The Zoo!

We went to the Dallas Zoo with the Cook's today. It was a great day. We visited their new exhibit which is similar to the Wild Animal Park outside of San Diego. The highlights of the day were: feeding giraffes, feeding goats, and playing in the play area (getting soaked in the water).

The most amazing exhibit was the cheetah exhibit. They built one wall so there is a jeep with the driver seat exposed to the humans and the bed of the jeep (flat area on the back) inside the pen. There is (of course) a VERY thick glass wall seperating us, but it brings you right up, close with the animals. We were there at lunchtime and the staff chained a big, meaty bone to the bed of the jeep. So, there were 2 cheetahs sitting right there gnawing on the bone for a long time. Stephanie and Josie sat on the seat in the jeep staring at the cats. It was amazing. I will try to get the picture from Jessica.

Inspired by Olivia

I showed the girls the video of my friend's (Emily) daughter, Olivia, "reading" a book. Stephanie and Erica watched in awe and later on I found Stephanie "reading" to Erica. It was so cute - a beautiful sister moment.

What to do with leftover frosting and cake scraps ...

Ha ha ... like you need any ideas, but I had fun throwing this parfait together.

And I still have 2 cakes in the freezer (all leftover from my cake ball experiments) .... I didn't think I'd ever get sick of chocolate cake!

Beautiful Weather

It has been heavenly here for the last week or so. Go figure, the city was at a stand-still 3 weeks ago and now we're enjoying 70 degree weather. The girls were playing outside one day and Stephanie wanted to have a picnic with her toys.

After lunch, we put down a blanket and read our stories in the backyard. Even after dinner, Stephanie was still commenting on how she really liked reading stories outside. It was cute how you could tell that a simple thing like that made such an impact on her. Perhaps I should let her have her quiet time in the tent?

Cupcakes!

I found a really cute Disney Princess cupcake set at Walgreen's while Christmas shopping. I figured the cake and frosting were probably inedible, but it came with a spatula, spoon, tablespoon measuring spoon, liquid measuring cup, 12 princess mini cupcake papers, 2 mini foil cupcake pans, 3 little bags of sprinkles and 2 tubes of decorating gel. I figured that was worth spending the $5 on it. We finally got a chance to make them the other night and sure enough, the cake and frosting were HORRIFIC. Stephanie was so excited to help me mix up the cupcakes and was so proud of them, I didn't have the heart to tell her they were bad. So, I secretly whipped up a new batch of homemade yellow cupcakes. She helped me throw together some homemade buttercream frosting, too. The mini cupcake size is great. I put the extras in the freezer. I can pull 2 out before lunch and they are thawed out by the time we are ready for a little treat. Both girls have been having fun doing their own decorations.

Cake balls, raspberry bars and kolaches ... oh my!

Well, the bridal shower is over! Phew! I ended up making 110 cake balls, 50 raspberry bars, and 72 kolaches. I didn't get a picture of the final cake balls, but they were chocolate cake with whipped chocolate ganache frosting. My friend asked that half of them be white with a pink drizzle and the other half pink with a white drizzle. I didn't get a picture of the raspberry bars either, but I was able to find a square cutter that was perfectly sized for some square papers I found. Everything turned out really nice and I was pleased. Patti was happy, too ... and that's really all that matters, right? Ha ha!

Anyway, I did get some pictures of the kolaches since it seems that nobody outside of Texas knows what they are. They are typically open-faced and filled with a sweet filling, but they wanted the Quiche Lorraine filling that I made for the women's brunch a few months ago. The dough is a simple roll dough that you roll out really thin. I put them in cupcake wrappers to make it easier to serve at the shower. They are very tasty and very addicting.

All about Stephanie

Stephanie is growing up so fast. She is experimenting with language. Her favorite phrase right now is, "What the heck!?!?" She got that from me - oh the things they pick up. She is also into making up her own language. We saw some pigeons on a sign the other day and I pointed them out to the girls. Stephanie informed me that she called them something different. I forget what her word was, but it was cute how nonchalant she was in dismissing English. She has an imaginary friend named, Chiglia. Ha ha! I have no idea where that came from, but this friend (I believe it is a girl) appears from time to time.

Stephanie also loves to have at least 30 clothing changes per day. Here she's modeling an outfit along with her princess shoes.

Here are the slippers she got with the Claire's gift card from Grandma Gray.

This is the new leotard that she got with the Valentine's money from Nonna and Grandpa Piccolo.

The second night that Erica was on antibiotics, she slept for 14 hours! Daddy was gone for the night at a sleep study, so Stephanie and I had a rare night all to ourselves. At one point, she was assembling a caravan of various toy cars. She wanted to have her dog ride with her, but insisted on putting on a helmet and finding one for the dog, too. It was very clever and cute.

Some friends from church raise sheep and have some babies whose mama died. So, they have to bottle feed them. They invited us over to let the girls help feed them one day. The girls were in awe and LOVED it.

Stephanie loves to play with all her stuffed animals. She spends hours just dressing them up (thank you, Aunt Allison and cousins for the clothes!!) and takes care of them with all her doctor toys. When we took Erica in for her ear infection, Stephanie took the pad from the scale and the wooden stick the doctor used to look in Erica's mouth. Here's she is demonstrating how she uses these tools to care for her animals.