The National Honor Society has a new member!!!

Last Thursday, Collin (my stepson) was inducted into the National Honor Society. Collin goes to an Engineering Academy so he will actually start college his senior year of high school, plus some of his high school classes, he will be getting both high school and college credit. We were so proud of his induction into the honor society!!! (-:

Here is Collin standing in the line up with his candle...except his candle blew out...UH OH!

But no worries, the girl next to him hooked him up with a light.

Here is Collin with his grandparents. (My In-laws)

And here is Collin with his dad and I. Disregard the fact that I need a haircut in the worst kinda way, and of course I had to give Collin bunny ears.

Afterwards, we all had to go celebrate, and what better way than to get some ice cream!! We joined Collin and his mom, met up with my inlaws, and all had some ice cream in the cold drizzling rain. YUMMY!

It was a great night, and we are so super proud of Collin's latest accomplishment!!!

Keep up the GREAT work Collin!!! We love you!!

Daddy...your dinner is ready and waiting...Love, Ally XOXO

Daddy -

I know you have a long day today, but I want you to know that I have your dinner all ready and waiting for when you get home.

I added in some extra special love and stirred it all up. Kira (our dog) really wants to eat some, but I am keeping her at a distance because this special meal is just for you! I can't wait till you get home and see my special creation just for you.

Lots of Love from your little girl,
Ally

XOXO

P.S. It is just you and I for dinner tonight, Mommy said she is going to the custard stand with Mikey.

(And yes that is a dog biscuit)

Happy 60th Birthday Dad!

Today is my dad's 60th birthday....Happy Birthday Dad!

We celebrated with a family dinner last night and my cake class finally paid off as I got to decorate my first "real" cake.

Well the writing didn't go as well as I'd hope, my roses could use a little work,

but it wasn't too bad. Of course you haven't seen my pre-cake decorating cakes. (-:

Check out the hand in the above picture. I kept moving the cake away from everything to take a picture, and my darling little nephew, Colt, kept pulling it back to him whenever I went to take a picture. This went on for quite some time as we are both really stubborn. (-:

Here's Colt totally thinking it is his birthday. He couldn't wait! His birthday will soon be here in April though!

Michael got all the candles lit and then suddenly a stiff breeze kept blowing. Michael didn't mind lighting them again...like any 12 year old he is finds enjoyment in aim and flame's.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Our Super Secret Surprise...

Since my grandfather passed away in early December, my grandmom has enjoyed listening to all the grandkids tell stories of things we did as a family and with grandpop. She has many times commented that she would love for us to each write down our stories so she could read them.

My grandparents when they celebrated their 60th anniversary in 2006.

My adorable, super smart cousin Erin, took it upon herself to coordinate all the grandkids into telling their stories in their own words and in their own ways. Now this wasn't an easy task, there are 12 of us grandkids...and many of us are known to be difficult.

The grandkids and some great grandkids at my grandparents 60th anniversary in 2006.

And most of us grandkids have a lot of the same traits...one being procrasination. She gave us a deadline of March 1st for our pages to be complete. I think it was the day before that my brother Randy, Meeper and I began discussing that none of us had started our page, and who was going to call and get an extension. Luckily another cousin made the call as she was behind too. Poor Erin!

At any rate, things all came together, and what a beautiful tribute it turned out to be!!! On Sunday, all the grandkids (minus Erin's sister that lives on the opposite coast) showed up at my grandmom's (on time with one exception).

Here is my cousin Erin with my grandmom talking on the cell phone to Erin's sister who couldn't join us. )-:

Some of the gang...

And some more of the gang....


My grandmom was sincerely touched by the effort. We all sat around reading the book and reminiscing about old times. It was such a beautiful day, and something I will always cherish.

And here is a picture of me and my brother that I just have to throw up here to embarass him. He was so happy that we got our picture taken!



So our super secret surprise was a HUGE sucess! I talked to my grandmom earlier and she is so thrilled with all the stories and memories!

Philadelphia Regional Robotics Competition...

This week Allyson and I ventured up to Temple University in Philadelphia for Collin's robotics competition. I didn't take my better camera, and our seats were "high" up so no great pictures from me.

Here is the chaos of competition...

Our team made it to the quarter finals, and won the first match, but it is the best out of three and we lost the next two. At any rate, the team did great. (-:

As we are now done with our in-season competitions, Sammy Su Botsy (our robot) is now being shipped home so the team can spend some quality time with her and prepare for the off season competitions.

Have a safe trip home Sammy Su! See you soon!

Playgroup Friday - Letter H

On Friday, we got playgroup together, and worked on the letter H. After circle time, Meeper had a heart cookie kit so the kids worked on decorating their heart cookies. Then the kids had "h"ot dogs wrapped in crescents and the adults had "h"am and cheese, mine was on a crescent...YUMMY!

Sorry I don't have many pictures this week of playgroup! I know all the mommies love seeing the pictures...hopefully I'll do better in the future!

Cake Decorating Class - St. Patricks Day

Sorry I haven't been blogging as much lately...please forgive me! I have had so much going on lately...I have been working on my stepson's website, my son's school issues, my daughter had the flu, and our finances as well as a "secret" project that I can't reveil until next week. It has been CRAZY busy!

At cake class this week, we decorated St. Patrick's Day cakes. Our teacher let us do them in "free form", basically any way that we wanted to do them. I had planned on making a sugar cookie for the top of my cake in the shape of a shamrock, but that didn't happen.

This is our teacher's cake...she actually had to do a plan "b" because the gel she had just bought was mildewed. YUCK! But I thought she did a great job considering she planned it up as she went...I guess if you do this for over 25 years, you probably wouldn't have too much trouble doing it either. (-:


The horseshoe is actually a sugar mold. I really don't know anything about sugar molds. I have a sugar mold candle holder, but beyond that, my knowledege is zilch. She is going to show us more with them next week.

This cake was made by one of the girls in the class, and I thought she did an awesome job. It turned out really great!
The below cake was done by the school nurse and her daughter who is a teacher, they are really nice people. They chose to make chocolate icing. Meeper wanted to do chocolate icing, but she didn't for some reason....

Here is me decorating my cake. I hate pictures of me...UGGH. But I am going to step out of my comfort zone and just publish it here for you all to see! Anyways, my cake had homemade cream cheese icing because I ran out of shortening to make more of the "decorating" icing. Luckily I had plenty of the decorating icing left from last week so I used that. I just mixed yellow in with my blue from the doll cake and got green icing.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my cake so the teacher asked me if I was interested in learning a couple new things. I did Austrailian lace on the edges, and a crisscross pattern in my shamrock. I really liked the rainbow cakes better, but at least I learned something new and I need to learn as much as I can from this class.

Meeper also made cream cheese icing, but for a different reason. Her family is sick of the decorating icing that we always use. She has been throwing out the last bits of her cakes cause nobody wants to eat them. I'll have to ask her if the cream cheese icing helped any.

Both of us still used the decorative icing for the actual decorating part because cream cheese is too soft to use for decorating.

After all our cakes were made, the teacher started teaching us how to make roses. We are making a rose cake next week so we have to bring 12 roses all ready made. Geez...homework. Meeper and I didn't do too well with our homework for this past week...we were suppose to bring in daisies for our St. Patricks Day cake. But I think we'll both do our roses....

Here is a picture of my practice roses.....the beginning glob on the left, and my last rose on the right. I need some more practice, but I am definately heading in the right direction...or at least I hope!

Catch me next week for our Rose cake class!

Swiss Stuffing Chicken

I adore cooking blogs...it seems I am all about food these days. Last night, we tried a recipe from Kelly's Recipes. We loved it....so since I know a lot of my friends are menu planning, I thought it might be something new to try.

It is called Swissed Stuffing Chicken. You can substitute the swiss cheese with sliced mozerella if you want. We used the swiss though. It was super easy to make and you can also make it up ahead of time to freeze until you need it for dinner one night...an added bonus.

If you read through the comments on Kelly's post, you can see how people have used many variations to make it.

Hope you enjoy it and thanks Kelly!

Cake Decorating...The DOLL Cake!

So first and foremost, I gotta give a shoutout to Meeper. While I was away on my whirlwind weekend in New York, my poor little cousin had to slave away baking me a cake so I would have one to decorate for cake class. And I so appreciated it! Thanks Meeper!

I knew this week at cake class was going to be interesting. I was so tired...beyond exhaustion between my jam packed weekend and the time chnage. Meeper told me she had some late nights too...so that only means one thing...we were going to be giddy, and nobody was going to get our little jokes. Sometimes one of us can giggle, and the other will start with no real reason...of course nobody knows there is no reason, and that makes it even funnier.

Meeper's car broke down during the day, she was suppose to drive us to class, and my van was almost out of gas so since we didn't have time to hit the gas station...there was really only one solution.

This.

My stepson, Collin's, new-to-him car. You know, sometimes you just have to break out of the Mommy Mold and instead of the mini van rock a more sporty car. I am sure Meeper enjoyed her ride...specially since it has been 15 years since I drove a stick shift.

But I assure you all that all of our cake decorating equipment will fit in this car...with strategic planning, and 3 people trying to shove it in. It really will fit...the only problem was getting the cakes home, but we'll get to that. (-:

One thing we learned this class was that I am quite messy...which really wasn't shocking to me, but some appeared to be shocked by this revelation. Note the icing coming out the bag the wrong way...which kept happening to me all night. But it made for some laughs...and even the teacher thought it was funny.

Here is Meeper cheating...patting down the middle of her stars, and I caught her. And note how clean her hands are...no icing exploded out of her parchment bag. Well I made sure she didn't go home that way.

In an effort to make sure that we both went home messy, I wiped my hands on her shirt sleeve. Which in turn started a little icing war and thankfully I don't have pictures of that!

After our little icing war, Princess Isabella got a little wild and I had to cover her up. I am telling you, this girl has no class...

Here is Princess Isabella decent and modest as she was meant to be...

And here is Meeper's creation, Princess Gertrude (is that the name I gave her Meeper?)

And here are some of the rest of the creations by other members of our class...

Class ended, and it became apparent that our cakes would not fit back into their storage containers and that Meeper was going to have to hold the cakes for the ride home...while I drove stick shift for the 3rd time in 15 years. We were riding and it was dark...and then Meeper starting laughing loud...and I just knew something had happened. My doll lost her icing flower bouquet between the console and the seat.

We couldn't find it, but we sure did have a laugh about how long it would be in there.

Fred found it when he took Collin practice driving the other night.

And I just giggled when he showed it to me.

Who knows how that got in there?

The GRRRolling LuNaTeCs and Niagara Falls!

Last weekend was the first competition of the season for my stepson's robotics team! We traveled to Rochester, New York to compete in the Finger Lake Regional FIRST competition. What an AMAZING time we had!!! And to make it even better, Collin's robotics team were finalists! We were so proud of them and all the hard work they have been doing to get this far. It was so nice to see it finally paying off!

Here is the LuNaTeCs robot all ready to compete....


Here is Collin's team after receiving their finalist trophies, and medals. They also received the "Judges" Award. We were extremely proud of their accomplishments, it is so awesome to see all the hard work paying off....

Below is a happy Collin and his girlfriend, Sam with their medals and one of the trophy.

Sam made Ally her own little LuNaTeC crown, and then one of the mentors on the team gave her an orbit ball necklace.

Collin working on the robot prior to the Finals...

And check out this girl's hair. Her team was on our alliance for the finals. I love it!! I think I'll wear mine like that for the next competition!

And here are the GRRRolling LuNaTeCs...

Team GRR, Team Rolling Thunder and our team the LuNaTeCs.

After spending Friday and Saturday at Robotics, we left Saturday night to head to Niagara Falls. It was downpouring and there was lightening almost the whole hour and half ride. But we made it in one piece to the hotel. We stayed at a Comfort Inn right next to the park that surronds Niagara Falls. It was nice and close. We got there at about 9 and I was exhausted.

I started looking at all the brochures, and all of them were saying that you have to see the falls at night because they are lit up and beautiful. Motherly guilt kicked in and I asked the kids if they wanted to go...of course they did. So out we went into the downpour to see the beautiful falls in the drenching rain.

Aren't they beautiful??? Just kidding, the night pictures just don't do it justice.

They actually were stunning with the lights on them, but between the darkness and the pouring rain, I didn't get one picture of the falls that turned out.

I did get a picture of the boys though...Allyson and Fred stayed behind because at this point Allyson was sound asleep...

The next day, after a scrumptious free breakfast at our hotel where we were joined by Collin's girlfriend, her mom and sister, we treked across the street to see the falls in the light of day.

Sam and her sister, Shannon..

Collin and Sam

After Sam and her family left, we headed out to Goat Island, which is one of the island's between the American falls and the Canadian falls. When we came back, the observation deck was open that hangs out over the river for a spectacular view of the falls.

On the way home, we also stopped in Locksport, New York so we could see a lock on the Erie Canal. Just something we thought the boys might be interested in seeing and since it was practically on the way home, why not?

It was cool to see...although I was freezing! I think it would have been much better to actually see a boat go through it, but it is the wrong time of year for that.

Then we headed home...it was a whirlwind weekend. I was really glad to get the kids to Niagara Falls once so they could see what it was like. Last year, when we went to Rochester for one of Collin's competitions, we didn't get to go on to Niagara as we planned because of tons of snow and more on the way so I was glad this year that we could go there since it was not too far.