Cake for a Cause!

I sent the following email to friends in the Denver area:

In January, my beloved dad passed away from an aggressive form of kidney disease at the young age of 52. His birthday is coming up on April 2, and so to celebrate his birthday and honor him I am hoping to raise some money to donate to the American Kidney Fund. The American Kidney Fund provides treatment-related financial assistance to dialysis patients nationwide. I have a small cake business and for the next month, starting today and ending April 2, I will donate 100% of any money I make from this business to the American Kidney Fund. So, if you have a special occasion coming up, or just have a sweet tooth, this is a great way to enjoy a yummy treat and make a difference in someone's life.

To view my cake website, please visit: www.CakesByJenn.blogspot.com

To view the American Kidney Fund's website, please visit: www.kidneyfund.org/give-now/

Please help me spread the word! I'm excited about having a chance to do something, no matter how small, to make someone's life a little better and to remember my dad on his birthday. Will you help me out? Pass this info on to anyone you know who lives in my area. Or do you want a treat, too? I've never tried sending a cake or cupcakes through the mail, but it's something we could experiment with! Or do you want to help by making a donation? Even a few dollars could be a help to a family and individual in need of a transplant.

FIVE!

Dear Katelee,

It seems like just last week that Daddy and I were cleaning up our dinner dishes and my water broke. Daddy nervously drove me to the hospital as quickly as he could, and about 8 a.m. the next morning, you were born! Our lives changed forever, in ways we never could have imagined. You are our pride and joy, our beautiful baby. Only, you aren't so much of a baby anymore! You are growing into a smart, funny, loving, friendly, wonderful person. I feel like I love you more every day, if possible. I can't believe you are five-years-old today! I have loved every stage of your life so far, and I really love five-year-old you. You know and use such big words, like yesterday when I asked you if wanted to eat oatmeal and you said you would be delighted to, or the other day when you informed daddy he was driving too fast for the weather conditions. You have some favorite phrases right now. I think you say, "Oh, yeah!" about 50 times a day. You are a happy and friendly example, always willing to help include a lonely child at the park or "help"a toddler or baby. You have a gift for gratitude; daddy and I appreciate how thankful you are for all you have. You inspire me with your generosity; when your friend moved out-of-state last month you decided to give her your beloved pillow pet as a gift to comfort her and show your love. You love to play the piano, go to school, teach family home evening lessons, read books with mom and dad, and play with your princesses. You are amazing! We love you so much, darling girl.

We have had a fun day of celebrating you! You woke up to find your room filled with balloons, a fun tradition we started last year. You ran into my room with a huge smile on your face - you knew it was your birthday! After breakfast, you got to open one of your presents...

...a new outfit to wear today. :)You invited two of your good friends, Sadie and Diesel, to spend the morning with us at Pump It Up.

We had a complete blast there! We were the only ones there for half the time, and so we had full reign of the place - even I was able to get in and have some fun!

I forgot to change the camera to the movement setting, so my pictures turned out blurry. Still, we can see from your faces how much fun you are having!

Your favorite part of Pump It Up was this climbing wall. You could have spent the whole time there! And you were great at it - repeatedly climbing almost all the way to the top before losing your grip and sliding and giggling your way to the bottom!

After lunch, it was time for school. You love going to school, and this day was especially exciting because I got to bring cupcakes to your class. As usual, you requested chocolate cupcakes with chocolate filling and chocolate frosting - you are a chocolate girl! You also came up with the fabulous idea of putting little crowns on the top of each cupcake. :) I added the little pearl sprinkles as an extra elegant touch.

Your class sang Happy Birthday to you and you blew out a candle! You and your friends loved the cupcakes.
We let you choose what you wanted to eat for dinner. You wanted McDonald's chicken nuggets, so we went to dinner together and you had a great time eating your kids' meal and playing at the play place.

The night ended when we went back home to open presents!

You got plenty of fun and exciting things! Your favorite gifts were your new pink razor scooter, which you are thrilled about...
...and your new unicorn pillow pet!

What a fun day! Right now you are sleeping soundly with your pillow pet, after reading your new books, and maybe dreaming about the friend party we are planning for Saturday. As you were drifting off to sleep tonight, I said, "Katelee, I hope you know that lots and lots of people love you very much." You smiled gently and whispered, "I know." It's true; you are so loved. That's what birthdays are all about - celebrating the amazing person you are and remembering how very loved you are.

Happy Birthday, baby!

Love,

Mom

Homemade Guitar

A few weeks ago Katelee had a 'fine arts' unit at school. As part of that unit, they made their own musical instruments. Katelee came home with this rockin' homemade guitar!

She is in LOVE with her guitar. She plays it everyday.

What a rock star!

Bear Cave

The other day, Katelee and I built a HUGE bear cave in the living room:

We had a great time! I was the mommy bear, and this little cutie was the baby bear.

We hunted for berries (grapes) and took them back to the cave to eat. We made beds and prepared for hibernation by reading lots of stories. We had a great time.

Moments like these remind me that I should take more time to do little things like this with Katelee. It takes so little to make her so, so happy.

I love being her mom.

Gerald's Birthday!

We recently celebrated Gerald's birthday, and we had a great night!

Gerald left early in the morning, as usual, for a full day of school. But we picked him up downtown a little after 6 and took him out to dinner. As we were driving, we noticed that the moon was HUGE and full and bright and simply gorgeous! Seriously, it might have been the biggest, prettiest moon I've ever seen. We kept marveling over what a beautiful moon it was. Katelee was especially cute about it. At one point, she said, "It looks like a shiny penny!" And then a few minutes later she said, "I think Jesus put that moon in the sky for Daddy's birthday." Aaaaah! What a sweetie!

This picture doesn't come even close to capturing the moon, but it was worth a try :).

We went out to eat at a restaurant called Texas de Brazil, a Brazilian grill-type restaurant. Gerald has been dying to try this place for over a year, so I'm glad we finally made it there for him. And can I just say - YUM! Yes, it was expensive, but it was worth every penny. Delicious! We highly recommend this place, and they have locations all over, so you should definitely check out the link above if you're interested!

Katelee and Gerald cuddling at the restaurant while we waited for the coconut cream pie to show up that we ordered for dessert. :)

Katelee took these pictures of Gerald and me at the restaurant:

After stuffing ourselves at dinner, we drove home to open presents and head to bed. This is what Gerald saw when he walked in the door:

Katelee was so cute this year, and she wrapped almost all of Gerald's presents, with only a little help from me with the ribbons and cutting. Didn't she do a great job?

Hard at work!

Gerald had fun opening his gifts, and got a few things that he really wanted and needed.

Katelee loved watching every second of the gift opening. ;)

Happy Birthday, honey! I love you and hope you had a wonderful day!

Snow Days!

We had a few good snows here in Colorado lately, and so we've finally been able to enjoy playing in the snow! It's been so warm this past week that all the snow is gone now so I'm glad we took advantage of the first really warm day last week to get together with good friends and enjoy the snow!

Katelee loved trying to sit on this 'snow chair' - she kept sliding right off!

The first snowman Katelee has helped build this season. :)

My little snow angel.

Yes, we will definitely have to buy her new snow pants next year.

Stop growing like a weed, Katelee! ;)

So. Much. Fun.

Thanks for inviting us over, Petty family!

Valentine's Day!

We hope you all had a

fabulous Valentine's Day!

We had a fun time getting ready for Valentine's Day around here. Katelee was so excited for her first school Valentine's Day party. She worked very hard on her class valentines. She was very proud of how they turned out.

We found this idea online, and loved it. We found the bouncy balls at PartyCity for 25 cents each, and found the printable coupon for a free game of bowling online to print, so these were really inexpensive to make. And I love that they were sugar-free! :)Also, we decided to paint Katelee's fingernails in a Valentine's theme the night before Valentine's Day. She loved it!

We don't do tons for Valentine's Day, but we always give each other little inexpensive gifts and we usually make a special dinner. This year we gave Katelee some pink body wash and a little pink bath scrubby and this silly balloon bug with candy.Valentine's Day morning, Katelee woke up sick with a fever! Poor thing! We gave her our gift, and she smiled lethargically.

Then we let her open her package from grandma, and she sat up and said, "Oh, yeah! Now I'm getting the good stuff!" We laughed our heads off!

Katelee had to stay home and miss her school party, but we cuddled and watched shows and by the evening she was feeling much better.

For dinner, we had spaghetti, garlic bread and peas, and I made chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert, which we all LOVED.

We ended the night by playing a round of CandyLand. Katelee put this gift bag on Gerald's head, which he wore while he played. Ha ha!

Today Katelee is feeling much better, and we made her little owl cupcakes to take to school and share.

So, our day was good. We love all of you!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm in L.O.V.E.

...with these little fondant Valentine's Day Owls Katelee & I made this morning.

Aren't they adorable?

They are going to go on top of the cupcakes we are taking to her school Valentine's Day party on Monday. She is SO excited!

Other things on our agenda today:

finish writing names on Katelee's school Valentines,

put Valentines to cousins in the mail (sorry - they will be late!),

and wrap daddy's Valentines day gift.

How about you?

Are you having a prepare-for-Valentine's-Day-weekend too?

Soap and More Soap

Anyone else having trouble lately getting their dishes clean? I thought it was just me, but I've recently learned that products with an ingredient called phosphate are being banned throughout the country due to the damage being done to waterways. From personal experience, and from the research I've done, phosphate-free products are not worth the money you spend on them! My dishes come out cloudy and dirty looking. Ugh. I hate dirty-looking dishes; I want my dishes to sparkle! I cannot find any dishwashing detergents at my local store that still have phosphate in them - they've all been removed, so even my old standby Cascade and Finish brands are giving yucky results.

Because dishwashing detergent is expensive, I've decided not to buy it anymore if it doesn't work anyway. So, I've been experimenting with homemade dish detergents. I'm going to keep experimenting until I (hopefully) find the solution that gets my dishes really clean again! In the meantime, I've tried 3 or 4 "recipes" and my favorite so far cleans as well as my Cascade is cleaning now (so not great, but not too bad) and is MUCH cheaper than Cascade. So, for what it's worth, here is the recipe:

• Put 1 T. Borax and 1 T. Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda in the detergent compartment of your dishwasher
• Fill up the rinse aid section with white vinegar

That's it. Again, not as good as my Cascade used to be, but at least as good as it is now.

Meanwhile, I'll keep experimenting and let you know if I come up with something that works better! And if any of you have tried something that works really well, I'd love to hear about it!

___

Also, I just made another year's worth of laundry detergent for my family. Remember when I told you about that? Anyway, because I had the main ingredients left over from last year, and I made a double batch this time around, I paid $2 for a year's supply of laundry detergent! $2! I love that. And now that I have been using the detergent for almost a year I can officially say that I LOVE IT!

By the way, this time I tried something a little different (by accident - ha ha! I guess I can't count)... I added only half the amount of water I was supposed to when it came time to mix it all together in the 5 gallon container. But I really like how it turned out! Instead of a liquid soap with blobs in it, it came out as more of a smooth gel. In other words - I made it concentrated! I've been adding 1/4 c. to each laundry load and loving how my clothes are turning out. And it's much easier to store because there is so much less of it . . . I might make it 'concentrated' from now on! Ha ha ha! Give it a try if you're interested.