Hi! Remember Me? I Didn't Think So!

Oh Lordy this is gonna be a workout. I'm going to try to start by going back to Carter's birthday and try to fill in the blanks to catch up. Much of it will be documented in pictures...except for the parts where all three of my boys got a tummy bug and spent a few days in the bathroom!

I spent much of last week planning for Carter's birthday party, which was held a week after his actual birthday in order for the bowling alley to be available. We opted for an evening glow bowling party. I did these invitations:

For some time Carter had indicated he wanted a robot cake for his birthday. So in keeping with the theme I did the invitations and planned on making him a cake. There's a gal in a nearby town who does PHENOMENAL cakes and I bow down to her cake prowess. She uses fondant and makes incredibly fancy cakes that are more than worthy of an appearance on Ace of Cakes. Plus, my creative scrapping friend Amy had recently posted on her blog how she had made a fondant cake. It turned out gorgeous. Her first try was incredible. I was so inspired.

That afternoon, I had to pick up Cooper early from the sitter's house since he started vomiting. He had thrown up twice there already so she called me. He seemed okay for the moment so I drove over to tell Chris what was going on. If only I'd gone straight home...the poor kid barfed in the Jeep all down the front of his jacket and his car seat. Ugh. I pulled over to make sure he was okay but told him to hang in there and I made the mad dash home. I carefully extricated him from the vehicle and planted him in the bathroom for an immediate bath. I put all his clothes in the wash right away, and put him in the tub right away. Chris, bless his heart. cleaned up the car seat when he got home. He got sick a couple more times but since the last time he was sick, he somehow learned how to run to the bathroom and puke in the toilet. Bonus!

I followed Amy's instructions on how to make the fondant. She was sweet enough to email them to me and I (so I thought) followed them to the letter. I was so gooey and stuck to myself trying to knead the melted marshmallows into the icing sugar that I almost started to cry. Good thing Chris gave me some encouragement or I'd have dumped the lot of it. If you ever make this stuff, for one, sift the icing sugar. Two - when it says grease everything with the shortening, grease it well...don't be shy about it! I actually phoned Amy across the country to make sure I had everything right before I got started.

I managed to get myself unstuck and re-greased everything and kneaded it some more. Unfortunately the only gel colour I had in the house was red, and there wasn't enough left to make it really red. I ended up with a lovely bright pink blob of fondant on my first try. I was feeling pretty elated at this point.

I did a couple more batches the next night. Since I couldn't get my hands on any black gel colour in this town, with Carter's suggestion and blessing I opted to make a light blue robot instead of grey. I made a batch of blue fondant, then a white one. I divided the white one to make separate colours for the accents on the robot. I was pumped. Each batch of fondant was more bright and smooth than the last. I was so ready.

I was going to bake the cakes that night too, but Puker Number Two (Carter) sprang into double-ended spewing action. On. The. Living. Room. Carpet. Yikes. Poor kid. He hates barfing (who doesn't) and I started to give him a bath. He sharted and I had to start the bath over again. Chris hates first of all the kids' being sick, and second of all the vomit itself. He gets all antsy and agitated and I wish he'd just take off until I had everything contained. I moved the couch and scrubbed the carpet. Thankfully I was done with the fondant process for the evening. Carter, as opposed to Cooper, will just stand in one spot and spew. He gets very upset at having to stand at the toilet. So each time I knew he was going to throw up I positioned him in front of it. At one point he actually stood in the middle of the kitchen floor and proceeded to barf. Oh...that one was after Chris had given him a drink of orange juice after the first puking episode. Oy vey. Into the tub again. Both ends going. Sheesh.

That night I ended up staying up with him all night, until at least 4:30. He barely slept before that, and each time he awoke he needed to get sick again. It was a rough night. Good thing/bad thing I was off the next day...good thing so I could keep him home with me but bad thing was it was his birthday party day.

By lunchtime on Friday he was starting to perk up. I gave him the option of going to school, which would afford me some extra time to work on his cake, which I baked that morning. I took him to school and came home to continue working on the cake. I managed somehow to slice the cake into layers so I could put icing in between. I made delicious butter cream frosting. That ended up being about the best part of the cake. I rolled out the light blue fondant and sculpted it onto the 'body' of the robot. Not bad so far. Then I used a half a round cake for the head and was cutting pieces for the bottom. I was attempting to make something that resembled the robot on the birthday invitations. Once I realized how difficult a process this was, and that it was not pretty, I conceded defeat. The round and small square cakes I made for the additional robot parts rose higher than the 'body cake'. The fondant went on fairly decently, however there were little lumps of icing sugar showing here and there. (SIFT!!!) Before I went any further, I stopped. I still have all those lovely other colours of fondant in the fridge staring at me each time I open it. It's been long enough since my epic cake failure that I might get the courage to do something with it. We'll see.

I spent the next hour or so on a quest for a cake. In the meantime, Carter's school had called. He still wasn't feeling well and had fallen asleep. I picked him up. Some of the partygoers were concerned there wouldn't be a party but there was no way I was canceling!!! Carter had a long rest for the rest of the afternoon. I picked up two cakes for the party. I was going to try to cut a robot out of fondant to lay on top of one of the cakes, but that didn't work either. I ended up printing the robot from the invitations and standing it up in the cake.

By the time it was time to leave, I gave Carter some Tylenol and we headed out. We dropped Cooper off at Kelly's house for a visit, along with a loot bag, which was very well-received. We went to the bowling alley and the partygoers all arrived except two. One who heard Carter was sick and whose daughter is immune-compromised and didn't want to take any chances, and one who heard the party was cancelled. I don't know who told her that but judging how it looked when I carried Carter out of the classroom, I can see how they would think that. It was a nice small group. It's so hard to decide who gets invited to these things, with twenty kids in the class. We opted to invite a few who had invited Carter to their parties, and drew names for the remainder for a total of ten kids. So with Carter there were seven kids there.

All was well for a bit. Carter wasn't up to eating...not even the yummy cake! He opened presents and started to lose steam. By the time we started bowling Chris had already taken him to the bathroom a couple times. Dang. He almost made it through the whole bowling game and would have little spurts of energy. The kids seemed to have a blast. Of course with only the black lighting, my pictures are pretty much crap but here they are anyway! I don't have permission to show all the kids so here are a couple of Carter. I took a couple with the flash that turned out a little better, but the cool glowing effect isn't there. Both ways didn't turn out well...


The weather that day and the next was crappy. On Sunday, however, we got all our butts out of bed and went out. We took the boys to the park, where I took over a hundred pictures. I feel a slideshow coming on... It was also Auntie Lurdes & Uncle Cliff's fortieth wedding anniversary on Sunday. Mom called me the night before to invite us to come out after supper for dessert, but that she needed a cake. Need a cake, you say? I HAVE A CAKE!!! A perfect cake that my clairvoyant tendencies told me to get as a backup cake for Carter when I wanted to put the robot on it. I never ended up doing anything with it and we ate the other cake for his party. I printed a greeting to put on top of the cake and it was lovely. Here are the pictures from the day...it was a great one!

Since Sunday (long weekend) Chris got sick. He was pukey and poopy all day yesterday. Thank God he felt better this morning andd went to work. The weather sucked yesterday anyway so we wouldn't have been able to go out and have the same fun we did on Sunday. Chris was feeling really low. I ordered takeout from Pizza Hut for supper. The pasta was great and I tried out their buffalo wings. Not bad, but not good enough for the price. I went to bed early last night and slept through until Cooper got me up at four-thirty this morning. I managed to squeeze in a bit more sleep after that and got up to face the day. The day RACED by. I had lunch with Kelly and her friend Sabrina and brought a snack to Chris...thanks to Dad who offered to take Carter to school today for me! :)

Well, all that lovely minutiae has been my life this past week and a half. Time to wake up and go about your day! :)