Busy weekend

Four wiggly kids tempted by cake + low light = one very blurry picture

Bear’s family all got together this weekend to celebrate Sally’s birthday. They only live about an hour away, but with the baby and his schedule, we don’t get to see them as often as we should. An hour away seems to be just far enough to make it too hard to do midweek.

Bear made another one of his cakes, but Sally wasn’t really into all the fanciness we’ve been messing around with lately. She is a function over form kind of gal, and didn’t want any of the pretty to interfere with a good tasting cake. So we made a quadruple layer white cake with chocolate ganache filling, and then I layered on about an inch of real buttercream frosting. Fondant sure looks nice, but when you are as big a fan of real buttercream frosting as Sally is, it just gets in the way.

I’m kind of the “get it done” girl in the family, so our birthday present to Sally consisted of a pile of things she needed doing. Skirts fixed, old projects finished, technological help. The big present was unveiled late Saturday afternoon. Everyone took the kids and bustled off to a nearby swap meet (which is really a deceptive name because the Orange County swap meet is more like a temporary outdoor mall than any other swap meet I’ve ever seen) while I stayed behind claiming my bum knee, and then spent the next five hours stripping wallpaper out of one of the bathrooms.

When I finished removing all the wallpaper in our house, months and months and months of removing wallpaper, I swore that I would never do it again. That it would be a deal breaker in any future house we might buy. But their wallpaper really needed help, and if you don’t have to live in the mess, it’s oddly satisfying. It’s like peeling sunburned skin or popping a really big zit.

No? Just me? Oh. Sorry.

We came back late Saturday night so we could make it to church Sunday morning. For Atti’s whole life we’ve been taking turns going just long enough to teach our classes and then coming home. He’s been getting monthly RSV vaccinations and we were warned with the fear of death to keep him away from crowds. He just got the all clear, so we were so excited to bring him to church with us and sit in the pew like a real family, only to wake up that morning and realize that he had absolutely nothing to wear. I just couldn’t bring myself to bring him to church for the first time in nearly a year in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that said “Mr. Grumpy” on it. I’ll at least save that for the second week back.

Then I heard that the teenage girls I work with are having a fundraiser this Saturday for a summer camp. Only showing up to teach my class leaves me pretty far out of the loop for most stuff, so while they’ve all been working on this for awhile, I was totally oblivious. I have until Saturday night to make a quilt to contribute. After finishing my healer quilt by Thursday when I’ll see Atti’s therapist Miss Jan for the last time. I think I can do it. But I may not sleep much in between now and then.