Kate's 2nd

Little Kate turned two on the 10th of July. The day started off well. We attended our annual ward breakfast/parade and the kids had fun playing, being pushed on their bike and wagon, and climbing on a real fire truck. We then let Kate open some presents. As you can see from the pictures below, she was quite pleased with what she got:




We got Wendy's for lunch so Kate could enjoy her favorite food--chicken nuggets. After Kate went down for a nap was when the disasters began.

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to bake, but I'm very particular about what I make and what I use to make it. No cake or brownie mixes, no shortening, and no margarine (among other things). I want a dessert that tastes GOOD. Morgan bought an Ariel cake pan for Kate's Ariel-themed party. The instructions said to make a cake from a mix, but I got a white cake recipe from my sister that she really likes. My first sign of disaster was that the cake overflowed in the oven. Last time that happened to me, my pineapple upside-down cake was more like pineapple cobbler. When the cake was finally finished baking, I attempted to invert it. It wouldn't come out. When I tried flipping it back over to loosen the edges again, I dropped it. On the floor. Resulting in this:


A completely ruined cake and not enough time to make another before Morgan came to begin the tedious decorating process. I was at a loss. I just stood there staring in disbelief. Tyler (who was downstairs trying to nap) heard the commotion and came to my rescue. He suggested we borrow a cake mix from a neighbor and whip it up as quickly as possible. So against my beliefs, we did just that and the cake came out perfectly.

Meanwhile, I had whipped up cupcakes from my favorite chocolate cake recipe. I'd never tried cupcakes with that recipe before, and the result was equally as disastrous as that of the cake: overflowed tops stuck to the muffin tins. This is what they ended up looking like:


It was back to square one with the cupcakes. I whipped up an easy white cake recipe (since the cake was now chocolate) and they turned out better, though not perfect.

In the meantime, Morgan got to work on frosting the cake. I didn't know how much frosting to make, so I just threw the ingredients together without measuring. I mentioned that I don't use shortening, right? Shortening gives frosting a better consistency for decorating, but it (in my opinion) is gross. I always make my frosting with butter. Well, this time I added too much butter and ran out of powdered sugar. I borrowed some from a different neighbor, but the frosting was still runny. You'd think I'd never made frosting or cake before. Well, Morgan being the amazing woman she is, made it work and got the Ariel cake decorated in time, with fish cupcakes to go along with it. Here she is at work:


And here are the results:



Not bad for having to work with runny frosting, eh?

The party, luckily, turned out well. We invited our family members over for a barbecue and we had a pool for the kids. I tried for a red and baby blue color scheme, but I didn't take many pictures and I didn't really have any decorations. I did buy an Ariel plate to hold the Swedish Fish and Goldfish

and I made fun-shaped ice (though you can't really tell).



Everyone sat around in the heat, eating and talking, while the kids had a blast swimming and playing on the playground.






I realized that the camera was on a funky setting for a while, so some of the pictures didn't turn out. Boo.

We put our little slide into the pool and Kate had a blast! She did NOT want to stop playing. Her little head was almost submerged when she went down the slide, but that didn't stop her from going down over and over and over again. We had to force her away to open presents and she was NOT happy!



She got lots of great presents which she loves! Ada seemed to think that everything was hers and she pretty much took possession of everything until her birthday came around. Luckily it was only 12 days later.




Then it was time for cake and she knew just what to do after we sang. It was so cute watching her blow out the candles!




I think Kate had a good day and she still talks about her 'Ariel party'. I'm sad that she is already two though! As soon as her birthday came, the terribleness was in full force. Luckily it only lasted about a week. She still, of course, has moments of fits and tantrums, but she can be calmed down much faster than Ada did (does). She is so sweet and cuddly and loves to give kisses. If you ask for a kiss and she refuses, all you have to do is make a sad face and she'll come running to you with open arms. Since her birthday, her favorite things to say are, "My do it myself!", "This is mine.", and, "I don't want it anymore." Other cute things she has said lately: "Mama, I wanna marry a prince." and, as she came to me with a coloring book in tow, "Mommy, please help me color Daisy's bummy." She makes me laugh. She is so much fun. She usually doesn't call me 'Mommy' anymore; rather, 'Mama', 'Mom', or 'Mommio'. She loves to sing, though she can't really sing a full song yet. When singing the ABCs, she always skips from 'F' to 'W' (her favorite letter). She sings parts of 'I Am a Child of God' and my favorite line of hers is, "With carrots kind and dear." We love our little Kate so much!