It's my party

Finally... one of the most anticipated days of the year! Birthday party day had arrived. We pulled out Mallory's rainbow-striped dress to wear - unfortunately it was on the cold side, and we needed to beef it up with a layer underneath.Everyone is excited that friends are on their way!We started off with some colouring pages while waiting for everyone to arrive. This was probably the calmest and least hairy of the activities we did, so why I pushed it along, I have no idea. After the colouring we made beaded bracelets (except that the stretchy cord they were done on did not want to stay tied in a knot, and I had to hot glue them together), and we painted rainbow suncatchers, the paint pens for which worked terribly - blobbed all over and stained EVERYTHING. I was frantic trying to keep the girls' clothes away from the paint. Some mom is never going to send their kid over again if I ruin their outfit! I don't think one speck of the paint came out of the tablecloth, despite pre treating it and bleaching it, and it was everywhere by the time the party was done. Since they were pens I hadn't thought of the repercussions of paint all over the place. Lesson learned.OK... enough with the crafts that are such a pain. Onto the cake! Here's Mallory's face as the cake (make that cakes) make their grand entrance......and another shot as she decides she'd rather not eat said cake, and instead just soak it all in.

In this photo you can also see the biggest hit of the party: we had rainbow ice cubes in white grape juice. BIG hit with the kids!And we had something healthy to go with the cake, too: rainbow fruit skewers.
Everyone happily munching.

Next up: time to open the gifts. Mallory is great at opening gifts... she is very expressive in her response to seeing everything for the first time. (We are still working on the thank-yous.)Then the loot bags were handed out, everyone was back out the door, and we took one more picture of me and my birthday girl.I can see here why everyone always comments on how much we look alike.

Party prep

It's hard to believe that five years have almost passed since miss Mallory made her entrance to the world (a full two weeks late - forgiven but not forgotten.) This year, for the first time since her first birthday, we decided to do individual parties for Liam and Mallory. With both of them in school their bases of friends have just changed too much to try to get everyone under one roof. Mallory decided that she wanted a rainbow party... though I will admit this may have been spurred on a bit by me bookmarking all kinds of cool ideas on Pinterest and showing them to her. Come on in... we are ready to party!
The wreath on the door was a fun project that Mallory and I made together. Liam even got in on the action. We used 250 balloons and there are a few spots that could have used even more. I don't think latex balloons have a super long shelf life, but I am putting this away and hoping to be able to pull it out for future birthday parties, even if they aren't rainbow themed. I guess it's also worth pointing out/admitting at this point that the concept of 'rainbow' was expanded to include 'all things colourful'. There were not that many actual rainbows at the party. The dining room, set up for our guests the day before the party. I originally was going to swag the ceiling with different colours of plastic tablecloths, but after getting a few up, I didn't think it looked very good and also realized the colour casts would really interfere with picture taking. They came back down and the mobiles went up in their place. It's hard to tell from the pictures how cool the mobiles were - they really added to the room. There were four in all, one at each corner of the table. Loot bags lined up and ready to go on the sideboard. And what was in them, you may ask?
Well... rainbow stuff, obviously! Skittles (taste the rainbow!), a rainbow swirl lollipop, stickers, a pencil that writes in different colours simultaneously, and rainbow modelling clay.
Here's a shot of the kitchen the day before the party - it was a disaster. And what, you may wonder, made that much mess?
OK, I will admit the cakes-in-a-jar turned out pretty cute. But I don't reallly recommend them. I wanted to make one of those tall layer cakes that are all over the blogosphere right now - the ones with plain white icing and when you cut into them, each layer is a different colour. But Mallory refused. She saw these and wanted them, so I agreed to it. Well, I don't know how the people posting pictures of these beautiful jar cakes all over the internet are doing it. First, it took a lot of trial and error to get the right amount of batter into the right size of jar, trying to account for how much it's going to expand when baked. Then, ours browned quite a bit on the outside which made the cake lose its pretty vibrant hue. Judging by the center of the cake though I think it's fair to say we used enough food colour:
(The cakes dome up when you bake them, so you scoop that off and then apply the icing.) The one in the photo here is not too bad but it was definitely the best of the batch. Then, there is the issue of how you eat it. The first few mouthfuls are nothing but icing, followed by nothing but cake. Mallory took two bites of hers and proclaimed that she did not like it. I scraped the icing aside to allow her to get to the cake, but she was already over it. All that work and then she didn't like it! I should have made the layer cake after all. On the bright side, I would like to think this is proof that she likes my homemade cake and icing better than the mix and canned frosting I used here - because I spent enough time tinkering with food colouring and layering batter in jars and baking in a water bath and washing every bowl in the house - I was not about to add to that work by making the cake from scratch, too.

Up next: scenes from a party. At least a few... I am always glad to take these photos during the prep stage of a party, because the actual event goes by in a flash and I never have enough time to pick the camera up.

The moment that makes it all worthwhile

Back in a bit, after I have scraped the icing off the carpet and tried throwing every stain removal trick in my arsenal at the dining room tablecloth.

Pittsburgh wrap-up

The thing that drives me nuttiest about Blogger is that, when you upload pictures, they show up in reverse order. The thing that drives me nuttiest about posting on a Mac rather than a PC is that I cannot just drag my pictures around and drop them where I want them to go. So I'm going to recap the rest of the trip, starting with the end. Because I'm lazy like that.Before we left for March Break, Cindy gave us these travel scavenger hunt sheets. We made a bunch of photocopies and thank goodness we did, because they were a smash hit. Mallory watched a couple movies (the drive was 5 hours each way) but Liam did NOTHING but scavenger hunts - I think he finished 3 in their entirety - and nap. This was quite a feat because while we saw lots on the roadsides at the start and end of our trip... there was a looooong stretch of Ohio interstate in the middle during which we saw pretty much nothing. And still he kept at it.
On our last morning in Pittsburgh, we went to the Children's Museum. It's rated one of the top 10 childrens' museums in the US and it's easy to see why. It's leaps and bounds above our local London children's museum. This is me in front of a wall of raining text.
This next picture is from the zoo. They do have penguins and the penguins do cheer for the hometown team.
What's this? Back to the children's museum. This was a huge Light Bright board that we had fun playing with.
The stairs in the museum... that all say 'ouch' or some variation thereof as you step on them. They were fun!
The souvenirs we picked up on our trip: Mallory got this stuffed penguin, which she immediately named Sidney Crosby. Except that she keeps calling him Cindy. With Cindy having been part of her life since the day she was born, I can't blame her!
Liam got a little Penguins zamboni. You knew it would be something hockey related, right?
The one culinary must-do in Pittsburgh is to go to Primanti Brothers for a sandwich. The sandwiches are big, meaty, cheesy, greasy messes, and they include the coleslaw and the fries INSIDE the bread.
Never fear... Mallory did get her swims in after all! Our hotel had worked out an arrangement with a neighbouring hotel for us to use their pool facilities, and provided a shuttle back and forth. Thank goodness. Otherwise there would have been a mutiny.
Yeah, these pictures are pretty out of order. Now we are back at the zoo, in the shark tunnel. Liam summoned the sharks by flashing his Jaws shirt and showing he was on their side.
This would have been a cool picture with the polar bear, if it weren't for the kid in it. (Not mine.)
One more at the pool, or rather, the hot tub. The kids got a kick out of this - it was pleasantly warm but not really hot like most hot tubs are. I set the timer on the camera and ran to get into this one, and with two seconds to go until the shutter clicked, Liam dropped a handful of foam on top of my head. I know it looks like I am frying an egg up there, but I swear I am not. This helps explain why Liam has such a funny little smirk on his face - he is SO proud of himself!
And with that... Pittsburgh was behind us. This week we started drawing up a fun little list of places we have been and places we want to go with the kids before they start leaving the nest in the next ten or fifteen years. Let's put it this way: there is not enough time or money. Chad currently has us pencilled in for two or three exotic vacations per year. I'd love to live that way... just not sure it's going to happen! Nice to dream about it, though.

Won over

Last fall I desperately wanted to see The Muppet Movie. It probably has something to do with having watched The Muppet Show every Friday night of my childhood. I thought it would be great fun to introduce my kids to the Muppets. They never turn down the opportunity to see a movie... or at least they hadn't, until this one. Something about the Muppets rubbed Mallory the wrong way and she REFUSED to go see it. Liam was only lukewarm. And so we never did make it to the theatre.

But this week it came out on DVD and I said I was renting the movie for a family movie night and that was that. Anyone who wanted to watch it could, and anyone who didn't want to could go to bed early. I guess they took the threat seriously because we all watched it last night. Liam thought the farting shoes and singing chickens were hilarious (of course) but Mallory - she was enraptured with the whole thing. And the first thing she did this morning when she woke up was draw me this picture. Of course it's showing here sideways, because my scanner does that. So in case you can't make it out, this is a picture of Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Beaker, Gonzo, the Swedish Chef, Walter, one of the chickens, and a few more whose names escape me because, let's face it, it's been a while.

She watched it again this morning and I've put it on again right now as a bedtime treat. She's hooked. I win again.

The Pitts, again

After the hockey game let out, we went back to the hotel to swim. It is not a Cook Family Vacation unless it involves a swimming pool at the hotel. (This, despite the fact that the kids can swim any day of the week at the Y or in the back yard at home... but I digress.) When we booked the hotel we made very sure that it had a nice pool. Chad went downstairs to check it out while Mallory put on her swimsuit. And then, wouldn't you know it, Chad came upstairs with bad news: the pool was closed for the exact duration of our stay for resurfacing.

After Mallory had a good cry, we decided to head up Mount Washington instead. It was a gorgeous day and the next day was calling for rain so we decided to take in the view while it was clear. Mount Washington has two inclines on it. The one closer to our hotel was the Monongahela Incline, which has been running up and down the mountain since 1870. I expected it to be old and rickety and scary, and was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't. Although I will admit that Mallory was not entirely convinced.It's a good thing she is too little to read some of the graffiti in the car: On top of Mount Washington, there are several lookout platforms with panoramas of the city. The incline ride did not bother me but I could not walk out on this thing without feeling like I was going to throw up.I did make it out there for a picture though... a kind man offered to take the family picture I posted a few days ago, of us in front of the city skyline. That made up for the botched photo in the Consol Center.Pittsburgh sits where three rivers intersect and there are lots of cool bridges and waterfront parkland that I imagine would be really pretty if it were green.

The next morning we were out the door early... we were off to the Carnegie Science Center, one of four Carnegie museums in Pittsburgh. The part we enjoyed most was the sports complex which offered lots of activities and almost no crowds. The kids both tried the rock climbing (in preparation for this summer's vacation!): Liam did not enjoy himself at this museum at all... no sirree... Mallory was fascinated by some of the cool exhibits in the robotics room. In this one, you draw a picture on a touch screen and then a robot arm recreates it out of little steel balls.
My favourite part was the 1945 submarine parked in the river out back that you could tour from the torpedos in the front end to the sleeping bunks in the back. Aside from being very claustrophobic, it was very cool.Back to the sports center again. We competed in many, many computer-timed 50m dashes against each other, and here's Liam taking a ride on the Human You-Yo.

For dinner that night we went to a seafood restaurant and ate buckets of crab legs. Well, three of us did. Mallory opted for macaroni and cheese. Surprise, surprise.

Great expectations

At about 7:30 tonight, Liam came to me with a worried look on his face and asked when we were going to make the rainbows that we eat. He was referring to our traditional end-of-the-rainbow parfaits that we have been making on St. Patrick's Day for the past four years in a row. The thing is, I wasn't planning on doing it this year. You see, we have something coming up soon (personal details whited out)......and I am about all rainbowed-out from that (including rainbow fruit so that there is at least one healthy choice on the menu). Plus, I had been planning on making a sweet treat for St. Patrick's Day dessert, but then a friend who came over for a playdate this afternoon brought a box of Timbits, and I didn't think it was necessary to have more treats in one day.

The moral of the story is, don't start a tradition for your kids and then decide to stop it on a whim. They will notice, and they will not be happy. Lucky for me, we had most of what we needed on hand to whip up some parfaits for a bedtime snack. We were missing the purple grapes, and Liam pointed that out, but I don't think he minded too much.It's not like I planned to skip St. Patrick's Day entirely. We did start the day off with a festive breakfast. We used our leprechaun dishes......and we wore our leprechaun hats......and Liam's foosball pajamas had him looking mighty festive.
This time, I used the gel food colouring to tint our pancakes green, and they turned out much, much greener than they have in years past when I used the liquid colour. The juice was tinted with liquid colour, and a couple of drops there went a long way.