Hanna's Birthday - Yay!

 The birthday cake in the making. The first step was making sure it all came out of the pan in one piece and baked to perfection. Step 1 complete.

 I made up the icing the night before. I cheated and bought 1 can of cream buttercream icing so I didn't have to make so much home made. I also bought the black "candy pen" to do the outline of the eyes and face as well as the eye balls.  I needed so little that it wasn't worth trying to add food colouring to get black. As you can see I started with the face (following the instructions step by step)

 Once I got on a roll, it was easy to do all the little brown rose bud thingy's on the top. I added a little orange to make it more feminine.

 Last, I filled in the feet and hands with rosebuds.

 For the finishing touches, I did a vine around the cake with pink rose buds and added some pink roses buds on the collar of the monkey.

 And last I decided to outline the rest of the face in black.

 Hanna did so good while I was decorating. First she had a big nap and then she had her lunch and played all over the kitchen floor while I finished.

 Goofy girl. She figured out how to climb under and over the dining room chairs.

 My last project of the day was to decorate the cookies. I used mom's brown sugar roll out cookie recipe  that is so tasty. I figured out its the brown sugar combined with almond flavouring that makes these cookies so tasty and different from other sugar cookies. I made the brown icing. I bought pink cookie icing but was very disappointed in that because I didn't know you had to warm up the icing. So the pink didn't set and it was runny.

 The morning of Hanna's party...bath with Daddy.

 Hanna wakes up to SURPRISE! A house full of people.

 Hanna's 2 uncles looking intelligent. Along with her Daddy.

 Table is set...just waiting for the sausages off the bbq.

 Sarah and Hanna.

 It was a perfect day...it threatened to shower at lunch time but it waited until we were done.

 The dessert.

 My favourite course.

Hanna shows some love to her bday monkey.

 Hanna tentatively dips her fingers in the icing.

 Am I going to get in trouble for this mom?

 "Happy Birthday to you!..."

 How about we take our dirty fingers and wipe it on the white tablecloth?

 A little help from a cousin to blow out the candle.

 Yum yum!

 Robyn points out the monkey cookies.

 The kids are ready for their cake.

 Mmmm...more.

 Uncle Graham comes after a service call.

 Hanna REALLY enjoys the cake.

 Teija shows off her Lega tower that is supposed to have a resemblance to Hanna....hmmm..

 Robyn dives into her cake.

 Hanna and her cousin Jaimen.

 My brothers lying around.

 ....while Mom in law works.

 Gpa Pihrag comes Saturday night and leaves Sunday evening. Farmers can't be away from the harvest for very long.

But we are very thankful that they could come for a little bit.

Hanna shows off all her funny faces. What's up top? 2 teeth coming in.

Hello? Hello??? Blah blah blah...

Last but not least, we enjoy a bit of shopping at Cross Iron Mills on Monday. Hanna gets ecstatic every time she sees my wallet. So here she is digging through it.

Thanks everyone for coming and for gifts and cards that were sent. We sure appreciate it. We had a fun time.

Life at the Radom house - Prepare for Picture Overload

I hardly know where to start.

Every time Hanna does something new, I think, "I need to catalogue that on the blog." but then I forget and now what I have to say is forgotten.

Hanna is getting to be a little pro at pulling herself up. She is a master of doing it in her crib. I finally order some breathable bumpers from Toys R Us and installed them so she doesn't get her chubby thighs stuck in the rails.

She is also babbling a lot more...saying things like, "mama", "dada", "baba". She loves the phone and now picks it up and puts it up to here (upside down or backwards - doesn't matter) and babbles into it.

She is sprouting 2 more teeth. The 2 top front ones. One is completely through and she has been working on the other one. It hasn't been real fun. For example, this afternoon, I rocked her to sleep 3 times before I could put her in her crib without her waking up and her screaming blue murder.

We had a wonderful day on Saturday with all the family. Mom and Dad arrived late Saturday evening so they weren't able to join in the festivities but they were there on Sunday when it was actually Hanna's birthday. Of course, it was a busy day on Sunday with our morning meeting, and then afternoon gospel meeting. Then out for supper with the family before Mom and Dad were to leave. We were happy to hear Rick Larson on Sunday speak. He is waiting on his visa right now but hopes to return to Bangladesh to continue his work there. He spoke to a few of us on Friday night and I realized that it is important to pray for the leaders of our land because they actually do have a lot to do with the going forth of the gospel.

I had fun learning to decorate this past week. I had done all my baking up ahead of time (cake, cookies and cupcakes). The evening before I was to decorate, I made up a massive amount of buttercream icing and separated it and coloured it. So it was all ready to go. I learned a lot. It's fun to do it every once in awhile but let's just say, my lot in life was not to be a professional decorator. Oh...and one more thing about that...I did a banana cake (to go with the monkey theme) and it went over very well. The kids loved it. Obviously it tasted like banana muffins or banana bread. It was very moist and it didn't dry out.

I took some pictures on my phone with a few of the various steps from the beginning to the end. Did I mention I also decorated monkey cookies? I would do things a little differently there too but they all got eaten and to me, the taste is what matters most.

So Happy Birthday to all the friends and family who have had their birthdays in the last couple weeks. Wow! Were there ever a lot of them.

I am feeling rather strange as I think of all the students being at school today and I'm not there. Obviously, Hanna keeps me tied up but how life has changed!

So I will let the pictures do the talking now as you're probably more interested in them anyways.

We learned at a young age to suck a straw - especially when there's milkshake, smoothie, frappe or the equivalent.

Cousins enjoying some quality time together.

 Edmonton visit - Aug 15-18. We enjoyed our time at Rodey and Coral's.

 Hanna loving her legs these days.

 Hanna likes her sippy cup but tends to get carried away and gets it all over her face.

 Our beautiful sweet peas - thanks to Gma Lewis for giving us the seeds last year.

In the toy box (she may have had some help getting in there)

Hanna's new hair do.

Precious moments in the morning when Hanna snuggles with me in bed.

An afternoon snack - cheese please!

On our way to the zoo to meet up with Annette and Keason as well as our good friend Jessica.

Our new bath toys. Fill in the blank.

A warm day at the end of August - so we went to a spray park in Canmore Park (in Calgary)

Hanna loved the spray.

 We spent the morning in Cochrane with our friends Rebecca and her kids Bentley and Bella. Then we went and visited Daddy at work.

Strawberry Pie

So Sobey's had their strawberries on sale and ever since being out on the Island and seeing A. Jackie making strawberry pie, I have been dying to try it.
So I googled "best fresh strawberry pie" and came up with this blog website:  http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2011/06/14/fresh-strawberry-pie-recipe/

I didn't use this crust recipe but instead searched within her blog for a pie crust recipe. It was really easy and it showed picture directions on how to do it. And it worked!! The pastry was an all butter recipe that said to grate the butter and add it to the flour and salt. I thought that was an ingenious ideas vs. having to use a pastry cutter or a fork. Then I added my ice cold water until it stuck together. Then I popped it in the fridge for about 45 minutes. It rolled out beautifully! I've always had bad luck with my own pastry. It's usually too dry. The recipe said to err on the side of caution and adding too much water was better than not enough because you could always add more flour when you roll it out.

It was a tad time consuming but here is the finished product! Voila!

Graham's pre-bday party Aug 10

So Joey was working Friday night so I cooked up supper for Graham and the rest of us. And then Joey had some a little later.  Here we are eating ice cream cake. Look at how excited Hanna gets over food especially ice cream!

I thought I would share these videos with you with Hanna. As you can tell by the videos, she cracks us up. Hope they crack you up too.

Video from today - Aug 9, 2012

So I'm trying to find an easier way to share videos as the video feature on the blogger website takes a long time to upload. So when I take videos on my phone, I am now uploading them to my youtube account (as Michelle does). If you have the link you can see them. I can also embed them in a blog like this. So here is my first try...
Hanna was performing today....need I say more?
Part 1

Part 2

August video

I love taps!

August already!

We have just been having a lovely summer. So beautiful that I of course, have gotten behind in the blogging world. But....alas...I'm back on because yesterday (Aug. long wknd), it was 32 degrees and cousin Sarah actually stayed home for the wknd and so we visited her community spray park. It is so special that you need a key fob to get in (although Ang came with us and realized after the big hike there that she had forgotten in). Thanks to the lovely people who opened the door for us, we got in without a hitch.

Hanna had a lot of fun sitting and playing outside in the afternoon. She wasn't sure what to think of the spray park at first but after awhile, as you will see, she warmed up to it.

We were sad to hear the news yesterday that my parents lost 8 bred heifers. Something (hopefully not a cougar) got them spooked and they broke out of the fence, and crossed the 4 lane highway. What a disaster for those that hit them and for the animals that died. I feel for my dad right now as he tries to sort out the mess. Hopefully the crop yield is fantastic to make up for this loss. And hopefully some dimbob insurance company doesn't come after dad because of something he couldn't help.

Here are some pictures that I have taken the last week or so. Hanna is still changing week to week. She says sounds like, "Buh", "muh" (I take it as mama :)), "Guh", and this morning I swear she said "Dah". Shawn will be excited about that when he hears it. She scrunches up her face to smile when we look at her and smile. She loves standing up. She continues to try and pull herself up but she's not quite there. She still enjoys her food (right now she is gnawing on a bun).

She is not quite crawling but she knows how to get where she wants. She'll do the caterpillar crawl to get to the phone. Belly slide, bum up, elbows back etc. She also knows how to go from stomach to sitting position.

She has also been sleeping a lot better. Although the last couple nights we put her to bed when she's tired (around 8:30) and she's up an hour later. Then back to bed around 10:30 and sleep until 6:00 (or so). However, at that time she nurses and then goes back to sleep. She awoke this morning around 9:00. Not bad! Let's me get in the sleep I need that's for sure.

I am still selling my Usborne books. I'm doing an event in Airdire on Saturday Sept 22. That will be my first event. I'm excited but also scared. Anyone wanna come help??? :)
I have 2 book parties in Edmonton next week that I'm also excited about. There are so many great books, I hardly know which ones to pack up and bring. I also ordered the package to do my "educational specialist" training so that I can approach schools. Seems silly that as a teacher, I can't approach schools until I have the "training" but it's training specific to Usborne and knowledge about the books. So I want to get that done before school starts so I can get out there and sell.

 A silly grin from Shawn on our anniversary. We went to a Mexican restaurant called "Salt & Pepper" to celebrate 6 yrs of marriage.

 Menu + virgin Pina Colada.

Hanna wakes up from her nap and we both rush in to get her. We goof around and she thinks it's so funny that she shows off her bottom teeth.

 We visit Daddy at work and love phones.

 We move around and get stuck behind things sometimes.

 We love getting ready for a bath. Every kid has to have a bum picture, right? Especially with one as cute as this.

 And we LOVE playing in the tap water.

 We love licking our yogurt cup clean.

 This was not her favourite meal (quinoa with moroccan tomato and halibut sauce. but she enjoyed making a big mess and playing in it.

 Early mornings in mommy's bed. Daddy likes to come and get me and bring me to Mommy in the morning.

 Hanging out with Daddy on a warm, Summer afternoon after work.

 Arriving at the spray park. I wasn't too sure what to think so I needed my sucky just in case.

 But after I discovered the water...

 I had tonnes of fun!

 Woo hoo! Water spraying everywhere.

 Look at my legs. Sticking straight out. I'm so excited.

 If you look close, my mouth is WIDE open. I just had to enlarge this picture so you could see her expression.

 Baby cuteness.

So after returning home with a nice little sunburn (not Hanna...Mommy), we ate supper out on the deck. I had a craving for a milkshake so I used my low fat frozen yogurt with skim milk and it tasted just like a frosty from Wendy's. Of course Hanna HAD to have some. And what do you know...she knows how to suck a straw.