she sent me these darling spring candies and cupcake papers and encouraged me and allie to try again! i have been craving lemon cake so i decided to make lemon cupcakes for easter dessert. i chickened out and made the cupcakes from a lemon cake mix because i am still leery of trying any new recipes at the moment (do you blame me?). but, i definitely wanted homemade frosting, but i couldn't find any kind of lemon butter cream, only lemon icing and that definitely would not do - i am definitely a butter cream kind of girl. so, i invented my OWN lemon butter cream recipe! yup, i did. and let me say, oh my heavenly goodness, they were fantastic!
i will definitely be posting this frosting on the cooking blog for any other lemon lovers such as myself. and the decorating, with help from kristy's package, was like something store bought! thanks to all my decorators, who were lauren, emily, allie and makenna. ok, and i piped the frosting. lemony goodness. 
they tasted even better today when i wasn't so full from easter dinner. so kristy, thanks for the good mail package and for having faith in me to pull off some cute AND yummy cupcakes.**have you ever made up your own recipe?
how do you feel about lemon desserts?**
yum. we enjoyed a wonderful dinner and time together and then of course the tradition egg hunt in our backyard.
we waited a little too long so instead of harsh light for photographs like saturday, we didn't have quite enough light and almost every photo needs a little photoshop help. yuck. i also am kicking myself that i didn't get a photo of ethan's entire ensemble, i bought him his first suit and he looked so dang cute in it.
the babies were more interested in "mowing" our lawn with ethan's little mower. 
but while they mowed, the little girls made out like bandits.
i love holidays because they are this great excuse to get together and spend time as a family and that's really what it's all about right - family..JPG)
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i should start taking more photographs of her creations, there have been many clever characters adorning her nails which rotate depending on the holiday. her only complaint is that she has a hard time doing her right hand. .JPG)
so besides just getting a plain old polish job, i got super cute flowers for some extra happy in my open-toed shoes tomorrow. lucky me. cutie girl.
the moms made an effort to have less candy this year, don't feel bad for tthe kids, there will be plenty by the time this holiday is over, and so the eggs were filled with fun little prizes instead. the favorite prize was provided by ann - these gross teeth, and were worn by the oldest children with a little too much pride.
grandma says they should wear them to the dentist next time they go. gross is all i have to really say about them. 
as much fun as the oldest children had, the little guys were my favorite photos of the day, especially the egg that was too big for joey's mouth.
i was also thrilled with how the cousin picture turned out, everyone is looking at the camera! this never happens! 
as cute as this photo is, we sure missed the rest of the family not in attendance. we can't wait until christmas when we're all together! yay!such a handsome group! i also really appreciate this family picture taken today because my husband is actually smiling in it, with his teeth. 
this picture alone made the years of braces worth it. look at my family, they're not so little any more are they? this photo is a little surreal for me, but i'm enjoying this stage of our family too much to feel too sad about it. 
i made myself some poached eggs and toast, something i remember my dad making for himself almost every saturday morning. 
the egg cooker was a wedding gift for him and my mom from his mother. i think the story goes that she got them the egg cooker because my dad loves poached eggs so much, but this must've been a premonition because before the wedding, he'd never had a poached egg in his life. the toast is an important part of the meal because you use it to soak up all the runny yolk stuff. 
(sorry patsy) so so so good. i also remember saturday mornings being sort of a party hour because my dad was nice enough to let my mom sleep in. we watched cartoons of course, while he made his famous french toast for us. some mornings we would wake up to a variety pack of hostess cake donuts which some how managed to jump into the grocery sack during his early-morning milk run.
or POPS cereal, which we loved because we weren't allowed sugar cereal growing up. what i never understood was, why the variety pack of donuts dad? all of us only ever wanted the powdered sugar ones, i mean, what the heck is the point of a plain cake donut anyway? i can't see one.
i tried my best to document this day in photos but now that i'm sitting down to upload pictures i'm realizing that there is a lot that i didn't record. in the morning i had the kids alone for a few hours and i really enjoyed just sitting on the floor playing with all the babies, they all got along so well and charlie is such a smiler! 
i love his mild-mannered disposition, and i've always said that i could take laurel home to live with me, i just have a soft-spot for this cute little girl - who i didn't take even one picture of! dang! at one point we were looking for a specific toy and laurel says to me, "aunt wende, i think it's under your bootie." it was not and she got tickled for the suggestion! she always says the funniest things. it was strange to be combing little girl hair again and wrapping little baubles around the pig tails, i kind of miss this part of mothering. i am most sad about not getting a picture of her hair, i'll need to do better next time. lunch time is never boring with apey, she has a way of whipping up stuff, usually yummy left overs that she changes up to make a great lunch. i had to volunteer at the gap store at the jr. high today so on my way out the door she handed me this to eat on my way...
apey's chicken salad rocks! and then, on my way out the garage door (literally) karrie stopped by with some very good mail! (moment of silent please)
i love love love these cookies! in fact, i could devote an entire blog entry to how much i love these things, maybe another day. let's just say that it's a good thing that they're only sold once a year because of i had access to them all the time, my hips would be in trouble, ok bigger trouble. i only shared a couple of cookies from the first box and the other box is hidden. thanks karrie! after jason came to pick up the kids we headed to the grocery store to grab some things for dinner, the babies were too cute in their little truck shopping cart.
these things rock and must have been invented by a mom because they entertain ethan every time we go! of course, so do suckers. i'll upload some funny video later, blogger video is kind of sticky right now. when it was time for apey to leave, we looked all over for makenna's shoes, we found them, where we usually find them, on ethan's feet. 
thank heavens for helpful sister-in-laws who double as girlfriends! thanks apes!
takes over her life. wednesday night we went as a family to see her in her last elementary school production, seussical. she played "little cat A", and we all could tell she was having a ton of fun on the stage. i could also see that the serious dancer in her had helped with her stage presence, because she did a great job! of course i got a little teary-eyed, i always do! i can't help it, i just love kids singing. last weekend we went shopping for some fake eyelashes to complete her costume and i found these super long ones which i think make her look just like a cat!
they drove her crazy but it was worth it! so i have stopped trying to photograph her during dance recitals, school programs and the play because the picture ALWAYS turn out terrible and i've tried every trick. so these are the after the play was over shots. this morning (friday) she slept and slept and slept and i let her because she was completely exhausted. as much fun as it is, we're both glad the play is over!
one day last week kristy and i ran to layton for some errands and of course it wouldn't be a day in layton without visiting jason's deli, my brother brandon and this wonderful sandwich nick named "the muff" short for muffaletta. if you haven't tried it yet, you should, it's a mouthful of greek goodness.
spencer has been playing basketball this winter and the other night had a double header! yikes! with only an hour break in between games, we needed some dinner fast. spencer's choice and he chose cutler's of course. spencer has been having a love affair with tuna sandwiches since he was very small, in fact, all of my kids love tuna, but not quite as much spencer. he loves cutlers because they pile the tuna on super thick. it was super fun to have a mini-date with spencer and made up for the fact that he lost both games. ouch. it's been a rough season for a team with so much heart!
taylor's spring choir concert was last week and he did such a great job! i actually videoed a clip or two of them singing and of course my favorite was "o danny boy" - this song ALWAYS makes me cry. i should've had a son named danny just so i could sing this song to him. you may recognize some of the choir nerds are also some of the settlers nerds mentioned previously. i love these boys and am always grateful for good friends to surround my kids.
it seems like we're always short an apron around here so allie sewed an extra one for friends to wear when they come over, she modeled it tonight just for fun. as a side note, allie went to madeline and amelia's bithday part - twins in our ward who we LOVE and eileen had this fabulous idea to sew them each their own apron. so her and allie sewed THREE aprons friday afternoon. we wrapped up two of them with the betty crocker junior cook book which we love. ok, back on subject. so we melted he chocolate and added the cream (notice my make-shift double boiler - i can't find one anywhere!) and all of the rest of the several steps while taking great pains to follow the recipe just right. 
i've been dying for mini cupcakes lately this recipe made such a huge batch of batter that we ended up with about 150 of them! a ton of work but they looked sooooo good. the next morning we started the frosting, again, researched on recipezaar.com. once the frosting was made i realized it was not quite the right consistency for decorating and found a recipe for a yummy buttercream instead. well, i'm an idiot because after adding ten cups of sugar (it was a big batch), i realized that it wasn't getting smooth and then it dawned on me that i was supposed to use POWDERED sugar - DUH! so on our third attempt, we made this delightful buttercream frosting and began the decorating process. 
we used fun spring sprinkles, coconut and even rolled out some fondant for some spring daisies. we worked until we giggled because these were by far the cutest cupcakes ever!
we put together a plate to go phil and lauri's and just as i was feeling that sense of pride and accomplishment that comes with a baking project of this calibur and cuteness, something terrible happened. i unwrapped one of the cupcakes, coconut - my favorite, and took a big bite. then i started to gag, choke and cough. it was terrible! what? it was terrible! it tasted like there was no sugar in the recipe, only bitter baking chocolate. you may think i left something out of the recipe right? wrong! i double checked every ingredient and even added a little bit of sugar! at this point, i was almost near tears, seriously, 150 mini cupcakes all frosted and ready for decorating and delivering that tasted terrible. what in the world could i do? and so, i got out a target bag, wrapped them up and delivered them all to the garbage can out front. and chocolate cupcakes are here by banned from our house for at least a month. grrr! 
of course, this did not stop ethan from eating the frosting on top, the frosting, was great, on the third try.