All the Sun For You

A mom, two boys, a husband, and a whole lot of adventure!


3 Comments

Almost Ready!

My cakes are baked and leveled, my chocolate graham crackers are pulverized into “dirt,” my fondant decorations are hardening, my chocolate for the frosting is chopped, and my raspberries for the filling are thawing. I’m in a good place with this birthday party right now! I can’t construct my construction cake until the boys are in bed, for obvious reasons.

So now I focus on dinner… after I rest!

(I got distracted while writing Matthews name on the yellow “sign” so I made a new one. It was still drying, so I used the messed up one for the layout diagram.)


8 Comments

THIS Moment in Time – Hardest Four Miles of my Life

I’ve run every morning this week following a 6 miler on Saturday and a rest on Sunday. My body is shot. 19 miles in four days isn’t that much of a cumulative distance, but I usually take a rest after two days of running no matter how far (or not so far) I run in those two days. Four days in a row is tough on me, but the weather has been ridiculously beautiful! So I power on… and take breaks… at the park. You know, the park that is perfectly safe and requires none of my attention. 😁


21 Comments

Party Re-Vamp

I’m exhausted.  My kids hardly give me a moment of peace these days.  If Bryson falls asleep to nap, Matthew fights his for an hour.  By the time Matthew is asleep, I get about 20 minutes to myself before Bryson wakes up (too early).  Today, Matthew fell right asleep and Bryson fought it and fought it, screaming and screaming, sending tension through my shoulders.

I just want to make their damn birthday cake, but by the time they’re both asleep, I’m only left 20 minutes and honestly, I’d rather just sit, dammit.

I had these grand (well, not really that grand) plans and now I’ve hired it all out.  I’m not even kidding.

Food?  Being catered.  By the time we buy everything I need to cook what I want to cook, it costs the same.  Then add in the time to prep and cook and my head was spinning.  My favorite place is catering the party with chicken skewer pita sandwiches with Gyro sauce and veggies (build your own).  They’re also bringing their amazing hummus (it’s ridiculous).  Done.

med fresh

Cake?  I’m only making the top tier for them to blow out candles.  I’ll be making white cake for their real birthdays on Wednesday and Thursday, so why make a whole other white cake now when I was always planning on having cupcakes in addition to the cake?  Stupid.  I don’t want a lot of cake left over like last year (really, I would like that, but my ass wouldn’t).  So I will just be making the top chocolate part of this little masterpiece (?) and will put some little fondant signs on the sides, make some fondant cones, whatever.  I can do those things late at night without making noise, and working with fondant relaxes me (isn’t that weird?).  They will blow out their candles and they will like it.  Then they will eat cupcakes (they don’t even like chocolate cake, but the digger can’t dig up white dirt!).  I’ll be making the awesome raspberry chocolate cake I made for Hottie last year for his birthday.  I’m ordering 4 dozen cupcakes for this party and the guests – we’ll keep the chocolate cake for us once candles are blown out.  Done.

Cake front

(After inserting that picture, I’m feeling guilty about not doing the whole damn cake.  Hmmmm… we’ll see.  No, we won’t see.  I’m just doing the top tier, dammit!)

Party favors?  Purchased as planned.  They are cute, they smell good, and they sent them in the bigger bags I requested so I can add something to the bag.  But what to add is the question.  I don’t want to put any food in there because it will absorb the soap smell.  I wasn’t thinking on that one.  I may just leave them with just the soap and call it a day.  Yes, that sounds good.  Done.

Favors

Decorations?  Purchased as planned!  They arrived the other day and they are just perfect.  I wanted these same decorations and theme last year for Matthew’s birthday but hopped on the Cur.ious Geor.ge theme because I knew he’d outgrow it by now (and he did), so I put this on the back burner.  Good thing I did, because this theme is perfect for the two boys who play trucks and construction site all day long together.  The banner, door hanging, and toppers look as great as, even better than, the photos.  Done.

il_fullxfull_373817890_q2ni il_fullxfull_274450651 il_fullxfull_250796317

I am doing purchasing/hiring out just enough to make it look like I know what I’m doing.  I do know what I’m doing, I’m just burned out beyond belief and don’t want to work on party supplies, cakes, and favors this year.  I just don’t.  I’d rather use my limited free time to sit at my computer and hammer out a few posts on my blog (loser!).  I told Hottie today via text that I feel like a bad mom for not wanting to work on this.  He said, “No need to feel terrible.  They’ll love the party just the same.”

He’s right, they will love it no matter what, and Matthew keeps saying that he doesn’t even want a birthday, so who cares if he doesn’t love it!

 


3 Comments

Counting on Nature

My extended family had a rough day today, and because of my closeness in proximity to my cousin who had her phone turned off at work, I had to receive a frantic, upsetting phone call and then deliver the news to her. What happened isn’t my story to tell, but the impact of the situation is still unknown and I’m very worried about my youngest cousin (the baby between both sides of my family). Being a mother myself, I’ve learned that even if your kid walks away from a bad situation mostly physically unscathed, that the impact of his actions to those around him can be just as hard, or even harder, to handle than most physical harm that could come to him.

Oh the things we learn and lose sleep over once we become parents.

So after a very mentally exhausting day that ended with no peace of mind, I just wanted to go out with my family for dinner. Dinner was great, until it wasn’t, but watching the boys befriend ducks and geese and bunnies at our little town center ended the day as well as it could be ended. You can always count on nature for that! 😁


6 Comments

These Two

These boys of ours are something else. One minute, they’re best friends and the next, they’re pounding on each other. And then, once time-outs are started, they won’t let the other one sit alone, because they don’t want the other to be lonely. This is the daily cycle in our house. 

Love-dislike-love.

That’s better than dislike-love-dislike, to be sure. But it’s still exhausting!

We’ve had way more happy moments together than angry moments lately, and no matter what the mood, Matthew wants to go nowhere without his brother. “Bryce, do you want to come to school with me?” “Brycie, want a bite of my cookie?” “Bryson, want to lay with me?” It’s ridiculously cute.

And the love and adoration goes both ways. Bryson is lost anywhere without his brother. Parks and play areas are a pass without Matthew and Bryson insists on getting Matthew up to play with him once he’s up in the mornings or after naps. I love watching him walk around the house calling out Matthews name.

They’re best friends.

My SIL told me today that we’ve done a great job making them best friends, but we didn’t do anything special.

We got lucky. That is all!

 


9 Comments

Birthday Time… Again!

I can hardly believe it, but I have TWO birthdays to plan in the next month!  We’re making it easy this year – the boys are sharing a party.  They’re best friends and honestly, all they care about is that they have each other at their parties, so we’re combining them.

And it’s more for us than for them.

Not really.

Well… really!

We have not had one of our big parties since before the kids came into our lives.  We used to have epic parties – the types of parties that people would ask us when the next one would be so they could be sure to be in town.  And we LOVED throwing huge parties!  The bigger, the better… and we like to go BIG.  Well, we’re not going HUGE, but it’s going to be big and it’s going to be FUN, goddammit!

Real food.

Real drinks.

Great cake (I always have a great cake because cake is my favorite thing).

Fun friends.

Babysitters for the kids.

I’m whipping this up and I feel like I’m pulling the kid-friendly aspects of the party (theme, invitations, banners, favors)  out of my you-know-what (really, I’m just pulling them out of Et.sy), but I want to focus on the real details.  I want to focus on the food we’ll make, the drinks we’ll serve, and the cake I’ll construct.

Here I come, birthday season 2015!

 

 


10 Comments

Emotional Limits

You’d think that after selling every last piece of baby gear, that I’d no longer have any emotional attachments to the past.

But I do.

I was inventorying the nursery decor that will be sold when we convert the nursery to Bryson’s big kid room, and I’m having a hard time imagining handing those things over to someone. The perfect mobile, the original artwork, the deer prints, the garland I made from leftover first birthday decor, the bookends shaped like animals. My heart is in each of those items.

I’m keeping them, most of them, and putting them up in the kids’ reading nook. My heart can’t take letting them go right now. I know my emotional limits.

For now, they stay.