FOUR!!!!!!!

Trace turned 4 on April 22! He was super excited and asked for his presents the minute he woke up. Did we give them to him you ask? You know we did. We even took Taylor to school 30 minutes late so he could open them. You only turn 4 once.





As his birthday was a Thursday, it was business as usual, but we had a family cookout to celebrate on Saturday. I somehow got the honor of not only baking Trace's cake, but also doing all the cooking out, so I don't have many pictures of the event, just of the cake.

Thanks to Taylor selling magazine subscriptions for Girl Scouts, I get the Disney Family Fun magazine. It is full of cute ideas, and a couple months ago they had several really fun birthday cakes. Trace saw this dirtbike cake and HAD to have one. I got a crazy idea that I'd make him one - remember, you only turn 4 once! (Those that really know me are all chuckling at this...I am what you would call domestically challenged.)

The model cake used chocolate icing (like 3 tubs) and I'm a buttercream fan, so I decided to go as far as to make my own icing. I also refuse to put pretzels on a cake, or cocopuffs, or glazed chocolate donut holes. That's right, it's my first cake and I'm already deviating from the recipe. Picture me standing in my kitchen with 2 boxes of yellow cake mix, eggs, oil, vanilla extract, almond extract, 2 lbs of powdered sugar, crisco, and butter and staring the oven and mixer thinking "I have three freaking engineering degrees, surely I can bake a cake".

I will admit that there were times I was scared, and at one point John and our ferrier, Beamer, came in the kitchen and relentlessly made fun of me and my half put together creation (Beamer wouldn't even try a bite of the leftover wedge of cake, he was totally skeptical). But, I didn't give up, and I think this cake turned out pretty good.







The festivities aren't over quite yet...We're going wild to celebrate Trace turing 4 and Eaden turing 3! We'll see you all after the zoo party this coming weekend!

Busy, Busy, Busy

Between work, yard work, tball, PTO, the "kid in casts", Easter, birthday parties, guitar lessons, the dog rolling in horse poop and requiring a bath daily, and a bunch of other stuff that I can't even remember, we've been busy around the Davis house!

Some quick updates and photos:

Trace driving the jeep - he drives it daily until the battery dies, then goes in to take a nap while it charges and kills the battery again. Yeah, he drives the jeep with the full leg casts - he uses the tball tee post with a rag taped to the top, pushes it between his casts onto the pedal, and leans on it with his stomach to make it go. He's a clever little guy, huh?



Easter - the Easter bunny was rather generous this year with the toys and rather stingy with the candy. The kids both loved their baskets, and still managed to make it to 7:30am Sunrise Service at church!







On the Saturday before Easter, the kids went to the annual Easter Egg Hunt in my parents' neighborhood. Eaden was there too. The kids had fun finding eggs, and Trace found one of the prize eggs - he scored a $15 ToysRUs gift card (which, incidentally, cost me $50 by the time I got the kids out ToysRUs).







Trace has entered into the "do not take my picture" phase, just to prove it, I'll show you some of the pictures...I've been trying to get a good shot for Thank You Cards, but I might have to ditch the photo idea.









Ugh. What's a mother to do?

Trace update:

Trace also went on April 13 for a check-up with Dr. Ain (read - we left the house at 8:30am, arrived just in time for our 1:30 appt, and made it home at about 9:00pm). His legs looked good on xray and he must have had some serious post-surgery swelling, because his casts were way to big - we were lucky that he hadn't crawled out of them. They changed his casts (and I didn't think to take a picture of the sneak peek of straight legs that we saw because Trace wasn't the happiest little guy), so now he's got blue casts - and these casts would seriously fit inside of the old ones. Trace has been crawling ALL OVER the house (more like dragging himself with his arms), is a pro with the wheelchair, and still won't sit in one place for more than like, oh, 15 minutes.

He's super geared up for his birthday on the 22nd (tomorrow), turning the big 4! He informed me that he needed 4 presents because he was gonna be 4, so I gotta hit ToysRUs on the way home! Stay tuned for multiple posts regarding this as I plan to attempt to bake a cake this weekend, and he and Eaden's co-birthday party is at the zoo in Pittsburgh on May 2.

We also have "The Big Reveal" scheduled for May 11 - less than 3 weeks away!!!!!!!!

I also owe Taylor a post of her very own for her awesome tball season!