Memorial Day Weekend

I love nice, long weekends! Especially when the weather turns out to be gorgeous!!

Let's see....Saturday morning I went to the gym then after Avery didn't nap, we took her to a playground and out for dinner. We also brought out her potty seat to see what she thought of it. At first she was really excited about sitting on it.....

(tea anyone?)

But then the novelty wore off and soon enough she wanted to climb in it and take it apart, etc. Let's just say she's not ready just yet for this!

On Sunday we didn't do much in the morning. I went grocery shopping in the afternoon and then later I took Avery out shopping at Michaels'a and to Carter's to get her some new clothes. (They had a HUGE sale going on!)

On Monday we decided to take Avery to her first parade!! We went to the city's parade which was downtown. There weren't a ton of people there and we found seats pretty easily. Here's Avery waiting for the fun to begin!

She had her spot on the curb-up front and in the action!


She loved the horses!


And when the bagpipes went by, she got up and started dancing! It was so cute!



Avery and I at the parade:



We had to buy her a flag to wave around! Look at my patriotic little girl! I could eat her up!


After the parade, she came home and napped. Then we went to my in-laws' for a cookout. Gabe's sister and her family came and my Mom and Aunt Pat also came in from Buffalo to join us!! Owen had fun finding snails (I think he had 4 of them):


And Avery was very interested in them!





Avery and Owen played some catch with my Mom:

Avery with her football:

The cookout was great-we got to eat outside and relax! It was just a beautiful day outside!!
Happy Memorial Day!

Twenty Three Months Old!

Today Avery turned 23 months! Only one more month until someone has another birthday! Wow!

I would say her eating has been better these days-she seems to eat better meals. Although the past week or so she wants to sit in her highchair only now (not her booster)...which is odd, but we roll with it. The other night we went out for dinner and she ate the biggest meal ever-a bowl of applesauce, a hot dog, a ton of french fries, and a bowl of ice cream! We were amazed at how much this kid put away!

Her sleep has been all over the place, especially the last week or two. She had numerous days of not napping and then taking FOREVER to fall asleep at night-sometimes close to 2 hours! I'll be honest, it's been frustrating to me because I can see how tired she is in her face and yet she won't give up and fall asleep. We tried everything-earlier naps, earlier bedtimes and she still takes just as long to finally conk out. I don't know what's going on with her, but I really hope it gets better-for both of our sakes!

This month Avery also dealt with her first round of antibiotics. She had both croup and an ear infection so doing the meds for 10 days was not fun at all. She was a trooper though and really never acted too sick, thankfully!

Thanks to her Dora book, Avery now says "Hola" and "Soy Dora" which is too funny! She also sings "Itsy Bitsy Spider", "Wheels on the Bus", and her new favorite is the alphabet song!! She skips maybe 1-2 letters, but overall does a great job with it. And at the end she says "Now ABC's....next won't sing me" (yep, every other word). It's so cute though and she sings it A LOT these days! She also started saying "please" on her own without us prompting her. Again, super cute to hear her say "More juice please Mommy"....love it!!

We finally bumped her up to size 4 diapers during the day. She still wears mostly 12/18 month clothes-especially pants because she's so skinny that they fall right off of her! She has a few pairs that we've had to take in a bit in the waist so they'll stay up!! (wish I had that problem!)

Here are the pics of Avery this month....
blowing Daddy a kiss:

"Cheese!"

I told her to smile:

Another smiling one:

I didn't get too many great ones this time-after I took these, she was saying, "all done" and was diving to get off of the chair...oh well!

Next month we'll have a birthday to write about!

Wilton Course 2, Class 4

Last night was my last Wilton class for course 2.

We had a lot to prepare for this week....we had to bake and frost a cake at home and also bring in 2 batches of buttercream frosting. Lots of time in the kitchen for this week!

There are only 2 of us in this class and the other girl didn't show up last night, so I had a private lesson! It was pretty neat!

We started out by learning the reverse shell, which was pretty easy. Then we learned how to do a basket weave. It's actually not too hard once you get the hang of it. Time consuming-yes! Hard-no!

Once we practiced those, it was time to decorate our cake. I brought in the flowers we made in previous classes for the decorating. We started out by putting the basket weave on the cake-which took quite awhile (and a LOT of frosting) to do! Then we topped the weave with the reverse shell border. After that, we added the flowers to it and put in some leaves.

Here's my final product:

Close up of the reverse shell border:

close up of the basket weave:

Overall I was pleased with my cake. Some parts of the basket weave weren't perfect, but that's ok-it was my first time doing it so I can't expect it to be perfect! I wasn't totally thrilled with the layout of my flowers either, but I only brought the big flowers we made so it was hard fitting them all on there just right.

Gabe took the cake in for his coworkers today and apparently it was a big hit!!

As of now, I'm probably not taking the next course-it's all using fondant which I really don't care about at this time...maybe in the future I'll sign up for it!

Weekend Recap

We had both a busy and a relaxing weekend.

Saturday was a busy day.

It started off with us having a garage/moving sale. Gabe and I were both up at 8am (before Avery got up) to haul stuff out to the driveway. The sale officially started at 9am and we closed up shop around 2pm or so. It was ok-it still seems like we have a ton of junk left. We might do another one in June....we just didn't have it in us to do both days this weekend.

Before we closed up the garage sale, I went for a quick run. I think it was the first run I took outside since Avery was born! I just did 2miles, but boy do I feel it today. I think my body is in shock! And of course it had to be the hottest day to go running too! But I made it and I feel better that I did it!

Once Avery woke up, we went for a drive by the new house. We were shocked to see that we have basement walls!!! If you remember on Wednesday, the frames were up for them to pour the walls. So in a matter of 2 days the walls were done! Here's a shot of the house from the street: This is the future garage:

The side of the house-yep, we have a window!

More of the side:

After we looked at the house, we met our friends Julie and Richie for dinner. Carly and Brayden were there too of course! We just went to Bill Gray's for some burgers. Little Brayden is getting so big (he's 9mos now!) and look at those legs! Don't you want to bite them?!

After dinner we walked to the lake to feed some ducks. On our way, I attempted to take a shot of all 3 kids-you can see how great that turned out:

None of them looking at me and Brayden's hood is over his face! Haha!


We got to where the ducks were and were surprised that it was mostly geese and swans!

And it was cool to see the swans sort of puff out their feathers-it really looked like a heart shape! So cool!

None of them were shy either-they came right up by us for some bread. I found it funny that some swans had black feet and others were more close to a white color. And the other thing-the geese and swans hiss....seriously! It sounded louder than a cat-it was a riot!

Another shot of the ducks/geese/swans:

This was Avery's first time feeding any sort of animal (besides our cat) and she loved it! She would squeal every time they took a piece she threw at them! It was funny!

Carly feeding the birds:

Avery and Carly giving hugs:

We had a really nice time and it was such a nice day! We were supposed to go to the Lilac Festival instead, but I'm glad we didn't. With all of the rain we had, I'm sure it was beyond crazy there!

Today was more of a relaxing day for us. All I did was run out and bought Avery's birthday present and went grocery shopping. Other than that, we were home all day just playing with Avery! So it was pretty relaxing for us today!!

Progress!

Yesterday we had a caravan of people looking at the progress of our house....my Mom, Avery, Gabe, his Dad, Owen, and Avery! We all met there before going out for lunch to check on the progress.

It was my first time there since they broke ground last week. We were quite impressed with the progress so far, especially since it's been raining almost every day since. We really didn't expect much to be done yet and were pleasantly surprised!!

Here's how it looks one week later:

The hole for the basement is completely dug and all of that metal is the frame for them to pour the basement walls. It's really amazing how fast they get this stuff done!! So exciting!!

Wilton Course 2, Class 3

Tonight was class 3 in my Wilton class.

I didn't do anything to prepare for this class, which was nice. I had so much icing leftover from last week that I didn't bother to make a new batch for this week. (And thankfully I didn't because I still had some leftover after tonight!)

This week we worked on three different flowers.

First was the daffodil. We were having some issues with our icing today because of the humidity so we spent a lot of time tweaking our icing while doing these flowers. They turned out horribly at first because our icing was too soft, but after thickening it a bit, they turned out pretty nice. This is one that the teacher made (with the junky icing...and it still looks better than any of mine!): Then we made violets. Except mine were yellow because I didn't make purple icing. These were a little tricky just because they are SO TINY!

And the last one we did was the lily. These definitely are my favorite so far and very easy compared to the others. I just think they look so real!!

So next week is my last class and I have a lot to do for it so I'll be busy baking this coming weekend!

Holy Day

Yesterday we went to Buffalo for my cousin Eddie's First Communion!

We went to the church first for the mass. My cousin is in the middle row in the black suit. After mass, we went for lunch at Pane's restaurant. We weren't in a private room which made it kind of hard to visit with everyone. They had a smaller menu (I assume it was for parties like this only) that we could order off of which was nice. The food was really good too! Here is the cake they had-it was really pretty and tasted yummy too!

Gabe and I at the luncheon:

My Mom and Avery checking out the fish tank there:

I have to say that Avery was SO well behaved! We haven't taken her to church much and she was pretty silent through the entire mass (which was about an hour and a half with all of the kids for communion). Then at lunch she was in a high chair for most of the time and did great! It was during her nap time so you never know what to expect and she was wonderful! I was so proud of her!

After lunch we went to my Mom's house and relaxed for a bit. On our way home, we stopped at my friend Megan's house to visit for awhile. We haven't been there in a long time and we had a birthday gift to give to Noah so we wanted to drop that off for him.

Avery and Noah at the table:

Checking out Noah's new big boy bed!
Giving hugs:

Groundbreaking!

We have some excitement in our house now!


Yesterday was dig day (or ground breaking day) on our new house!! Our long time waiting has paid off and our house is finally getting started!


Gabe drove out to the lot during his lunch yesterday to see what was happening and took a bunch of photos. Unfortunately they're too large for me to upload on here. The next time we go there I'm going to bring my camera so I can get some pictures to share with you!

Last night we had more progress on the house as well. We met with the company doing our kitchen and pretty much planned out the entire thing! We made a few adjustments to the layout (added a double oven, took away a corner of counter space, etc) and also picked out a few things.

These are going to be our kitchen cabinets (in the color rouge), and these are the bathroom cabinets (in the color saddle). We also picked out the hardware (knobs/handles) for the kitchen and bathrooms, but I can't find them online at all. The only thing we haven't picked out yet is the granite for the countertops. That is done through another company so we'll be doing that at some point. We'll be meeting with the kitchen place again so he can show us a 3D computer model of the kitchen and go over some stuff with us.


Yesterday was definitely an exciting day on the homefront!!

Wilton Course 2, Class 2

Tonight was class two of my second Wilton course.

To prepare for class, we had to make two batches of royal icing. It's only made with powdered sugar, meringue powder, and water so it's a little easier than the buttercream frosting. However, it's very, very thick and I really didn't like the consistency of it when I had to mix in the food coloring. The only cost for today's class was the powdered sugar-I had everything else already.

But, it worked well once you put it in the bag and started to make things with it!

We started out learning the Wilton rose. It's a rose with a 3-5-7 petal pattern. I thought it was pretty hard to do and wasn't really thrilled with how any of mine came out.
Then we learned the primrose. This one was a little challenging as well. The one I have the photo of is one that the teacher did so of course it looks great. Mine turned out ok-the petals didn't have the heart shape at the top like hers did.

We also learned the apple blossom which is a very tiny flower. These ones weren't as hard as the rose or primrose and I think they're pretty!

The last one we learned was the rosebud. Once you get the hang of it, these are pretty easy to do. We haven't learned how to do the calyx and stem on them yet, so maybe that'll change my mind!

The difference with this icing that we're using now is that it hardens when exposed to air. So you have to be really careful when using it in the pastry bags, etc. You're constantly putting it in a wet cloth and a ziploc bag to keep it from drying. This is the icing you use to make flowers to decorate cakes that you want to be hardened. Buttercream frosting will "crust" over, but it never hardens. You can also use this icing to decorate cookies as well.