Cake Pops!

The Jollys sent Katie Anne a box of cake pops for her birthday!  

One of my friends and Book Club members, Kristen Meers, owns Eye Candy Cake Company, and she makes these delicious cake pops!  Katie Anne - and SJ - were very excited to get a special delivery, and even more excited to eat them!

The birthday girl enjoying the delicious vanilla cake pops!  

Thanks, Ella and Colin!

 SJ was absolutely in love with the chocolate cake pops!  His expressions while eating them were cracking us up!

Kristen's cake pops are amazing - go and check out her Facebook page here!

Special Easter Cake

For today's Easter celebration with my family, we are making a special cake for everyone to enjoy to celebrate Katie Anne's birthday.  Katie Anne was excited to pick out the theme of her cake.  She looked around Pinterest with me for Easter cake ideas, and she decided to go with a Peep cake with blue sky icing and little "nests" of icing and jelly beans.  She helped me with all the steps to make it... here she is mixing up the batter.

Then, she was ready to decorate it - her favorite part!

Then we had a little surprise!  SJ wanted to help decorate it, too!  SJ doesn't join us too often for crafty kitchen projects - partly because he doesn't like doing them and loses interest quickly, and partly because he's just not quite old enough.  However, we were all pleasantly surprised at the great job SJ did. The kids were so cute working together!

The blue sky turned out a little darker than we'd wanted - I think we added too much food coloring - but overall the cake was really cute!

Cookies for Santa

At last... it was was bedtime on Christmas Eve!  Katie Anne was incredibly excited, but she was also ready for bed because she knew Santa couldn't come and visit until she was asleep!  She gathered up some of best cookies for Santa, and she put out the cookies and milk using her special plate set from Grandmama.  She was so thoughtful - she wanted to make sure that Mrs. Claus and the reindeer got treats, too.  So, she packed a few cookies in a Ziploc bag that she labeled "Mrs. Claus" for Santa to take home with him, and she also left out some carrots for the reindeer.

 Katie Anne's little set-up for Santa and the gang...

She made a list of the four things she wanted at PreK for Santa.

Soon after she went to sleep, Santa arrived!  He left the kids lots of surprises, and most of the things Katie Anne wanted were there for her to find in the morning.  Santa brought her the Fijit Friend Willa and the Play-Doh dentist set. (We aren't so sure about what SJ wants for Christmas this year, so Santa - and everyone else - just guessed, but I'm sure he'll love it, too!) This picture shows a motorcycle for SJ and the American Girl doll with the bed, but those things are actually from Mommy and Daddy.  Mommy just hadn't wrapped them before this picture was made!

Santa ate the cookies, drank the milk, and took the to-go cookies back to Mrs.Claus.  The reindeer chomped on their carrots, too.  Santa even left a note for the kids!

Can't wait to see their faces on Christmas morning!

The Jones Family Christmas

On Christmas Eve, we headed over to Doc and VJ's to celebrate Christmas with them!  We ate a big meal together and exchanged gifts.  We got to spend time with Carlton, Trisha, and Grandmama, too.   

It was an extra exciting Christmas Eve celebration this year because Carlton and Trisha announced the gender of their baby (due in June 2012).  They gave everyone a little Christmas bag with a gingerbread cookie inside... the gender of the gingerbread revealed that the new baby Jones is a girl!  We are all so excited to meet our new niece and cousin in June.

Then it was time to exchange gifts!  The kids loved everything that they got.  Some of their favorites were a bed tent, a Disney princess book, and giant wall stickers for Katie Anne and a lights and sounds firetruck and bulldozer for SJ!

SJ got very tired after the gift opening, so he went to take a nap.  We had given Carlton the game Wits and Wagers, so we all played that game together. I think that Saunders will be buying this game for himself, too - it was really fun!

After SJ woke up, his cute gingham shirt was so soaked in drool that he had to wear a back-up shirt... that was Katie Anne's!  He had no shame in his purple size 4T summer shirt- he wore it with pride!

That evening, we made cookies for Santa. VJ also had lots of gingerbread things - trains and houses - that she wanted us to make.  They are kind of hard to do!  We did a good job on the train, but we had to give up on those mini houses.  Then, it was time for baking and decorating cookies!  This is always one of Katie Anne's favorite parts of Christmas Eve!