I Went on Summer Vacation and All I got Was This Lousy Blog Post : Part One

So it's been noticeably quiet around here. I know you've been missing my endless tirades about children named Swayzie, but it's because I've been gone on my very late summer vacation. I headed up to Canada for a gorgeous wedding of my friends, Steve and Meghan, and then came home to spend a few days at Lake Powell with the family. But because of this, I am hopelessly behind on the happenings of our family, and shall commence throwing up pictures and snippets right now.

First up, Justin's birthday.

Justin's birthday fell on a Tuesday this year, which is LAME. I had these ideas of an awesome cake and all of that business, so on Monday Addison, Andrew and I ventured out to buy all the food and balloons for a party with Justin's family. Did I ever tell you what a terrible idea it is to try and wrangle two kids, bags full of groceries and 13 balloons on a very windy day? It really is a terrible idea. After much struggling, I got the balloons into the car and drove home.

On Tuesday, I started to make the cake and cupcakes that were to grace the party with my awesome baking/decorating skills. O....M....G....it was the worlds biggest mess. I decided to add some food coloring to the cake batter, which for some reason totally deteriorated it. It burned up at the edges and stayed gooey in the center, and not the good kind of gooey. I figured I could just frost the crap out of it to hide the mistakes. I used TWO family size cans of frosting and all I did was ruin the cake some more. No worries though, I could just add some well placed sprinkles to camouflage the sagging areas. Nope. My final idea was to cut the bad part out, like I'd cut a slice out on purpose, which cause the cake to effectively disintegrate into nothingness. I unceremoniously tossed the entire effort into the trash and snuck it out to the garbage can so I wouldn't have to field questions from Justin. I frosted a dozen cupcakes, stuck in some candles and called it good. It was pretty much the biggest waste of time EVER.

Justin liked it though. Addison and I snuck downstairs while he was in the shower (Me: Addison! Wake up! It's time to surprise daddy! Addison (still half asleep): Okay, you go put the balloons up. I will go back to sleep.) and put up the balloons and streamers, and jumped out and yelled surprise. Andrew was slightly confused by the whole thing, but it turned out okay.

Addison and I had gone to Build a Bear workshop the day before and I had her make Justin a bear that she thought looked like him. She chose a black bear (?) and then chose a Utah Jazz outfit to put on him. I guess she was close enough...

Anyway, here's some pics. Happy Birthday Justin! You're 29.... that scares me.

Stay tuned for the next installment of I Went on Summer Vacation and All I got Was This Lousy Blog Post.