My crazy cuz and fam

In November my cousin Rachel got married and my cousin Nikki came up for it from Arkansas with her amazing hubby Steve and her gorgeous son Caelen. Nikki is like the sister I never had and never wanted. Just kidding Nik. I love her to death and we are pretty much joined at the hip whenever we are together. A few years ago she married her soul mate, Steve. Who I adore!!! He is no doubt a blessing from God to her and Caelen. Him and Doug hit it off right away. They kind of had to because when Nik and I get together you can't seperate us. We had a great time with them and were really, really sad to see them go back to Arkansas. We have big dreams of living close to each other someday. Although the guys might hate that cuz they'll never see their wives again. Seriously!

Barbie cake

Here is a barbie cake I did for a little girl that wanted the pink dress. Italian meringue buttercream isn't as easy as american buttercream is to work with but it tastes so much better that I'll sacrifice perfection for taste. I was waiting to post this so that I could put other cake pics with it but I'm still waiting for those pics to be sent to me. I've also made a superman symbol cake for a 40th birthday and a buche de noel. The superman cake turned out pretty cool. The buche de noel was gorgeous but unfortunately I did not have time to take a pic of it and I trusted the client to take good pics. Next time I'll just deliver it late so I can get a pic of it. They were all fuzzy and totally not usable. Oh well. Live and learn.

My husband is a blockhead

My husband is a blockhead. Wait! We all are. Ha, ha, ha. Doug and his creative funnies. Gotta love em. Here's what we would look like as lego people. Note Ethan's Flash shirt. For anyone who doesn't get it, The Flash is a superhero. And check out Blake's one tooth. I personally love the McSteamy stubble that Doug added for himself and if you could have seen the before pic of me, you would have thought that my lego alterego was a hooker. She had way to big of boobs for me and way too skimpy of a dress. Hope you all get a laugh. We did.

So much catchin up to do!

It's been forever since I've blogged so I'm probably going to overload you guys with a bunch of stuff you guys won't care about, but I gotta do it. We've had a lot going on in the last month. Just recently my mother in law had a small heart attack and is in the hospital. We love her so much and it was very scary for us. She has been having some complications on the medicine that she's been on in the hospital that made her heart stop once and made it slow down to 30 beats per minute another time. It was very scary to watch. She is doing better today but we are still really nervous. How could we not be? No matter how faithful you are, it's still scary.

On a lighter note, Blake woke up singing a song about his fav cousin Abbie and Ethan came running out of his bedroom yelling Good Morning. He always says good morning but today was just so enthusiastic and sincere. I love when Blake sings. He's always making up his own songs.

So now for an update on what we've been doing. We took Ethan ice skating for the first time and he LOVED IT!!!! He took to it really quickly and ofcourse wanted to do it by himself right away. We had a hard time getting him off the rink. He totally wore out Doug. Blake went around with Daddy a couple of times too and he loved it as well. It's too bad that they don't make ice skates in his size. I bet he would have rocked it!

Ethan's Reading!

Not much time but I just wanted to mark the day. Ethan read his first story last night. Doug and I were in shock that he picked it up so fast. It's amazing how fast they learn. Ethan was so excited that he wanted to practice in his bed last night instead of going to sleep. He was so proud of himself. It made me feel sooooooo good to see that spark in his eyes.

Blake's latest news

Yesterday I finally got a call from the endocronologist and got semi good news. All tests came back normal. Very good. No answers though. Not so good. The tests did show that his metabolism is high. Really? Who woulda thunk. The high point for the normal range of the thyroid test is 1.5 and Blake's result was 1.49. Still not high enough to burn through 1200 calories. On one of his growth hormone tests he was a hundreth of a point off of abnormally low. So the doc thinks that although he is still in the normal ranges that the combination of the two and how close they were to abnormal may be the cause of the problem but they can't say for sure. He will be reevaluated in 9 to 12 months to see if he has started to grow at a normal rate yet. If he hasn't caught up or is not on a normal curve yet then they will give him growth hormone shots. I don't think the shots would start at three but they never said. So for now we still give him a high calorie diet as well as we can and hope for the best. I'm really hoping he catches up soon so that we don't have to do the shots but if we do, it could be a lot worse right?

Doug's Christmas Party

This past weekend was Doug's company Holiday party and surprisingly we had a good time. Mostly because we got away as much as possible. Every year they have the party at the Pfister in Milwaukee. It's a really swanky hotel but their pillows suck. It was the first time we had been away from Blake that long and as much as I love my boys it was nice to get away for a little mommy and daddy time. It was nice not to be interrupted every other word and to have some adult conversation but we did miss them. Every year there are celebrity sightings at this hotel since it's the nicest hotel in Milwaukee. I could really care less but this year the guys of the company got a special treat. The Cleveland Cavaliers were playing the Bucks on Sunday so Shaq and Lebron James were at our hotel and seen often. Personally I'd rather see them at a game than walking thru a hallway but the guys loved seeing these basketball legends. The Baltimore Ravens also stayed at the hotel which got Doug excited since their quarterback was from his dad's university. We also met a woman from the music biz that I will not name but will say she was one of the nicest, real people I have ever met. We talked to her for a long time and exchanged numbers so I hope that we get to talk again in the future. All in all a good date night for Doug and I. Too bad we only get that once a year. Can't we do a holiday party every couple of months? Just so we can recharge our batteries.