Our Canoe

So, it has been almost six months since I posted, I'm not sure why, just didn't get around to it. But something happened today that I just had to tell all 3 of you who may still check. Here goes. Tyson got a canoe for Christmas/his birthday and we have been having a lot of fun in it. Every time I have been in a canoe I have loved it and had so much fun. I was really excited for Tyson to get one. ;)

Here he is loading it up on the family truckster, as I like to call it.  It is fun to drive around with a canoe on your car here, no one else does it.  You can see people staring as we pass.

Our first trip out was pretty short, Rylee enjoyed it quite a bit, but Erin is a little iffy on whether or not she likes it. 

Erin decided she wanted to feed the ducks and not get back in, so I went back out with Rylee.  It is so peaceful and calm out in a canoe, except at this pond the freeway is right there so it's a little noisy.  There are tons of birds (including big white ones) at these ponds.  There are even pelicans, which are really fun to watch. 

 

So I have taken my camera  out with us on the boat to get some fun pics, but I am Sooooo glad I didn't today!  (hint hint)

We went to a different pond than we had before, Adams Fishery I think it's called.  We also hadn't been since the weather warmed up, I think canoeing is a fall and spring sort of activity.  It was hot.  But we fixed that. (hint hint)

When we first got there Erin and Rylee went down by the water and found a yellow and black butterfly fluttering around and taking sips of water, it was really fun to watch it.  Rylee was holding out her hand to it. 

Then we got into the canoe and shoved off.  For some reason Tyson was sitting on the very end of the canoe instead of on an actual seat, but he said it was fine for him to sit there.

It wasn't. (hint hint)

 It was really hot, but there were some trees in the water, kinda like a forest, all shady and it looked like fun to go in, so we did.  We had to duck under some branches, and there were spider webs everywhere, but it was so much cooler and shadier.  So we paddled around a little in there,  and we got a little stuck.  I'm not sure what happened then.  

Rylee went a little to the side to dip a reed in the water and I kinda leaned to make sure she didn't fall in, but then Tyson did!  And I went after!  And then the whole thing capsized!  It was pretty freaky there for a bit cuz I couldn't get up to get Rylee, and I couldn't find her after I stood up, luckily it wasn't to deep.  I finally saw her foot and pulled her up upside down and she was sputtering and crying, and Erin was freaking out, and it was kinda scary!  Tyson had grabbed Erin, although she swims like a fish, and she was crying and freaking out more than Rylee.  There wasn't really a shore to go to since we were in the forest, and there was a bunch of water in the canoe, it wouldn't hold us.  Here we were standing waist deep in the water with a canoe full of water and two crying and freaking out girls.  At the same time, Tyson and I started laughing.  Erin and Rylee didn't think it was so funny, though.  They were just clinging to us and crying.  After we calmed them down a little,  I held the girls while Tyson tried to dump the boat out, but there was just too much water for him to lift it.  There was nowhere to set the girls down so I couldn't help him, so we dumped out our water bottle and tried to bail out the boat.  That was just not working.  we tried to find a shallow enough place to put the girls down but we couldn't, so I just had to hold them.  Finally we found a log that Tyson somehow braced the canoe against enough to tip it over and get enough water out that we could bail the rest out.  Then went out through the forest and ducked under branches, and Rylee was saying "oh no trees!  in a cute little singsong voice, she was back to having fun!  The whole way to shore she kept saying it over and over.  She's kind of a plucky little thing. 

When we got back to the car we stripped the girls and they had to ride home naked.  Luckily it wasn't that far.  Also luckily Tyson had left his iphone at his mom's so it wasn't in his pocket.  Also luckily my phone was in my pocket, cuz I hate that thing!  But once again I am soooo glad I didn't have my camera with me this time.

There are many things we learned from this adventure:

Sit on the actual seats.

Bring a bail bucket.

Bring a rope.

Don't bring cell phones and cameras and keys (oh my!)

Bring towels and extra clothes.

Don't wear our favorite shoes.

 

And that is the Great Canoe Adventure of June!

Rylee's First Birthday

Here are some pictures from Rylee's First Birthday Party!  The theme was 'Fun in the Sun'.  Everything was sun.  I love a theme.  Sun decorations, Sun food, Sun cake, Sun songs, Sun clothes, Sun pinata, and of course, Sunflowers! 

So I have been OBSESSING about this party for about 3 months. I'm not even kidding. There were lots of nights where I would wake up at 4 in the morning and start thinking about this party and not go back to sleep. Hence the title of this blog. So, here are the results of all my obsessing. It turned out really good, in my humble opinion...

I made this banner in the beginning of July.  Cute, huh?  I found a craft store that let me use their die cuts for free if I bought the paper there.  It was really fun.   I also hand made all the invitations with die cuts.  I don't have a picture of them.  They were really really cute.  If I do say so myself.

This fun netting was from Tai Pan, I love it.  I need more for my next party. (in a couple years.)  I bought all the decorations from one of my favorite websites, Celebrate Express.  They have everything for parties!

Another favorite website of mine is Oriental Trading Company.  They have so much fun stuff.  That's where I got all the sunglasses for these favor tubs.  Everyone was supposed to wear them, but the adults in my family were not cooperative.  Go figure.  I don't know if you can see the stickers, but they are custom Sun stickers from Zazzle.com, they say 'Rylee is One'.  Fun!

The banner in the background is all of Rylee's pictures each month of her first year.  I loved this idea, so I had to steal it from my friend Martha. (not Stuart, but close)  Also here is Rylee's first Traditional Birthday Rose.  We wanted a fun tradition, so we thought we would give the girls one rose for each of their birthdays.

Here is a closeup of the netting, it is so fun.  Ignore the blown off tablecloth.  I got these fancy tablecloth clips, but the tables were to thick to use them.  Sheesh. And of course there was a breeze, but that was lucky cuz it was freakin' hot.

Here is Auntie Terry filling up all the boys' water guns.  Perhaps the water guns were not the best idea, but it was meant to keep people cool.

I also found all these perfectly colored balls at Walmart.  Please ignore Erin's Finger, she was holding that sucker stick...

The Birthday Girl was being so cute and Smiley!  She is such a doll, and was so happy despite the fact that she didn't nap that day.

Her favorite presents were the clothes, funnily, and especially a cute jean skirt that Aunt Ashlee gave her.  She had a blast opening the presents!

Hitting things with a stick (or in this case, broom) is always fun.  I forgot to get a stick and a blindfold.  I can't think of everything, okay.

 

 

Erin stuffed all the candy in her pocket, she loves pockets right now.

 

Here are my Masterpeice cakes.  They weren't quite as monstrous as the Easter Monstrosity, but still they took a lot of hours over two days.  It was my first attempt at piping frosting.  Not too horrible, I thougtht.  I still need practise, though.

Here she is, eating her cake!  She is not very aggressive when it comes to cake.  It's not her favorite.

I love this pic of Steven and Cindy.  I wish I had a picture of Rylee's face, too.  I'm sure it was really cute! 

She wanted to share with everyone.  So cute.

My mom got the handful that was already in her mouth.  Gma is a good sport.

 

Here's the damage!  I love giving a whole cake to a one year old! 

 

I really had fun throwing this party, but I'm glad it's done!

Family Pictures

I was keeping these pictures low profile til Father's Day, cuz they were going to be presents. Then I just never got around to posting them. They are so cute! Mal Walker Photography took these for us. She is so nice and easy to work with. The first time we had them scheduled, the girls were all ready, hair done, no puffy eyes, etc. but then they had sprayed the orchard with fungicide. We had to reschedule. The reshoot morning Rylee had puffy red eyes and Erin would not let me do her hair. Ug. They turned out super cute, though. If you need a photographer, I recommend Mal Walker! Here's a link, for ya: malwalkerphotography She has really good prices on prints, too!

Bath Time Fun

I love having similar pictures of both my girls at the same age.

Easter Monstrosity

I'm not gonna lie.  This cake was a gigantic pain in my butt.  I went a little crazy with my idea of a cute cake for Easter.  I have always wanted to make one of those cakes with different colored layers, but I didn't really know how: hence the pain.

I used two cake mixes, cuz I wanted three layers.  I wanted to make my favorite cake recipe, Lemon Cream, which adds cream cheese and sour cream to a lemon cake mix.  Since I didn't want the yellow cake to mess with the other colors, I used a white cake mix and put lemon extract in it.  At least that part worked!  I mixed it all together so I had to guess how much to remove to die each layer different colors.  I did not guess well.  The last layer was the pink one, and I ended up using mostly the whole batch of mix for three layers instead of four.  Then the layers didn't match the peeps (I also had to go to two different stores three times to get the right combo of peeps colors) I should have gotten the neon die.  Oh well.  Plus I only had two cake pans so I had to wait for the first layer to cool, then wash the pan and bake the third layer.  Every layer ended up a different size.  What I learned from this is that I should have used just one cake mix and divided it into three smaller layers instead.  Duh.

Then I made home made cream cheese frosting.  It was really good, but it was hard to work with, it kept sliding down the cake, so I had to put it in the fridge between decorating stages.  Yes, there were stages.

I died the coconut myself, which was a lot easier than I thought, but still a pain.

Here is Erin testing a peep for me, the yellow ones did not make the final cut.  She liked them, though.

Then I had to frost each peep to glue it on, cuz I did the peeps the next day and the frosting wasn't really wet anymore.  My three color pattern did not quite work on the bunnies, there was a place where it went blue purple blue instead of blue purple pink.  It bugged me, but probably no one else noticed. This cake is HUGE.

So here is the final product: Lemon Cream Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Coconut Garnish with Three Colored Layers.  OMG.  I think I'm crazy.  Another reason for the title of this blog.