Fly Like a Baby Hawk

We got to meet our new nephew yesterday when we drove up to Great Wolf Lodge to spend time with my sister's family for my niece Alice's 4th birthday.

Alice was born a couple weeks before Josh and I got married. Here we are singing Beatles songs to her when she was a newborn:

Here she is on her birthday:

I guess there is a book about a little girl that eats so many pink cupcakes she turns pink, so Alice was rubbing the pink cupcakes on herself. It was pretty funny.

I made these:

I was trying to experiment with sanding sugar. The original idea (to have tiaras made from silver sanding sugar) didn't work, and I didn't have tons of time, but of course Alice didn't care. She just wanted pink and purple cupcakes, so everything else was a bonus.

Now for pictures of Hawk:

He is such a good baby. He fussed a little when he was hungry/tired and he drooled A LOT, but he has the cutest smile and is super aware of what is going on around him. 

He is a lot skinnier than I thought he would be and has long arms and legs. I think he's going to be tall. He's just the cutest baby in the whole wide world and has these huge eyes that would make you melt. We love him so much already!

Please Give a Warm Welcome to...

... the newest nephew in my family: Hauxhurst "Hawk"!

He's originally from Ethiopia, but my sister and brother-in-law were (finally) able to bring him home on Saturday. They wasted absolutely zero time putting him in a Ducks jersey and preparing him for his inevitable future as a Duck fan.

The other kids in their family are excited to have him home, too, and they have been preparing for over a year for a new sibling. 

My sister says he's very well-behaved, which might be a byproduct of living in an orphanage, but might just mean he'll be mild-mannered and nothing like my other nieces and nephews (ha ha). 

Previous to Hawk coming home to Oregon, we weren't allowed to post pictures of him due to Ethiopian adoption laws, but this has been big news in my family, and something for which we've been waiting excitedly. 

Hawk's full first name (Hauxhurst) is a family name from my mother's side. The Hauxhursts (my great grandparents) adopted all of their children and established the importance of adoption in my family. Another of my sisters also has an adopted child, and we're very lucky to have both her and Hawk in our lives!

We haven't met him in person yet, but Josh says that he "can't wait to squish baby Hawkeritos." You can look forward to those pictures in a couple weeks!

While Josh is Away, the Cats Will Play!

Josh is gone on High Adventure with the scouts, so he wasn't here today when we got a special present in the mail.

 Mr. F helped me unpack it

Josh and I have talked forever about getting a bigger cat tower for the cats (part of my long term goal to build a cattery in the garage), but finally got around to it. It came disassembled and I didn't think it would be terrible to put together. 

Except the instructions looked like this:

Just a picture. And though the parts in the picture are labeled, none of the individual pieces were labeled. So I had to take it apart again a couple times. And I think we're missing a piece, so I didn't finish it.

 Halfway to awesome

I put it by the window because the cats like looking outside, but they hate it so far. It's too high for them, they're too fat, it wobbles a bit. I put Falkor on the top and it took him five minutes to figure out how to get down.

 Mr. F was a little better, but she also didn't like sitting there for too long.

I couldn't get any pictures of Mercury because she jumped down right away. Oh well.... They'd better get used to it because it isn't going anywhere!

Itteh Bitteh Kittehs

We were in Eugene this past weekend, visiting family and generally being bums. We finally got to see my sister Helen's house and her baby kittens. As a way of explanation, my sister volunteers for a no-kill animal shelter and finds homes for displaced/unwanted kitties. She ended up with the kittens (and their mother) because they were found on someone's farm land while she was picking up cats to be spayed.

We call this a "cat stack"

Helen tried to see how many cats she could stick in her mouth. The answer is one.

I think this one was Moonbeam.

They have the cutest blue eyes

My mom was either wearing this cat as a hat or this cat was wearing my mom as a belt.

This cat was so snuggly!

Josh played a video of cats meowing and the kittens freaked out. Uh-Door-uh-Bull!

While in Eugene, Helen and Josh also jammed on the banjo, guitar, and ukelele:

The end of an experience

As part of my training, I was a therapist at a private liberal arts college, but this week was my last week. It was sad saying goodbye, but they gave me a present:

(It's a blanket, not a sweatshirt).

Next week I'll be doing psychological assessments (for custody hearings, mostly, it seems) and family therapy (in McMinnville of all places), but this week I got to luxuriate in my tiny, windowless office (that I shared with two people and lots of files), finish a mound of paperwork and listen to hours of audiotaped sessions. The life of a (student) psychologist is totes glamorous, let me tell you.

Piecakes or CupPies

For my last full week at Lewis and Clark, I wanted to make some cupcakes from my cupcake decorating book (remember these and these?)

This is what they were supposed to look like:

Cute, right? The frosting was just vanilla buttercream with cocoa powder and yellow food coloring mixed in. The design is pretty simple, here is what they look like in progress:

After baking the cupcakes, I frosted them, leaving a little unfrosted edge. That was supposed to be so I could make a crimped part of the crust out of frosting. I covered the frosted part with M&Ms. Believe me, it was a total chore eating all the non-red or blue ones! ;)

After covering all the cupcakes with M&Ms, I then piped lines on them to simulated the basketweave crust top. Unfortunately, BOTH of my pastry bags sprung leaks, so I didn't get to finish the edges, but everything else turned out okay:

I have an issue right now with determining the right consistency of frosting; the last cupcakes I make were practically dripping and this frosting was a bit thick. I'm not sure which to try next, but I love the cupcakes that look like regular food (like corn on the cob).

I'm Seeing Spots!

I put on some new bedsheets today. They really make me smile. I don't know what it is, but polka dots make me happy.

We have some different versions, including darker brown polka dots and reverse polka dot pillows. I don't know what made us decide on brown, but it's soothing. I would hate the idea of trying to fall asleep on red sheets. 

(BTW the green pillows in the background are from a previous set of sheets that my mom bought for us when we got married, but they fit our old queen bed rather than our size-of-Texas king. I haven't yet been able to find good pillowcases that fit, and we love them a lot, so we keep them on the bed even though they don't match. We clearly don't care. Up until recently we were still using a queen quilt and mismatched pillowcases).

In Other News:
Josh is reading The Hunger Games and I think he's enjoying it. I've taken a hiatus from my 30 Books Before I'm 30 list because I have, sadly, become too busy to read for pleasure. I did finish The Book Thief today, which took me something like a month because it was mostly a bathtime book.

Also, in a neverending quest to decrease stress and try new things, I tried Moving Cupping courtesy of my acupuncturist. It felt... interesting... For a few days afterward it looked like I had been severely beaten, and I even freaked myself out in the mirror a couple times because I had forgotten about it. I'm not sure if I can recommend it, though I think it was helpful.