Ketchup

Not really ketchup... I just need to catch up.

Kids have been great, I'm happy to report. In fact, if I were writing a report card for the Jacobs Family for the month of May I'd give them (us) an A+. That's mostly because my PMS and Joe's Man-PMS hit back-to-back and were at the end of April, so so far May has been pretty breezy! Watch out, last 2 weeks of May, things could get ugly...

The kids have been getting along really well. Particularly, Caroline has been getting along with her cousin Amelia really well and Kari's been gracious enough to adopt her for entire days, even one entire night - Caro's 1st sleepover! Don't worry, no boys allowed, even Kari's husband was gone for the night (which makes me think Kari must be a sucker for punishment). They like to hang out and be goofy together, like hanging in their younger siblings' carseats.

I've been working on thinning out... not myself, but the house. Yes, I'm signed up for a 5-K on June 1st but instead of running I've spent my time baking (and eating) cake.  So there's not a lot of obvious stuff hanging around in my house that needs to go away, but once you dig deeper there are numerous places (kitchen cabinets, coat closets, under the bed) that harbor things I don't really want/need/use/remember that I even have. So I've been thinning them out, slowly but surely. Those kitchen cabinets yielded up a WONDERFUL, yet under-used, cake pan of 3-D cars. My mom bought the cake pan since we've got boys, but our boys ended up being into dinos (and now Power Rangers) and not so much cars, so I never really thought about it. Once I DID think about it, I realized my sister Elsha is a cake maniac (connoisseur? Artist? maniac sounds more fun) and really spends time on cool cakes, where I really spend time CONSUMING cakes and not caring what they look like. So I offered the pan to her, but before it left we had to get in one more 3-D car cake extravaganza....

 I was watching Amelia for a while one morning and Joe had some volunteer thing at work (Target does lots of volunteer hours around the community) so it was me against 5 kids, which seems like adding cake and frosting and sprinkles on top of it all would make ME a sucker for punishment, but it kept the kids busy for a solid 45 minutes. And, like I said, I got to EAT CAKE at the end of it. Time well spent.

 Caroline spent HER time frosting and re-frosting one car. 45 minutes, frosting only, one car.

 Eli laid it on thick and deep, then drowned it with coconut shavings. I ended up eating his car. It was delicious.

 Amelia would frost for about 2 seconds, then forget the cake project and dig into the sprinkles. Who needs cake when you can have tiny sugar nuggets?

 Just so pleased with her finished product! (Other kids eventually added decoration)

 Patrick decorated 2 cars and a road (overflow from the cake mold that I had to cut away and then creatively called a road), and I swear he put a lot of detail into it all, but it really looks like a pile of goop. And don't worry, he ate the whole thing.

 Coming back from their errands, Kari and Jonathan brought me some healthy Subway for my thanks, I gave them a kid on a sugar-high. You're WELCOME!

The end of the "school year" is coming right up, this next week is the last week of Joy School. Year 2 has been awesome, the kids are really great friends by now and I'm so glad we did Joy school! I love the curriculum and being involved in lessons and seeing the kids blossom over the 8 or 9 months...

 ...and now I am dearly looking forward to one of those kids finally going to Kindergarten. Yay Patrick! I think he'll be a stud at school. I am also dearly looking forward to summer, I'm ready for a break from pretending I'm totally patient and love to hear ridiculous non-related comments when I'm trying to teach a lesson. Gotta take a few months to regain my teaching composure.

 Ethan is a crawling anywhere and everywhere - always busy, frequently stuck, and impossibly cute. He's one of those babies that makes girls wanna have babies. And also eat babies, I just want to sink my teeth into him! Garrrrr.... yummm.