. He just wanted to be surprised, and insisted he'd like whatever I made.


What does the kid like? Cereal. So I went the easy route and simply decorated his cake with cereal.

Ian was nice enough to separate out all the generic brand Fruit Loops by color for me, and we stayed up late and watched TV while I put cereal all over the cake. (My impulse was to mix up all the colors because that would look pretty to me, but Quinn likes order and patterns, so I decided concentric rings in rainbow order was the way to go. Random fact: blue was the rarest of the colors to sort out, and orange is in abundance. Additional random fact: all fruit loops taste the same, regardless of color, and despite what your mind wants you to believe.)

Quinn was surprised and super happy with his cake. (Which was chocolate inside, by the way. He always wants chocolate inside.)

Next up! Mona's cake. She turned 16 this year, and didn't want a friend party either, but did decide it would be fun to go glow bowling out in The Dells with family, so we made a day of it at the end of Thanksgiving weekend along with her uncle and cousin.

Mona did know what she wanted her cake to look like, but told me if it was too hard I didn't have to do it. I like a challenge, however, so it took three tries, but I did it!





Behold the Piñata cake!



We watch a lot of "Nailed It" on Netflix, and on the Mexican version they made little piñata cakes, so I thought I knew what to do. But no. I tried valiantly to make it all out of cake, but no matter how short I made the legs or how many skewers I used to try and support them, those cakes simply collapsed.


I wound up making the legs out of the cake box cut in half, and sculpting the head and ears out of rice crispy treats. Even then, frosting the cake took so much time that I had to take a break and put the cake in the freezer for a while so the ears would stay up.

 

Piping all that frosting on took forever and really wore out my hands, but it was worth it. Because look how cute it came out!


Mona whooped when she saw it, and she laughed, and then she cried, and then she took a million pictures. Totally worth all the work. Plus, when we cut into it, it was full of candy. I hope I never have to make a piñata cake again, but if I do, I will know how to make it work.





 

Here is my one genius tip I can share that I figured out while doing the piñata cake: If you need to switch colors of frosting in the piping bags, but still need the same tip over and over? Put the tip in its own bag and switch out the bags full of colored frosting into that one. Professionals probably have multiples of the same tips, but I don't, so when I realized I could just put a bag inside another bag and go from color to color easily, I was rather proud of myself.


The last cake was Aden's, which she made again herself for the annual "Food for Thought" fundraiser for the Hunger Task Force at her school. She won first place the last three years (her freshman year for her dragon/geode cake, next for her candy sushi plate, and last year for her working chess set). And while looking for links I realized I never posted about her chess board cake, so here's a peek at last year's cake, with pieces all made from modeling chocolate:

We joked this year she should simply make a cake in the shape of a first place trophy. As funny an idea as that was, Aden is too modest for that, so she went with a sandcastle.

 


Aden's sandcastle cake utilized most of my failed piñata cake attempts. (Lest anyone think we were being wasteful!) She kneaded together the crumbled cake with icing the way you do when making cake pops, and sculpted the outer structure of her sandcastle. There were failed attempts to build tall towers using the rice crispy treats that weren't sound enough to survive being transported to her school before she settled on the lower design. The center of the cake was regular cake. The turrets were made of ice cream cones. Everything was covered with icing, then coated with graham cracker crumbs. Aden made her own modeling chocolate to create all the shells and pearls. (She wanted company when she stayed up late the last night to finish it all, so she let me paint all her little shells with food coloring.)


The sandcastle cake was heavy, as well as spectacular. And yes, she won first place again. She even got an extra award for having participated in the fundraiser all four years of her time in high school. (Personally, I think having four amazingly decorated cakes are a cool addition to her portfolio for college.)

 


 




With cakes finally finished, we set in on holiday cards.

I had a thought to make some simple trees out of pretty paper and leave it at that. We make so many, I find it easier if they are basic and identical. But my kids made all of them this year, and the three of them kept switching places in the assembly line (mostly because when Mona gets slap-happy the cards get weird and the other two object, although personally I like the weird). So all the cards are really different from each other this year. And several ended up being assembled upside-down, so if you're someone on our list who gets one of those, it's not some kind of "holiday in crisis" message like an upside-down flag. It's just...kids. They may be 18, 16, and 13 now, but definitely still kids.

Here is a sampling of how some of these cards came out:

It's been a busy birthday/holiday season. Lots of concerts and recitals, lots of people coming and going. One of the best parts of performing at this time of year, is we usually get to do it in some pretty beautiful venues. I never take that for granted.



We even got a new mirror ball for the living room as our family present this year. (Yes, we have a mirror ball year round in our living room.) The old mirror ball's motor died, so we upgraded to a bigger ball. Too big a one, actually, since my brain didn't fully comprehend what going from an 8-inch diameter ball to a 16-inch ball really meant. We also ordered a separate motor with a super handy remote control, but it was REALLY fast (30-something revolutions a minute), so we returned both the giant ball and the fast motor for a more reasonable sized ball (12 inches), and a nice slow motor (about 4 rmp).

So it's been a season full of lights and music and laughter and family, and I don't know what more anyone could want. Well, better health for a few of us. We are hoping for everyone feeling fine in the new year. Beyond that? We're great. Hope you are, too.

Happy Everything, and we'll catch up again in 2020.

All the Birthdays

Birthday season is done!  During the two minutes I have between that and trying to assemble everything for Christmas, here is an overstuffed recap:

The first birthday of the season is Quinn's just before Thanksgiving.  I was in Cleveland that week, but I did get to talk to him for a bit on the phone.  We played twenty questions where he had to guess what I was looking at outside my hotel window.  It was giant plastic birds, so it took a while.

"Happy" Memorial Day

I have a friend for whom wishes of a "Happy Memorial Day" or a "Happy Veterans' Day" really grate on her nerves.  These are not bubbly greeting card holidays.  They are meant to be secular versions of true "holy days" used to contemplate sacrifices made on our behalf.  For many they are simply a chance to enjoy a little time off, but my son finds it amusing that people could overlook their intended meaning and usually takes a moment to try and suppress laughter while saying, "Hey, Mom!  'Happy' Memorial Day!"

I don't usually write posts on Memorial Day.  I felt obligated to do so when I was a blogger for Babble and their only resident military family voice, and this post on the subject still expresses how I feel most accurately.  But I decided I will take a moment today to acknowledge what things have changed, for better or worse, since I wrote that Memorial Day post back in 2010.

Accepting the Fat Pants

It's not been an easy go since summer.  There are many good things to be grateful for, but a combination of grief and chronic pain has undermined my world in a way that some things have had to give.  The main thing is I don't have the mental energy to be disciplined about what I'm eating.  It makes me sad, but I don't know what else to do.

It seems wrong that you can undo a lot of work so quickly.  It took a year to get my weight down to where it should be, and a matter of weeks to go back.  Not that I'm all the way back, but enough that I can't fit into what I was using as my regular clothes for a while.  I saved out one pair of bigger pants when I lost weight and now they are they only pants that fit.  I will try to get myself under control enough that I don't outgrow those.

Cake Wreck 2013

I'm officially declaring Aden's cake this year a big failure.  (Emphasis on the word "big.")

This is okay for two reasons:  First, for all those people who somehow think I can do anything it's nice to show I can't, and second, disaster tales are way more fun to tell than success stories.  So come see how badly cake making can go!

Aden wanted a Minecraft themed cake, and she decided she wanted it to look like a crafting table from the game.  I didn't know what that was, but found this (unfolded) image online:

Essentially it's just a cube with pixelated images laid out in a 16 X 16 grid on each side.  As far as cake shapes go, a cube didn't sound bad.  But our first mistake was deciding how big to make each side.  Ten inches sounded like a simple number.  (Heh.  Lesson one: Smaller is better.  Smaller may have worked.  In retrospect, eight inches tops would have been the way to go.)

My plan was to make a cube of layer cake, frost it, and stick pages of sugar paper on that I'd paint appropriately with food coloring.  Sounded time-consuming, but doable.  But then the store did not have enough sugar paper.

Mona-Rama

My Mona is ten!  How can my baby girl be ten?  

Since Thanksgiving fell so late this year, Mona had the chance to have extended family at her birthday party.  I told her we could arrange a friend party if she wanted it, but she liked Quinn's birthday adventure in Chicago and wanted something similar.  We declared it an extended Mona birthday weekend, and spent a day with visiting relatives at the Field Museum, and on their last morning in town we threw a breakfast party with crepes and a chocolate fountain before everyone headed for home.  We spent the rest of that day exploring the Museum of Science and Industry and had a blast.

For Mona's actual birthday this week she took cupcakes to school, got to pick where we went to dinner (who knew she liked Culver's that much?) and I baked her a cake.  I love having the chance to bake interesting cakes for my kids.  Mona didn't decide until the day before her birthday what she wanted this year, though.  She wanted a cake in the shape of a Mold-A-Rama from our collection and thankfully she chose probably the easiest one to turn into a cake: the Space Shuttle figure from the Museum of Science and Industry.

Mold-A-Ramas at the Willis Tower, and Quinn Turns Seven

Do you know the story of the Taoist Farmer?  I heard it the first time in a martial arts class many years ago.  The version of the story I remember is that the farmer's horse runs away, which seems like bad luck, but then the horse returns with two wild horses, which seems like good luck.  Then one of the wild horses throws the farmer's son breaking the boy's leg which seems like bad luck, until all the able-bodied men in the village are soon conscripted into war.

Quinn's recent birthday felt like that all day.  There were both figurative and literal ups and downs, actual dark clouds along with rainbows and tears.  It was exhausting, and not a birthday we are likely to forget.

When I asked Quinn a few weeks ago what he'd like to do for his seventh birthday he was ambivalent.  Since he could take or leave a friend party, I decided we should just stick with family and do something interesting.  I suggested a trip to the Willis Tower (still the Sears Tower in my heart) for a trip to the Sky Deck and to add the two Mold-A-Ramas they offer there to our collection.  He loved the idea.

My thought was that if we were going to make the visit to the Willis Tower for Mold-A-Ramas at some point anyway, may as well tie the overpriced experience to an important moment.  I figured every time we drive through Chicago in the future we will see that famous skyscraper and remember celebrating Quinn turning seven.  What could go wrong?

Well, the weather, of course.  We woke up to rain, and wondered if driving all the way to Chicago just to look at the inside of a cloud at 1,353 feet up in the air was worth the trouble.  With the Museum of Science and Industry as a backup plan we decided to chance it.

By the time we reached Chicago the clouds had broken up and we decided to the top of the Willis Tower we would go.  We parked several blocks away, enjoyed a windy walk downtown, made our way through several lines to buy tickets (Ian was free with his military I.D.!) and wait for an elevator, and then we were on the Sky Deck.

It really is amazing.  Pricey enough I doubt we'll do it again, but certainly worth doing once.  The views every direction are tremendous, and there are four glass decks that protrude a few feet out from the building so you can look down to the ground underneath you from where you are standing.  The kids all felt very brave.

Beehive Cake

I'm working on a post about my wonderful brother's wonderful wedding this weekend.  But there is a lot to say and I need more time to think about it.

In the meantime, let me tell you about the cake we made for the event.  My brother is an entomologist, and wasn't interested in a traditional wedding cake.  But my mom is an incredible cook and my kids and I like to decorate desserts, so we decided to team up on the cake for my brother's big day.  We weren't entirely sure how much cake we'd need, so I thought it made sense to create a cake and supplement with cupcakes.

For a guy who does research on bees it sounded fun to make a beehive as the main cake, and put bees and flowers on cupcakes surrounding it.  My mom even made alternating layers of chocolate and yellow cake so the inside of the cake would be striped like a bee.

My mom baked cakes in different sized round pans, and for the top we used half of a special baking tin I have for making a giant cupcake.  Unfortunately, the dog got to two of the layers while they were cooling on the kitchen table and mom had to bake two more.  (I'm not entirely sure Chipper has gotten back into mom's good graces yet.)

Let them eat one last cake (Babble)

Aden’s recent birthday party went really well, but it occurred to me as I was trying to fall asleep that night that it was almost a disaster.  By the skin of our teeth did it work out.
But first of all, this is what Aden looks like at nine.  It is blowing my mind that she is nine already.  I remember her as a tiny thing in the hospital, and my precious baby learning to walk and talk, and then run and dance and play with friends and become a big sister and go to school and oh my god now she’s nine.

For Aden’s cake this year she wanted a marble cake with chocolate ganache and cut strawberries in the middle layer, butter cream frosting, and pink fondant.  I was new at most of that, but it came out okay.  I made my own fondant which tasted pretty good, but my husband and I slipped a bit getting it onto the actual cake after I rolled it out, and I ended up making some pink icing to pipe all over the place to hide the seams and cracks.  Aden was happy with it so that’s all that mattered.  She put on all the little candy pearls and sprinkles and candles.

 

Anyway, the party crisis was this: I had Aden make her own invitations and be responsible for handing them out at school.  Two nights before the party I asked her who was coming, and not only wasn’t she sure, but she said three of the invites never made it out of her backpack.  It was after 8:30 in the evening, so I made her call the mom of each of the girls in question and ask if they were available for the party (which they were). 

Now, initially Aden told me she wanted a small, quiet party, maybe even with her being able to serve hot cocoa from her tea set for fun.  But she made about eight invitations, which with my three kids adds up to a lot of kids.  The only guests who actually showed up for the party were the three I made her call. 

The party was perfect.  Three girls turned out to be the perfect number to have over.  That made six kids gathered around the dining room table, and they made their own pizzas and while the pizzas baked the kids played Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and then a sort of makeshift two team version of Pictionary.  (That game was adorable, because Quinn was the ‘hat’ that held the slips of paper telling people what to draw, and for some reason they couldn’t all sit back to watch the person drawing, they all kept jumping up to gather close to the easel.)

In any case, they all had a great time, they made great pizzas, they were happy with the games, Aden got to serve cocoa in her little teacups, the cake was fine, and Aden just smiled and smiled and occasionally jumped up and down with sheer joy.  It could not have been nicer.  Except that at the end of the day it finally hit me that if I hadn’t made her call those friends a couple of nights before the party, there would have been no one there.  Can you imagine how tragic that would have been for Aden to be waiting by the goody bags she put together to hand out, standing among her carefully hung streamers and balloons and have no one come?  Agh!  I’m not sure exactly what happened to all the other invitations. 

I know one of the kids who came to Mona’s party had simply put that invitation up on his fridge without mentioning it to his mom until the night before, and she panicked and gave me a call and I told her it was not too late to RSVP and of course he could come.  I’m sure lots of Aden’s invitations will show up during winter break backpack cleanings.  But as I say, it was a perfect little party and exactly what Aden wanted.  I just can’t believe how close it came to being a really disappointing day instead.  I think next year I will follow up on the guest list a little more closely.

I can’t believe I’ve been a mom for nine years.   It’s gone by so fast and yet feels like forever.

I love my Aden.