The New Year Begins! 2018

The new year is starting off cold (oh! the electric bill!), but it's starting off a good year. 

Our little cutie turned 6 months old and is growing and getting "big" so fast! (He's getting big in skills, but he's still a little in size.)

First time in a shopping cart seat.

Kaitlyn and I play around with camera settings.

Natalie is reading through books so fast; she reads constantly.

We've made a little more progress on the storeroom - Rob building the shelves and Beth organizing. (My goal is to get the floor cleared and have enough stuff for everything.)

Rob's birthday cake kind of looked like something from the swamp at the end of the CandyLand game. (I was going for "death by chocolate", but cake decorating isn't my strength!) It tasted really good though - most of us couldn't finish our piece.

Alee's American historical project was on Amelia Earhart (which is the reason for the costume)...yep, I made that hat (thanks to an early release school day and some sibling babysitters).

Still the star of the house; Gideon loves his siblings as much as they love him.

The twins got to be signed out of school and go to lunch with me (their choosing) on their birthday like the others. (Seth chose Subway, Carolyn and Alee chose IHOP.) The twins chose the mall food court. Usually I say no to the carousel, but for their birthday, I said yes.

They're 11 now!

Their cake looked much better than Rob's. It's an ice cream cake. Natalie chose hot fudge cake (which we had Saturday with Rob's family), and Kaitlyn chose ice cream cake, which we had on their actual birthday.

Natalie loved Kaitlyn's ukulele so much at Christmas that we got her one too for her birthday. Kaitlyn got an assortment of things (since her things cost less) - a unicorn hoodie (that took me all day to sew pieces onto a hoodie thanks to my less than helpful 6 month old), a "briefcase" to play spy, a nail art kit (to be a beautician), and a pocket racer (which they both got). The less then $5 pocket racers were so much more popular than I expected. Worth it!

It's a little messy looking on the inside - it's layers of cookies'n'cream cake with layers of cookie dough ice cream (that's what she wanted!) with chocolate buttercream frosting between layers and homemade sweetened whipped cream all over the outside. (In the future I wouldn't do the buttercream since it's too crumbly when frozen. I've gotten good at the cake/ice cream part, but I'm still experimenting with what works best for the frostings/fillings. (Kaitlyn asks for some flavor of this every year, so it's good practice for me.) :)

Ready for February - I think. :) (Ready for warm weather to come and all the germs going around to go away before they catch up to us!)