Dreamnight at the Zoo

"Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is once again throwing open the gates for hundreds of critically ill children and their families for the fifth annual “DreamNight at the Zoo” on June 1. The event provides a no-cost, worry-free evening exclusively for families with youngsters struggling with serious medical issues.

Families will be able to experience up-close animal encounters, munch on their favorite fun foods and experience interesting occupations at a dozen different “dream stations.” A child may dream of being a cowboy, firefighter, TV reporter, magician, race car driver, policeman, soldier, dancer, animal keeper or super hero – and he or she can experience them all at the dream stations.

DreamNight started in 1996 as a partnership between the Rotterdam Zoo and Sophia Children’s Hospital in the Netherlands. Since that time, DreamNight has grown to become a worldwide event involving 82 zoos, wildlife parks and aquariums in over 23 countries around the globe. And it happens all over the world on the first Friday evening in June."

So read the invitation we got to go to the DreamNight at the Zoo. We got the invitation because of Meagan's cleft lip. Nate was TDY, but I decided to go ahead and take all three kids by myself. It was amazing! They shut down the zoo to the regular public, and you had to have an invitation coordinated through a physician to be able to get in. Everything was free: the Skyride, the carousel, pony rides....they even had a free hot dog dinner and cotton candy, plus there were tons of booths with lots of free stuff for the kids. Meagan even got a stuffed unicorn. We watched a hippo show and a lion feeding. There was so much to do, we ran out of time. We had a blast and are truly grateful to those who made it such a memorable night!

"I love you anyway"

"I hate you!" The dreaded phrase no parent wants to hear from their child, but one that every parent can expect at some point. Or some variation thereof. For me, it's been, "I don't love you anymore."

Bethany was the first to come up with this one. She started off with the guilt-inducing "You just broke a piece of my heart." That one really affected me the first time I heard it. By the fifteenth, not so much. Then she started in with the I-don't-love-you-anymores, mostly when she was mad that I wouldn't give her something she wanted, or I wouldn't let her do something she wanted to do. It never really affected me all that much. I mean, I have friends who take it really personally when their kids say horrible things like that to them. Maybe it's just because she's only seven, and I know she doesn't really mean it, but it doesn't really crush me. That being said, I didn't really like her saying it, either.

For the first several times, I just ignored it. I figured if I didn't respond, she'd stop saying it. That didn't really seem to make a difference. Then one day, I had an idea. After she told me she didn't love me, I just said, "Well, I love you anyway. Even when you're mad and screaming at me." That's all. No real lecture or anything. It only took about three times, and she stopped saying that to me at all. It was pretty amazing.

Sean kind of picked up the habit from Bethany, though, but coming from a three-year-old, it's almost funny. Especially when our conversations run like this:

Sean: (angrily/defiantly/whatever)I don't love you anymore.
Me:Well, I love you.
Sean: I don't love you.
Me: I love you, though.
Sean: (contritely) Mommy, I love you.

"I love you anyway." Pretty powerful words.

Family outing--iPod photos

I've recently discovered the camera function on my iPod. It's kind of fun. It can take pictures of what's in front of it, or what's behind it. They're not super high quality photos, but they're good for candid shots...and entertaining kids, as I found out today.

We went out on a family outing this afternoon, mostly to run errands. We'd been in the car about two minutes when Nate and I noticed that both Meagan and Sean were asleep. I guess they were tired.

Yes, Sean is holding a sparkly, silver purse. Legacy of having two older sisters, I suppose. When I bought them purses to carry their money around, he had to have one, too. Hey, at least it's not pink.

Our last stop of the day was Target/Petco. I went into Target with the kids, while Nate went fish shopping at Petco (he loves this Petco, says they have a great coral selection). We finished first, obviously, and were sitting in the car waiting for Nate. The kids were getting restless. Sean wanted to leave without Nate. He said Daddy could just ride home in someone else's car.

So I started taking pictures to keep them happy. They loved it. When we got home, I was surprised to fnd that I'd taken 62 pictures. They kept pulling funny faces or doing silly things, just to see the pictures of themselves. Here are some of my favorites:

Sean's holding his new piggy bank he bought with his own money. It's a pig/race car bank. You can't see the front, but there is an actual pig face and it has the general shape of a pig, but then there are wheels instead of legs. He loves it. He passed up a Lightening McQueen pillow to buy it.

I love Bethany's smile in this one.

Sean's expression here is pretty funny.

Towards the end, the kids wanted me to take an upside down picture of them. When I told them it didn't really work that way, they decided that they would be upside down instead. That was the best Sean could do in his car seat, and Meagan was still buckled up, too.

It's all about perspective

I was sitting in the front seat of the van.  All three kids were buckled up behind me. We were waiting for Nate to finish up in the fish store, and the kids were getting restless (Sean even suggested leaving without Daddy). So to keep them entertained, I pulled out the iPod, and turned on the camera. The first sight to greet me was a horrible image of my fat, double chin. It was disgusting. I felt like a bloated toad. I almost turned off the camera. But then I lifted it higher, so the kids could be in the picture, too. From a different angle, I suddenly didn't look so bad anymore. Not runway model material, for sure, but heaps better than before. I guess it's all in how we look at ourselves that matters.

I was feeling a bit down this week, because I've hardly lost any weight this week (only about 1/2 pound vs. six pounds last week). I wasn't even doing anything different. It was enough to make me want to give up and go eat some cake...or that chocolate bar the RS gave me for my birthday...or something. But then I could see in the picture that my face does look a bit slimmer. So again, it's all about perspective.

My first wedding cake

So here are pictures of my first--and likely last--wedding cake. It didn't turn out quite the way I'd wanted it to, but still, I learned from it, and I'm confidant I could do better next time I work with fondant. Maybe I should've practiced more before I made the actual cake. Oh well. The bride liked it anyway.

I did this much of the cake all by myself. I've used fondant before, but not on a circular cake. I had trouble not having creases in it, especially near the bottom of each layer. And Valerie warned me about the frosting between layers of cake bulging, but I did went ahead and did it anyway. And yep, you can see bulges in the middle of each layer. In spite of all my mistakes, though, I was amazed at how many people loved it and told me it looked great.

Here's the final product. Another sister in the ward added the flowers on. The table looked so empty, I wanted to add a little extra greenery along the back, but got voted down.

Meagan's Princess Party--The Preparation

For months, Meagan told everyone that she was going to have her 6th birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. She was inviting people left, right and center. I was starting to worry about how much it was going to cost, or how sad she was going to be when we told her it wasn't going to happen. Then one day at the store, she saw a princess castle pinata, and she completely changed her mind. She was going to have a princess party, and she was going to invite all the girls in her class. I was both relieved and wondering how it would be to have 15 little girls at my house. I decided to let her invite them all anyway, since in the past, only half of the invitees have come to parties we've had. But no. Almost all of them came. Our final count was 14, including my kids.

I will state here and now that I totally went overboard on this party. I know I tend to do that. If it were just for Meagan's sake, it probably wouldn't be worth all the little details I slaved over. But a lot of the preparation is for me. I just have so much fun thinking and planning, and creating. It's an outlet, an excuse to make fourteen little princess hats that I wouldn't otherwise have. That being said, here is what went into Meagan's party (and I hope you read this someday, Meagan, when you can really appreciate it. :) )

I started prepping for the party about a month in advance. Yes, really. I learned that with other parties. I'd run across great ideas, but wouldn't have the time to make them happen. So I looked up games and ideas. I started thinking of what we could do at the party, and making a game plan. I also started planning the cake. This was the third year in a row that Meagan had a princess castle cake for her birthday. The first year was pretty much a bust. I learned from it and did better the next year, but it still wasn't as good as I'd hoped. This was going to be the year. The year the cake would be outstanding. I got my inspiration from this picture:

It had a tutorial here: http://www.cakeboss.com/CastleTutorial.aspx

The turrets are made out of paper towel rolls covered in fondant, so I started saving them as I used the paper towels. Other than that, this project was mostly on hold until closer to the party.

The first game I made was Princess Bingo. I found about forty princess-related clip art pictures and randomly mixed them up on the bingo sheets, then laminated the sheets. Then I found some plastic circles at JoAnn's and glued a copy of each picture on a circle. I went to so much trouble to make it durable because I thought we could use it again at home if I did.

Another idea I got online was a story about "Princess Meagan" who falls mysteriously ill. A good fairy comes and tells the people of the kingdom that the only thing that would cure her was a magic dragon egg. I'd hidden a bunch of "dragon eggs" out in the yard, and I sent the girls out to find one. There was one for each of them. While I was telling the story though, I had a bunch of pictures that I showed (I'd thought of making an actual book that Meagan could have as a sort of souvenir, but ran out of time). I wanted a picture "Princess Meagan", but didn't have anything that would work, so Pamela photoshopped a picture of Meagan's head on top of Shirley Temple from A Little Princess. Meagan loved the picture, and asked me if I was going to make her a robe, dress and crown like that for the party. Yeah, right. I wasn't quite ready to go that overboard.

The next thing I worked on was the starter activity. Meagan and Bethany both have been to princess-themed parties, and they always come home with these foamie crowns. Sometimes they're glittery, and sometimes the girls have added stickers or something to them to decorate them. Since they're so common, I wanted something different. So I decided to make cone-shaped hats, with a square of fabric floating down the back. It took me several tries to get a good pattern to work from, but I finally got one in the end. The fabric I used was some I already had on hand--leftovers from various projects. I was going to hem the squares at first, but then decided that was too much work for something that probably would only be used for a very short time. I got some foamy stickers and stick-on jewels for the girls to decorate, along with some feather boas to glue to the bottom of the hat. We also had two boys coming (Sean and Asia's little brother Austin). I couldn't expect them to wear girl hats (although Sean would've done so with no problem), so I made them prince crowns instead.

What party is a party without some form of Pin the Tail on the Donkey? (There are so many versions of it out there, that I doubt kids today have ever heard of the original.) For this party, we had Pin the Lips on the Frog Prince. We were trying to turn him back into a prince, you see. Yeah, anyway, I drew a frog on a piece of posterboard, then made lips out of various sheets of pink and red scrapbooking paper I had lying around. This was probably the cheapest game we did. Oh, second cheapest (see next paragraph).

Since we had so many girls, I was afraid it would take a long time to get everyone through Kiss the Frog, and some kids would get bored. So I decided we'd split the group in half, and half would play Kiss the Frog while the other half went down to the grass to play Royal Ball Freeze. I ripped a bunch of Disney princess-y type songs from some CDs and put them on my iPod, and set up some speakers out by the lawn. When the music played, they were supposed to dance. When the music stopped, they were supposed to freeze. Simple, but could potentially go for any amount of time.

The one project that took the most time, other than the cake, was the play castle. It almost didn't happen. The idea I'd read online had a woman making a castle out of two fridge boxes with a TV box inbetween. It was surprisingly hard to find fridge boxes. The closest tip I had was to call Lowe's at 6:30-7:00am when they are unpacking the day's deliveries. I kind of lucked out, though, and happened upon a clerk unpacking a matching washer and dryer set at Best Buy, and he let me have the boxes. This was perfect, because then both sides of the castle would be the same size. Instead of a connecting box, I cut one panel from each big box, swung it out 90 degrees, and connected it to the other box. Then there was a sort of hallway between the two towers. I put one door on the front right side, and another on the left, so they could chase each other right through. The window on the front has a lift-up panel, and the "window" on the right side is just a few slits. As soon as the kids saw it, it was dubbed the "dungeon". It was rather fun to make, but my fingertip went numb from all the spray paint I used to cover the thing (only one coat). In hindsight, it would've cost just about as much to buy a can of paint and roller it on as it did to buy all the spray paint (it used more spray paint than I'd anticipated), not to mention being less painful for my fingers. I won't even talk about the paint on the garage floor where I sprayed past the newspaper I'd put all around. Oh well. Lessons learned for next time, I suppose....if there is a next time.

I can't seem to figure out how to rotate pictures, and have them stay rotated when importing them into Blogger, but this picture was too cute to skip.

The last thing I prepared was the cake. Since the towers weren't supposed to be eaten, I made them a couple days in advance. Fondant isn't really my thing, but at least I'm getting better. I put ice cream cones in the tops of the tubes (paper towel for the large ones, and toilet paper for the smaller towers). Then I spread a bit of royal frosting on the tube and wrapped it in fondant, then rolled the whole thing over a small brick-shaped impression mat. The nice thing about the mat was that it covered a multitude of mistakes. The join on the fondant could just be cracks going up the tower, for example. Little bumps and bulges got smoothed out.

The pointy part of the tower is an inverted sugar cone. I didn't want to put fondant on those (not my thing, remember), so I used royal icing. This was sooo much better than buttercream (did that last year, and they smeared--you could hardly touch them). I also used royal icing for the little border around the top. The pink part on the sugar cones is kind of rough--I was trying to give it some roof texture. Finally, the windows are little bits of black fondant that I had left over from Sean's Mater cake.

The night before the party, I iced a thin layer of crumb-filled frosting on the two layers of the cake and then stuck them in the freezer. Sometimes it's much easier to frost a frozen cake. I also iced "Happy Birthday Meagan", and a bunch of little hearts on the sugar cubes that would be the crenellations. I was sooo glad I'd done those in advance, because if I'd waited, it wouldn't have happened.

The assembly of the cake on the morning of the party was fairly simple. I did run into one big snag, though. When smoothing frosting, you can sometimes dip your spatula in water to get an extra-smooth finish. I discovered the hard way that this is a BAD idea when you want to use an impression mat. It took forever for the frosting to crust over enough to get the brick mold shape on the cake instead of the frosting just sticking to the mold. I actually got out my hairdryer and started blowing the frosting dry, because I was worried that I was going to run out of time before the party started. I also belatedly realized that the frosting didn't need to be super smooth when I was just going to push a mold into it anyway. So....next time I won't do that. At least the wait time gave me a chance to set up other things. The end result isn't perfect, but I'm not exactly a professional. In spite of any small quirks, though, I am rather proud of this cake. Here's the final product:

I personally like Ariel in the little pond. I'm also rather partial to the ivy and the little path in front.

"Happy Birthday Meagan" wouldn't all fit on the castle, so "Meagan" is nestled in the grass below.

You can't see it well, but there are little hearts on every other sugar cube.

So here are a few pictures of the pre-party set-up:

The cake, the hats and the treasure box. The box held some rings and necklaces and little things like that. They were the prizes for the various games.

The balloons and streamers on the TV stand were about the extent of my decorations (there are a few more balloons outside, too). I decided there was enough other stuff to look at that I didn't really need to add more. I had Cinderella playing on the TV as the girls arrived, so those who finished their hats first could come watch a bit of the movie while they waited for the others to finish.

Here's the hat-decorating table, with little bowls full of stickers and jewels. There's a stack of pink bags in the middle for them to also add stickers to if they wanted, to hold their party goodies they get as we go. In the background on the half-wall, you can see the glue gun and feather boas.

Sean showing off the castle.

I forgot to take a picture of the pinata hanging from the swingset, but this is what it looked like--the pinata that started the whole princess party.

Bring it on, girls, we're ready to party!

We're off to see the lizard...

So I thought today would be a great day to go to the zoo. The kids had the day off school (they're doing some special testing at school), it's midweek (Thursday), and it's April, so the summer crowds wouldn't be there yet. Right?

Um, no. Not really. I forgot to factor in the end-of-school-year field trips. The place was overflowing with little kids in matching lime green and hunter orange t-shirts. And that's not even mentioning the scads of junior high and even high school kids with work sheets they were trying to fill out at each display. A few lucky groups were getting guided tours from zoo volunteers. (I eavesdropped on a few of them--they were interesting).

In spite of the crowds, and the fact that Nate had to work, we had a great time. We made it there just in time for the sea lion show. Only one of the five sea lions was out for the show, but the kids had fun watching him race around, flip his big flippers in the air, and jump out of the water to touch a ball. This was their favorite exhibit the last time we came, so I wasn't surprised that they enjoyed it.

I did something new for this visit that we've never done before. I made the kids do some work. They each had to choose one type of animal, and then answer questions about it on a little worksheet I'd made up. It asked things like the animal's habitat, diet, size, enemies--just basic information like that. I wanted to get them a little more interested in what they were seeing, and maybe help them learn a bit more.

I think it worked. They had fun filling out their sheets. Sean chose sea lions. He found out a lot of his information from the show. Okay, it was mostly Bethany who collected it--she even approached one of the zookeepers to ask about the last fact we were missing. Sean was too busy eating fruit snacks and pretzle sticks. It's a bit above his head anyway, but I didn't want to shut him out. Meagan chose lions and Bethany chose tigers. I did one on orangutans. I even learned something new. I never knew before that orangutans are the only primates that don't live in groups. Their fruit trees are too few and far between to support a group.

I plan to have them do this every time we go to the zoo now. Since we have a membership, we'll go several times in the year. Each sheet will have a picture attached of the animal we saw at the zoo, one that we took while we were there. I'm going to put them all together in a book, so they'll have a sort of memorabilia book of all our zoo visits.

The first four pictures are the ones that will go in our zoo book.

Lions....

...and tigers...

...and sea lions? There were bears at the zoo, but we didn't see them today. Too much to see, too little energy on the kiddos' part.

There's a baby in the white sheet. It was just like a toddler, playing in that sheet. It would hide in it, drag it, and even wore it like a cape. It was so cute.

Bethany, Meagan and Sean at our picnic lunch....that happened about 30 minutes after getting to the zoo. I hadn't planned on eating at 11:00, but they were soooo hungry. (Read: they were driving me crazy.) Sean kept trying to yank the lunch box out of the bottom of the stroller. He wouldn't have been so hungry if he'd just eaten his breakfast. Grumble, grumble.

I wish I'd gotten a video clip of these giraffes. They were licking each other.

What's a trip to the zoo without a ride on the carousel? Bethany loves riding this black panther. It reminds her of Baby Jaguar on Diego.

Sean and Meagan on their mounts. Meagan kept patting hers and telling it that it was a good camel.

I see peacocks wandering loose all over the zoo, but this is the first one I've seen with its tail feather up and on display. It was realy cool.

I stumbled across some forget-me-nots. I'd never realized before how very small they are. They're so delicate.

This little exhibit is fun. You jump as far as you can, and see what animal jumps as far as you. I was somewhere inbetween a penguin and a jackrabbit.

Meagan can jump as far as a spider. Almost a bullfrog.

Sean's my little bullfrog.

And Bethany's a flea. :)

This was right at the end of the day, just before we left the zoo. They were getting worn out by that point, but had enough energy to climb one more statue.