Happy 5th birthday Vinnie!

Vincent on his first birthday


Vincent is 5 years old today! Five always seems like such a big year to me. They are about to start kindergarten, they have lost that toddler baby chub, they are even starting to wipe their own butts. They are becoming big kids. Having Vincent turn 5 means I am now down to one baby! Wahhh!!

Vincent is easily our most creative kiddo. He loves to draw and color and is so imaginative. He will spend time crawling on all fours and pretending to be a dog, or oodles of time setting up his dinosaurs in elaborate positions all over the toy room floor.

Recently Christopher has been interested in the brio train tracks. Vincent is awesome at making up different track configurations for him (while Peter on the other hand had to google "train track ideas" just to come up with some!)

Here is Vincent with one of the tracks he made for Christopher:




Here is a sampling of some of Vinnie's art work.



"A Fast Ball"


"A Cool Dude"
"Eggy the Cat"

"Henry Horse"


"A llama the hama" ( I have no idea what that means)
"Batty" He drew lots of these in October.



"Spinosaurus"



"Terra" He drew lots of dinasaurs. These two are just a tiny sampling of the pages of dinosaurs he has done.



Happy birthday my Vinnie boy!

OUCH!

I have been blessed with pretty thick, long eyelashes. Unfortunately they came with a unibrow. I have been getting my eyebrows done for more years than I can remember. My regular waxer is out of town for the month, so I went to my back-up. I thought it seemed to hurt a bit more than it usually did. I got to my car and my eyes were throbbing. I looked in the mirror to find some of my skin came off!!

They look much worse in real life than they do here in this picture.

I am not even sure why she had the wax so far down. My eyebrows are big, but not that big! Of course I had them done at lunch and actually had to go back and see patients.

Ugh. I hope they don't scar.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...

Next week is Vincent's 5th birthday, so we are having his party tomorrow. I decided to make some shark cupcakes for the party.

I started with these ingredients (except the swedish fish--I ended up not making the fish cupcakes. Too tired)
First I shaped the Twinkies into the body of the shark. I cut the chocolate wafer cookies in half for the fins. They were so delicate I broke many of them and had to keep cutting.

I assembled them onto the cupcake. I made a slit in the back of the twinkie to put the fin in. I then stuck in the freezer for a while.

This was the hardest part! I had to dip them in slightly melted gray frosting (I used a can of frosting and colored with black icing dye). The first couple dipped fine, but then I had a difficult time trying to get the entire thing into the cup I was using. The book I got this idea out of only made 3. I was making 15. In retrospect I needed a deeper cup and double the amount of frosting (alot of which would have been wasted). It was an incredible mess and time consuming.
The rest was fine. I used red fruit leather cut into an oval for the mouth. I piped white frosting for the teeth (that part was fun and much quicker than I was expecting). I used an upside down mini chocolate chip for the eyes and piped some black frosting for the gills (or ribs as Vinnie kept calling them).

I got the idea out of an awesome book called "Hello Cupcake". There are tons of other fun ideas I can't wait to try!

Goosebumps...

There are no other words to describe the feeling I had while watching the inauguration of Barack Obama. A truly amazing day.



"... greatness is never a given. It must be earned."

President Barack Obama, inaugural address, January 20, 2009

This never gets old...

Shampoo mohawks in the bathtub!

Got skinny kids?

I do. I frequently struggle with finding pants to fit them properly. By the time they fit them in the waist, they are too short. If they were girls it wouldn't matter so much-- I would just say they were capris and call it a day. A lot of kids pants come with the adjustable waist band now (one of the top 5 inventions EVER!), but the infant pants don' have that.

My brilliant husband came up with an awesome solution. Zip ties! You know, those little plastic adjustable ties that you can tighten, but not loosen back up again. We just throw that around the belt loops, adjust it to the right size, and voila'! It can get thrown in the wash and dryer, no problem. When he grows a bit (" a bit" being the operative term in this house-- my 2 1/2 yr old is wearing size 12-18 mo pants), just cut it off and put in another one.



I may be small, but I'm cute!!

How about some syrup with that pancake?

So in a just a few short months I will be hitting the big 4-0. For Peter's 40th birthday a few years ago the 2 of us went to Vegas and had an awesome time. Yesterday I had the pleasure (yeah right...) of my first mammogram to commemorate my 40th year. (Don't go feeling sorry for me just yet. We will do something fun around the actual date)

Everyone kept telling me about how it hurt. I have to admit, I didn't believe it. I figured I have given birth to 4 kids without pain medications, this would be nothing. Much to my surprise, IT HURT! Granted it was much quicker than pushing out the boys, but still. Thanks to those same boys, I don't even have boobs anymore so I am expecting the "NO boob" discount on my bill.

Just so you don't think I am a total kook, I did not bring my camera to my appointment with the intent of taking a picture. It just happened to be in my purse, I was waiting and thought, "What the hell!"

Have you ever hidden from your kids?

You know, like behind the bathroom door. Or crouched at the foot of the bed. Because you are trying to get ready and you just don't want to get one more cup of juice or pour another bowl of cereal?! No? Oh. Me neither.

Anatomy of a medical office

Today was the opening day for my new office. There is so much to say, I don't even know where to start! I took tons of pictures throughout the construction process. This is basically what it looked like before we started. What you can't see is the row of 3 rooms to the right which stayed the same structurally.
Unfortunately the foundation was cement so the plumber had to trench out concrete just to get the plumbing in. Expensive!
The frames for the rooms then were layed out.

The walls went up.
We have the upper windows so that natural light from the windows will come into the central area.
Then they painted. The colors did not come out well in the pictures, but it is a cool purple and green combination that perfectly matches my business card and website.
Here is the inside of one of my exam rooms. The table and cabinets all match. I have 2 dark blue rooms, 2 burgundy rooms, and 1 light blue room.
This is the central area in the back. Doctors offices to the right, exam rooms to the left and medical assistant station in the center.
This is really just a small part of the waiting room. The waiting room is pretty big.
I have lots of decorating plans. We are going to have murals done in the exam rooms, more paint and pictures in the waiting room. I am looking for a fun, bright area rug for the waiting room.

Today was good! I only saw a few patients, all from my old practice. They were all so nice and excited about the new office. One patient even brought a little gift. It is going to take some time to build back up again, but I now know that I can do this!

Holiday Eating

I know, I know. No matter what how you define it, the holidays are officially over. I have been so busy with my darn office (those pictures will be coming very soon, I promise!) that I haven't done much posting. Looking back through the pictures I have taken the last month, I noticed tons of food pictures, so thought I would share those (because I am sure you are bored looking at my pictures of my kids!)

I always make goodies to bring over to friends and neighbors. I do something different every year, although Pete has pointed out it would be much easier to pick a couple of things I do well and stick with that. Me? Apparently I thrive on the stress that comes with trying out new recipes when I am crunched for time. This year I made chocolate dipped toffee squares. So good! Unfortunately I was too impatient making the first batch and did not wait for the candy thermometer to read "soft crack" , instead deciding that "firm ball" was close enough. Nope. The toffee never actually hardened and I had to scrap that batch and start over. Lesson learned.
I also made "Angel Kiss cookies". I found the recipe on Laura's blog, Piece of Cake. Interesting side note-- when I mentioned to her that my cookies came out super flat, she suggested I turn my oven down a bit. Since I have lived in this house my cookies all come out super flat! I even replaced all my baking soda and powder thinking it was that. Now I am wondering if it is just my hot oven.

The final thing I made was these cookies. Growing up we called them "Hello Dollies" ( I have no idea why) I have also seen them called magic cookies.
Next year I will take Pete's advice and choose 2 things I am familiar with.



The kids did some gingerbread cookie decorating this holiday season

This is the boys at Christmas Eve dinner. No, we did not drug them with wine at dinner. They had cranberry juice in our Christmas wine glasses.

We received tons of treats from friends and patients. This item was especially beautiful and delivered on Christmas Eve, making for a perfect dessert for the evening. It was a red velvet mini bundt cake.

I made a delicious eggplant dish to bring to my sister-in-law's house for dinner. Do you see the big indentation? One of the boys stepped on it getting out of the van. Based on the markings in the foil we deduced it was Vinnie. We still ate it though!

Now I seriously need to go on a diet!!