Staying in the touch with the WI Learish

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

SNOW DAY '11

Our first real snow day. It takes a lot to close school down in WI. And we got a lot. Well, mostly we got a lot of crazy winds. But since it was snowing AND windy you just could not leave the house. Visibility was like 7 feet.

The kids were pretty excited at even the possibility of a snow day. They have several rituals that will ensure a snow day. Non of which I had heard of. Here are some examples. Place a spoon under your pillow, toothbrush under your bed and wear your PJ's inside out and backwards. Place two ice cubes in the toilet and if they are gone in the AM you will have a snow day. Eat something with ketchup the night before.

As luck would have it, the schools announced closure around 8p so we did not have to get up at 6a to find out we could go back to sleep! I have no idea how much actual accumulation we got but the drifts are crazy. I was going to take the day off tomorrow and spend the day learning how to snow board. But, it's only supposed to be like 5 degrees and lots more wind. No thanks!

outside the front door

front yard

side yard

Chris and Jack saying SNOW DAY!

front of house

side walk

snow drifts by side walk

front of house

kids hiding in snow drift

back yard

patio

Acacia eyeing up the bar

so she can jump off it ... there is a video of her jumping off at the end of this post

back yard

Acacia stuck in the plowed snow off the driveway

outside the front door

outside my bedroom window

Acacia's 10 '11

What can I say? Double digits! Time to party. A swimming pool party was selected this year and of course the request for a swimming pool cake. Since there was no swimming pool cake in the book of cakes that mom gave me 10 years ago I had to turn to the expert. Julianne surfed the web and came up with what appeared to be relatively easy (seeing how I do not have any actual cake decorating tools as she does). Acacia approved of the cake and off we went to purchase teddy grahams and peanut butter M&M's.

OK - so as you can see, there was a swimming pool cake. Looks easy enough, right? Well, little story here. When cakes bake they kind of bake with a dome affect. So, if you take the cake out of the pan and place it upside down on a plate the center of the cake hits the plate first as it is the highest point of the dome. The outer edges are kind of suspended in mid air. So, when you place two round cakes on top of each other they touch in the center but there is a large gap all the way around the outside of the cake. So, when I cut out the little center part of the top cake to make room for the pool (filled with jello) the top cake then had nothing to hold it in place and it completely fell off the cake. This did not happen all at once mind you. The cake was completely decorated and ready to be filled with jello. I left it like that over night and found it apart the next AM. This was a terrible set back and I had no idea how to correct for this. Back to the expert ... "Well, didn't you level the cakes?" Non expert ... "Um - level??"

Back to the store for more of everything. So, instead of having Friday evening to relax I had to bake, cool and decorate this cake. I was a little stressed (OK - pissed). But, in the end it came out lovely! :)