Cake Pops First Try

What do you do with extra cake and extra icing when the birthday cake is finished? Make cake pops!

No directions here, there's plenty on YouTube.

I did it and turned out pretty good and not bad enough to be a Pintrest Fail!

Beginning prep with extra white cake, icing, pop sticks, 

Now don't forget the candy melts!

First thing was to break up the extra vanilla cake into crumbs. 

Next, I folded in the strawberry icing. I put in just a little too much. 

Then I rolled up the icing and cake crumbs into balls. I then put the sticks in. 

White chocolate candy coating for the inner coating. 

Next I put on the strawberry candy coating for the outer shell.

Then I decorated with milk chocolate. I've never done this before so I had to fix the piping bag after the lower left disaster. The rest of the piping came out but I'm sure I could do better with some more practice.

Here's another view. No secrets.

The family liked them and we got to use the extra cake and icing that didn't make it to the birthday party. 

Mother's Day at the Zoo

This Mother's Day we traveled to the Brevard County Zoo and Ethan got to spend the day with Grandma. It was a two hour drive there so it was Ethan's first two-hour road trip. Of course he didn't sleep on the way there. We were able to get two full hours at the zoo before he began acting out.

He was still in his soccer outfit from practice earlier in the morning. The clothes worked for the park because it was hot and those clothes kept him comfortable.

 

Ethan liked the little kid window to see the meerkats. 

The windows let him watch the meerkats while they stayed out of the sun. 

 

 Here he is at the entrance looking at the statue of a hippo.

Ethan's favorite part of the park is the giraffe feeding. He got to feed a few pieces of lettuce to the giraffes. Sorry for no pictures of the feeding I was too busy holding him up. 

Ice cream break on a hot day. 

The stroller is more of a cargo carrier these days.

He likes pushing the stroller, not riding in it. 

After the zoo, we all went to a restaurant for early dinner. Ethan was playing with cars on the table and spilled ice tea everywhere when drinks were brought out. At least we all got to spend time together :)

Crib to Toddler Bed

We just couldn't hold off anymore. Ethan is a climbing escape artist. The crib could no longer contain him. If he wanted to, he could jump out of the crib before we could cover three feet. It was time for a toddler bed so he wouldn't jump out on to the hard floor and get hurt.

The sleeping area is still in the master bedroom. We built a wall to hold in the escape artist. The Ikea crib converted to a toddler bed. There are bumpers on the mattress of the toddler bed and pillows in case he rolls over that. 

Of course he didn't take to it immediately so I had to get him to sleep while he adjusted. Here's a candid shot I found on my phone after I woke up :o

Science Center

We were invited to go to the local Science Center with some friends. They told us the Dinosaur exhibit was on display for one more week so they were going to check it out.

We decided to go too because it would be good for Ethan. Well he enjoyed it a lot and got plenty of stimulation. Here are some of the pictures:

Most of the dinosaur exhibits were inside and dark. Here's a good picture where you can see the dinosaur model and Ethan isn't trying to climb behind the rope to get to the exhibit. 

A sensory table in the "under 6 years old" area. This is where we spent most of our time. There were a lot of activities he was interested in. 

He likes the tunnel obstacles. 

He couldn't be dragged away from the water table. Of course he got so wet, we had to change his shirt. Fortunately, there was a playground there too and he ran around so much in the hot weather, the shirt dried.

Well I didn't take pictures of the playground or bounce house outside of the science center because you can see that stuff anywhere. We'll be back anyway.

Pool Demolition (part II)

After the inspector gave us the approval to continue with the demolition, it was time for the hard work:  destroying the concrete patio, upper portion of the pool, and then filling it in.

I was not able to take pictures of everything but here are the main pictures to give you an idea:

We used lots of fill. This is the first delivery of dirt which was dumped in the front yard.

The first layer of fill at the bottom was actually gravel. That covered the holes in the bottom of the pool and dirt fill was dumped on top of that.

More fill,

...keep filling. Needless to say the Bobcat bulldozer tore up the yard. A lot more than I anticipated. It also broke underground sprinkler piping and even cracked some of the driveway it was so heavy.

After finally getting filled in, the dirt was raked out and leveled before inspection. We passed inspection so now there is no more pool to worry about.

We wanted to be able to enjoy our backyard so we replaced the pool with a wood deck which has ample space for us to use the grill or walk around on. Ultimately I would like another slab but I want to give the ground time to settle. I expect to see the ground dip somewhat where the pool used to be as the fill dirt settles. Putting a concrete slab over the filled in pool would not have been a good idea since the ground had not settled yet.

Pool Demolition

I don't think that it is a secret that we never liked our pool, in fact, it was a headache to maintain and we barely used it. We didn't even tour houses for sale that had pools for months into our search for a house. After much debate we decided to finally demolish the pool and reclaim the yard.

A pool is nice but it was a lot to maintain. I was putting a lot of money into it, even several thousand over the past two years and it still wasn't clean. I spent more time treating and cleaning it than using it. We didn't like the shape or the location of the pool. The pool had become an obstacle in the back yard preventing us from enjoying our time outside. Finally, we were told that our pool had to be re-modeled (renovated) in the next two years which would cost in excess of $5,000. That was enough to call it quits. Let's put the money for a remodel towards demolition.

It was a hassle to event get quotes for the demolition. The quotes were in excess of $20,000. We found a former contractor to do it himself for considerably less. Instead of paying a demolition company $2,000 to pull a permit, I did the paperwork and paid just under $150 for permitting.

Here we go:

The pool had become a nasty mess. We also couldn't use it unless we took down the safety fence which was put up to protect Ethan from falling in.

Here it is being drained some more.

After draining the pool, we used a stand up drill with a 6-inch diamond-tipped concrete bit to bore holes throughout the pool. We bored four, 6-inch holes throughout the pool in addition to the mandatory 12-inch hole in the deep end which was required by the permit. These holes were put in for drainage after the pool gets filled in.

We found some wildlife living in the pool. We scooped up a frog and a turtle (along with some algae). Here they are in a bucket getting transported to the pond in the park behind our house.

The frog got released into the pond.

The turtle got released into the pond too.

Here we are at the end of phase 1. Holes drilled into the pool. The inspector had to sign off on the permit before we could continue with further demolition and fill.