By Nicole

In honor of my most pinned pin , and because I promised to some time ago .  Yeah, photo albums and race recaps aren't the only things I flake on. Here is a step by step post about how I made my first monster truck cake. When my nephew turned three, I promised I would make his cake.  His instructions were to build a monster truck with flames that was running over spiders and shooting webs.  Tall order! I talked him down a little, but I decided to go all out and try to build this truck.  I was currently watching Ace of Cakes a lot back then, so rice krispies had become my new best cake tool. So I carved a rice krispie truck from a giant hunk of rice krispies and put it in the fridge to harden up again.  It was almost exactly the size of a loaf of bread.  In fact, I think I had smooshed two bread pan sized rice krispies together and then carved from there.   Once I was sure the truck was solid, I started frosting it.  I was tir...

Whew, it has been a whirlwind couple of days.  And I have no expectation that things will slow down. One of the most annoying things for me this month of NaBloPoMo is that my blog has felt more like Facebook status updates than any real writing.  Not only have I not had time for it, I just haven't had a writer's mind lately.  My mind is filled with nothing but to do lists and checkmarks.  In fact, I am so sidetracked these days that I spent most of yesterday reversing my words. Whatever I meant to say, I said backwards.  Instead of wash your face and brush your teeth, it was brush your face and wash your teeth. Most of date night was spent with me reversing everything or taking long pauses between sentences so I could make sure that my mouth actually said what my mind was thinking and that whatever my mind was thinking made sense. I married a patient man, thank goodness.  Thankfully, today was a laid back, do a lot of random things type of ...

Because I can't express how thankful I am for the gift of my husband and kids... here are some pictures.    Summer 2009 - They were so small!     The boys' first day of school this year.  Leilee wanted to go too!   The man partly responsible for those adorable children above.  With last year's Novembeard .   So, my first Nearly Wordless Wednesday.  Done and done. Note*  It is almost impossible for me to read or think the words "nearly wordless" without thinking of the part in the first Harry Potter movie when Hermione Granger says (to Nearly Headless Nick), 'Nearly headless?  How can someone be nearly headless?"  In the cutest little British accent ever.

"Don't hold in your emotions; get them out now.  Or else you'll end up like me, cynical and unpredictable."  This was my advice to my coworker as we traveled out of state for a work conference.  Next to me, our other coworker burst out laughing... only because she knows it's true.  I'm not sure at what point I realized that I might be too cynical... but I can at least explain the unpredictable. About a month and a half ago, my brother and his wife told our family that he was going over to Afghanistan for a year in the middle of October.  When he told me, I was kind of shocked, but otherwise just asked questions about how R was going to handle being a new bride in their apartment all alone for a year.  About three weeks ago, my sister and I brought our kids to stay the weekend with them.  We went shopping and went to the zoo and had pizza and played X-box together.  The kids had a blast, which was what AJ wanted.  As we ...