Friday, December 6, 2013

Fashion Fabulous Friday



A full face mask with serious bad-guy eyebrows and mustache looks totally normal when it's -10.
(Let me say that again, -10.)
 
 
(Having a choir boy as a Christmas decoration on our front porch looks totally normal in all temperatures...since it was bought solely based on its resemblance to our eldest son.)

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

It's Cold

It's 8 degrees outside.
 
And it looks like this.

 
 
Luckily, the cat on my couch doesn't seem to mind.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

They Might be Vikings

Granny Sherry's sister in law and niece (Joann and Terri) from Minnesota came to visit Sherry and see JR in Willy Wonka.
 
I'm so thankful for Sherry's Norwegian-ness since my kids got their pretty eye color out of it.
 
 
This picture has 3 100% Norwegians, 1 half, and 3 quarters. 
All with blue eyes and pretty much the same color hair...except for JR who got my dark hair.
(Thank goodness he has the blue eyes or I might have had to pull him from the picture.)

Monday, December 2, 2013

Ugliest Cake and Proud of It

You might remember how upset I was that Jason and JR didn't win the father/son cake bake last year at Cub Scouts.  (JR was fine, I was mad.)  It's here if you need a refresher.
 
 
JR hadn't been to Cub Scouts since September because of play practice, so I figured we better participate in the father/son cake bake since it was his first meeting back...even though Jason was out of town that entire week.
 
 
The rules are that they aren't supposed to get any help from mom, but let's be real, Jason's way better in the kitchen than I am, so me helping certainly wasn't going to give him any advantage!
 
 
We had just finished Willy Wonka, and with the outcome of last year, I wasn't interested in putting too much effort into this cake. 
 One of the categories was ugliest cake and I figured we could get one of those whipped out without much work.  I googled "ugly cake", found one that looked easy and that's what we went with.
 
 
In reality, I think JR did less work than Kyle and Reed.  They were really into the cake baking, and pretty much took over...and JR pretty much let them.
 
 
Here's the cake before the icing.  So easy it's scary.

 
We let it freeze overnight, then slapped some chocolate icing on the next night.  And if you've ever seen how "gentle" JR can be with things, then you know 'slapped' is the exact right word choice.

 
The eyes are crackers with white icing and the eye balls are tootsie rolls.
The tongue is a laughy taffy.


The guts are just crumbled up cake pieces mixed with icing.  The kids thought the red food coloring was awe-some. (Clearly I don't use food coloring with my kids on a regular basis.)



We went into the contest with zero expectations.  We hadn't put much work into it, but JR (and Kyle and Reed) thought the cake was the coolest thing ever, and we were happy to just have something to turn in.


Luckily for us, there wasn't much competition in the ugly category:
 
 
A toilet cake (which won last year, so that wasn't going to win again).



 Two kitty litter cakes (so those cancelled each other out). 
The other one look exactly the same, so no need for a picture.


Which left our only competition this knife and severed finger (the finger is a carrot) cake.
 
 
After the non-win of last year, I still wasn't sure he had a chance...even with such little competition.
 
But, he pulled out the win.
I'm not sure why they got red ribbons.  Guess that's all they had.
 
 
 The other winners were his friend from his class who won for best cub scout theme (it was my favorite cake).



 Best patriotic themed cakes was also the category for the kids who didn't follow directions and just made any old cake they wanted, which I guess is why R2D2 wound up the winner.

 
And best overall was the Pinewood Derby cake.
 

So there you have it.
A surprising win, but we'll take it.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Turkey in the Snow

Thanksgiving turned out to be a real turkey day!
 
 
First, the morning was spent skiing with a bunch of turkeys.
 (Jason, me, Kyle, Reed, JR, Anna, Emily, and Scott)
 
 
Ok, so maybe we didn't ski with turkeys, but they were definitely snowboarding.
 
 
Then Emily and Reed made us all turkey place cards.

 Granny Sherry drove up to Breckenridge to have Thanksgiving dinner with us, and we were all very thankful that Debbie did all the cooking. 
(I was thankful I didn't have to cook, and everyone else was thankful they didn't have to eat my cooking!)
 
I mean, just look.  Now that's a turkey!