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.