Lavender Rain

This year, I was actually feeling the Christmas spirit. I feel like it’s our first Christmas together as a married couple/family… but it’s really our second. Last year, we didn’t even give presents to each other. I remember, the day after Christmas last year… we found out we were pregnant with our second baby. That was our present to each other Christmas 2008. This year was fun, but financially challenging. We purchased a new vehicle because we needed to. Our minivan broke down, so we bought a new vehicle. We weren’t able to buy gifts for everybody, but that is okay. We were glad that we bought our kids presents early in November.

We hosted a Christmas potluck this year for our close friends. We all had a great time. I love to entertain and eating while having a great conversation with friends. I don’t talk much, but I’m a good listener (at least I like to think so). Our friends, Robyn and Allan, who were in town for the weekend, stayed a bit longer for us and we really appreciate them for doing that.

Here are some photos…

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Zoe is 22 months old today! I can’t believe that she’s going to be 2 in 2 months. I feel like I just had her. She’s been very active, doesn’t want to stay sitting for too long. She always just has to move around… She is very disruptive. It’s getting harder and harder for me to clean up the mess in our house. I feel like it is a losing battle. I constantly have to clean up, but sometimes I wonder why I even bother. To be honest, I can’t stand clutter and crumbs!

I’m getting a little frustrated with her eating habits as well. I’m not complaining, but there are just days when she won’t touch anything I give her, but instead plays with her food by smashing it with her hands and smearing it on our furniture… According to “The Mom Show” I have to make the food attractive so they will most likely eat it. Well, sometimes it works, it really depends… but here are some of the things that I’ve done to make it attractive. I don’t really think they look attractive though, but sometimes it works.

I want to give her multivitamins, but according to the label, I can’t give it to her until she is 2 unless I talked to the doctor.

I feel like Zoe needs to be more chubby for some reason. I find that she is too skinny, but I don’t know if that is right for her or not. Her doctor’s appointment is next month, so I’m gonna have a lot of questions to her pediatrician.

This would be the first time that I scrapbooked with Zeke’s picture. I know that I haven’t been into scrapbooking lately. What can I say, baking & cake decorating are currently high on my hobby list. Anyway, just posting for this new page. It is a template, not made from scratch. it’s hard when you can’t spend as much time on a page anymore.

I realized that I have been posting a lot about baking and cake decorating. I felt that these posts seem to be out of place in this blog. For that very reason, I decided to create a separate blog that is only related to baking and cake decorating. From now on, all topics about baking will be posted on Cakes by Kristine. I don’t want to purchase a separate domain and web space for that blog yet. I have a lot of space on this so why not.

I digress. I had the strangest dream again. It kind of freaked me out, but also made me sad. I don’t feel like repeating it here. I have been thinking about the health of others, especially loved ones. Life is indeed too short. Now nobody died from my family, but it’s just something that I’ve been thinking a lot about and I know that I have to be ready for that. As a believer in Christ, we are taught that death is a very beautiful thing for a believer. God is happy when a Christian dies, because once his soul leaves his physical body, he is face to face with the Lord. I don’t fear death itself, but I fear what manner I’m going to die. I’d rather die in my sleep or because of old age. I am afraid of dying in a way that is painful and in a matter of slowly torturing you physically and mentally. God is the only one who knows how much time I have on earth. He only knows the time and manner of my death. God knows how everyone is going to die…

I wonder who is going to go home first… me or my husband? I will be very lonely without him, especially if I’m old. Life is really short… I really can’t take it for granted… anyway, I apologize about the topic of this post. It is a little depressing. So I’m going to share some photos from my husband’s kid’s Christmas party that was held in Galaxyland.

So I finally finished Wilton Cake Decorating - Course 1 last night. I’m really surprised by what I was able to do, the skills that I learned. I’m really happy that I took this course. I’m very thankful for my husband for allowing me to take this course. I’m so blessed to have his support. I know that he would have taken the course with me if he wasn’t so busy working. But I’m very proud of Josh for the work that he does to provide for our family.

So here’s my overall review for the Wilton course: It’s really fun, very hands-on. Actually, it reminded me of being in Art class again. What I really like about it is that it’s really fun. I got to meet other people interested in cake decorating, and many of these people are very artistic and creative. The course fee isn’t so bad. I only paid $23 CAD because it was 40% off at the time. While it’s true that the fee isn’t so expensive, buying the supplies are. You have to buy a lot of cake decorating tools, especially if you are just starting out. I’m glad that I had most of the basics already when I signed up for this, but boy I was not expecting to buy a lot. I am happy that our instructor is really nice. She tells us that we don’t have to buy everything, especially if you are just doing this as a hobby. She said that other instructors are very strict about it.

Anyway, here is my final cake from Course 1:

My roses petals are cracking because my icing is too dry/stiff

This was really a lot of fun to me. It’s a great hobby to have, I definitely like it more than scrapbooking. I already signed up for Course 2 and I’m starting this Sunday.

If you are interested, you can find out more from the Wilton website or from your local Michaels.