March 3rd

Hi, it’s Christina –

Our Ka-boom went Ka-plop! YEAH!!! We woke up this morning to only a dusting when they were originally calling for 18” – 24” inches a few days ago. WooHoo!! I am so sick of the snow as I’m sure most folks in NJ are as well.

Unfortunately when Lys woke up this morning, she was miserable and on the verge of tears. She’s running a fever, her throat is sore and swollen, everything hurts her, and she didn’t sleep at all night. I managed to get her to take some children’s liquid Motrin, I sent her back to bed, and I left a message on the doctor’s answering machine to call me when they open at nine. Technically, by two weeks, Lys shouldn’t be allowed to go to her doctors’ since they are pediatricians, but hopefully they will still let her come in and be seen. Guess I’ll find out after nine.

Saturday’s party went well. We were an hour late to the party because Lys was finishing up Max’s cake. She stayed up until one baking, then she started assembling and decorating at eight Saturday morning. She didn’t finish until four. The cake came out beautiful and it was very tasty too.

Originally the cake was going to be done in pink and white fondant, but we didn’t have enough, and at $8 for a tiny little container, we weren’t going and getting any more, so we settled for pink fondant hibiscus flowers instead, and just glazed the white icing so it looked like fondant. All totaled, the cake took Lys about twelve hours to make. What you can’t see from this photo is the inside of the cake was a pink and white checkerboard. Keep in mind, we do not have one of those special checkerboard pans, so Lys did that by hand as well. Plus the cake was filled with homemade vanilla custard. It was a big hit, and Max loved his pink “Sweet 16” cake.

Today after I get Lys all squared away, I have a holy mess to clean up. I had a ferocious headache yesterday (not a migraine thankfully, just a headache), but it was still bad enough to knock me out of commission for the day; so today I have the kitchen to clean up. There’s pink icing, pink chocolate, flour, dirty baking pans and decorating stuff everywhere. The kitchen is going to take a good hour to be set to rights. My kids are wonderful bakers and cooks, but when they get done in my kitchen, it looks like a bomb has been set off. In Lys’ defense, if she wasn’t sick, she would have cleaned it up, but since she’s feeling miserable, I have to do it.

After the kitchen, I need to make a grocery run and then I need to start my taxes because the FAFSA’s for college need to be done. Translation, no writing and no editing will be done until I get the taxes finished. Way back, in a previous life, I used to prepare taxes, but it has been eons since I’ve had to do a Schedule C, so this may take me a few days to get everything done correctly. I may be calling my girlfriend Fran in for reinforcements, she’s a CPA, but I’m going to at least give it a try before I bother her. It’s tax season and she has her hands full enough without me adding to her burden.

Okay, I need to get my hubby up and out of the house. We’ll do the writing challenge tomorrow. I hope y’all have a great day, and happy writing!