The happenings of this Week {massive}

First of all, I've been completely remiss at announcing the winner from Monkey's photoshoot giveaway!  So without further ado, the winner is... Tamara!  Congrats!  I'll be in touch with you to find out your prize preference.

Baby news: 
I took Owl and Otter in for another weight check, and they are 9#14 oz and 9#11 oz.  Which is enough of a gain to dismiss concerns.  They are, admittedly, quite small.  But they are active and generally happy. 

They are starting to sit up unassisted, but it's still hit and miss.  They get up and rock on hands and knees a LOT and sometimes they move forward...but it's mostly by accident.

a random picture of Owl

No teeth yet, but an increasing amount of drool.

The latest cute thing is their smiles.  Owl smiles in a wide closed-mouth smile that makes her cheeks chub out in little balls.  Adorable.  Equally adorable: Otter's smile that includes sticking out her tongue. {Her happiest jabbers also have a stuck-out tongue.}

Their sleeping took a turn for the worse about a month ago.  Because we found out that they hadn't been gaining much I started taking every opportunity to feed them...so at night if they woke up I'd feed them rather than give them a chupa and let them go back to sleep.   I guess it helped from the feeding side of things, but not the sleeping.  One night I was awoken every hour because they alternated.  So a few nights ago I started putting one in the crib in their room and one in the cradle in our room.  They went back to just a couple of times per night, and last night Owl slept straight from 10pm until 9am.

Moose news:
He says "did."  As in, "I did walk" "She did hit me"...every past-tense verb is has "did" added, and some present-tense ones have "do."

I posted these Moose-isms on Facebook--

• In the car today Moose and I saw a car being towed by a truck. Moose saw it and said, "oh, look at that tip toe truck!"  

• Just now Fox told Moose to go take off his sister's boots. Moose responded, "but they match my pants!" ...hmm, maybe he spends too much time with his sisters.

• (Written to my friend, Sister Jarrett)  After you left I went in to help the kids with their personal prayers. For Moose he repeats what I tell him to say...until tonight. When I said "in the name..." he said, "I'm not done yet!"

"oh, what do you want to say?"  

"I want to say 'thank you that Sister Jarrett did come here.'" 

So then he said it and finished the prayer. Super sweet : ) I guess I wasn't the only one that was grateful for the visit : ) 

Monkey news:
Poor Monkey got sick during the night.  I think she's thrown up at least 10 times since then.  We stayed home from church together.  She's taking a little nap now.

But yesterday she and Chick and Moose got to go meet Clifford and hear a Clifford story time, so that's pretty exciting.  {My aunt took them, and the babies napped, so I had a rare quiet house and free time.  "Free" is relative...I tidied the house and junk like that.}

And last weekend Monkey and Chick decorated a gingerbread house (with Fox's help).  It was tremendously exciting for them.

Chick news:
She's 6!  On her birthday she wore her hair in looped up braids with pink ribbons, like the American Girl books about Kirsten.  In fact, Kirsten is her favorite of the girls, and we read "Happy Birthday, Kirsten" this week.  In the book she gets pink hair ribbons for her birthday, as well as a quilt that her friends made for her.  And her Mama has a new baby and Kirsten helps a lot.  Lots of similarities to Chick.  She is my fabulous baby helper, and she got a package in the mail from her Grandma J which had a beautiful new quilt.

Anyhow, Chick loved all of her presents, and has played with/ used them all.  But her favorite present was her unicorn.  She named it Uniella.

Our tradition is to do a pinterest/ internet search for the cake that they want, and then it's my job to try to recreate it (or something similar).  Chick found several that she liked, but then told me that it didn't really matter what kind of cake it was.  She just wanted to help me make it, and she wanted to be my ONLY helper.  {She was a great baking assistant, but let Monkey in on the action too for frosting}.

She chose THIS cake in the end, because it reminds her of Cinderella's dress.  I was happy with her selection because I like to try new things when cooking. 

• This time I tried the tips for better cake from a mix (which equates to many more calories} found HERE. 
• And I learned to make buttercream roses, which was pretty fun and exciting. 

• I also goofed around trying to figure out some other buttercream design stuff, and Chick ended up choosing the less realistic flowers, but I liked the color better anyhow. {the pinks are frozen until v-day}
• And I got to stack 4 tiers, but to avoid having WAY too much cake I did single layers for each tier.  Which made for a squattier cake and thus looked completely different from the inspiration.
• I also made marshmallow fondant for the first time. Partway through the process I thought that it was ruined and wasn't going to work out. But pretty much one minute later it was gorgeous and done. (maybe not a literal minute...felt like a minute though).
• I've bought fondant before, but I think it was just for cutting out shapes...I'd never covered a cake with it, so that was another first.

At any rate, it was a fun learning process. Plus, thankfully, Chick was happy with the finished product (so was I, novice that I am). She even said that it was more beautiful than the original picture : ) Oh, and it tasted great too...the extra added calories really paid off ; )

Other news:
I actually made a project! Not a big one, but started and completely finished is quite an accomplishment these days.

I think that's all of my recent news. This next week is layout, and if combined with the flu it's sure to be a much less eventful one than this past week has been!!