Whew, it has been a while since I’ve written anything! Why do I always expect to get SOOOOO much done over the summer months? I should know by now that I need to have some better expectations of what I’m actually CAPABLE of accomplishing! There’s just so much great weather and family and friends to enjoy, it’s hard to do the not-so-fun stuff that needs to get done as well – like reorganizing a bunch of rooms to make better use of space in preparation for a new school year and a new baby! Fortunately, this week my boys are at VBS FULL DAY! Woot! Although we’re packing for a family camping trip and leaving on Thursday, I have 3 solid days with my girl to get some serious purging, cleaning and organizing done.
Our shelves have almost an inch of dust on them (of course not, but it’s fun to exaggerate :D), and the bathrooms and kitchen floor haven’t been cleaned in….well, you don’t need to know how long.
We were really blessed to spend a long weekend up at the cottage with my grandparents. We are so grateful to have them around still – at 88 and 85(86?) they’re not getting any younger, so any time we and the kids can spend with them is precious. I remembered to charge the camera batteries and put them back in the camera…but would you believe I forgot to put the MEMORY CARD BACK IN?! GAH! And the kids were like FISH in the water. And JJ caught a HUGE bass (not even joking) and he was so terrified as we has reeling it into the boat, it needed to be caught on camera. And the weather was beautiful. Sigh. It will all have to be committed to memory…and you’ll just have to satisfy yourself with a shot from last year :D
This past week was spent racing around and preparing for doing cupcakes and a cake for my very first wedding! Thrilling and terrifying, both at once. Our dear friends and small group members, Murray and Michelle, asked me to do the cupcakes. Since they’ve tried them a number of times thanks to small group nights, I guess they were confident I could pull it off! LOL But I’m used to baking max. 40 cupcakes at a time, so 130 was going to be a challenge!
Since I knew the week would be busy, I didn’t work all of it. I planned some fun activities for the kids and even got out of my comfort zone a bit with messes!
We even managed to squeak in a day or two of school ;0)
You can bet the week was full of surprises and a humongous learning curve. I started baking cupcakes on the Tuesday and froze them (I have a recipe that freezes really well, and I knew there was no way I could do it ALL on Friday, along with a cake!). Well, Tuesday evening I found my downstairs freezer open and the cupcake bags smashed down the side. The boys had tried to put freezies in the freezer and had moved all the bags. 3 dozen cupcakes, ruined! It was quite the catastrophe. My poor hubby came home from church to a wife pregnant, exhausted wife, crying her eyes out over a table full of chocolate cupcakes. He helped me to see the bright side though – one of them being, at least it hadn’t happened on Friday night! :D
This wasn’t to be the end of my cupcake woes. On Wednesday I e-mailed the person I was renting a cupcake stand from. She e-mailed me back to tell me that the stand had been damaged and wouldn’t be fixed before the weekend. Dun-dun-dun. Thanks to some quick thinking friends and their cupcake-baking friends, I had a stand by the end of the day! Catastrophe #2 avoided.
#3 – The “semi-ruined” cupcakes went to the office for the birthday party (most of the imperfections were covered by icing, but I did NOT want them on display at a wedding!) in my 3 dozen cupcake carrier. Except we left the carrier there. And we needed it for Saturday to help transport the cupcakes as I only had boxes enough for 8 dozen. Good grief. However, the girl I was renting the stand from had just picked up some boxes, so she had extra and saved the day again!
I was pretty sure something was going to fall apart or come off on the cupcakes either en route or on the table, but everything made it in one piece – which was good, because I’d only had JUST enough icing to finish the cupcakes. Everything went up beautifully and stayed where it was supposed to – man it was a LOT of pink! lol
#4 – However, the venue managed to THROW OUT the top tier of the cupcake stand that I had RENTED, after I asked them to make sure I got the stand back (because they took it back to serve the cupcakes). Brilliant. So now I have to work something out with the girl I rented the stand from and see if she’s willing for me to buy her another one. And I think they cost $40. Like I said, HUGE learning curve.
In all though, this was one of THE most enjoyable weddings I’ve been to! (Hey look, it’s me at 21 weeks! :D)
It was not a traditional Chinese wedding in the ceremonies, but the bride changed her dress 5 times!
And they had a grande entrance with each one :0) We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, even with our table being RIGHT BESIDE the cupcake table – I’m sure you can see the agonizing irony in all of that (WHAT?! I have to watch the cupcakes all night?!).
We even stayed until after 1 am and broke out some dance moves on the completely empty dance floor while waiting for the night to wrap up so we could take the sound equipment back.
What did I learn in this whole episode? Well, the biggest thing is that I started out in my own strength – I did NOT commit my way to the Lord and trust in Him! As soon as the thing with the cupcakes in the freezer happened, I realized that. And from that moment on I put the whole project in his hands. Even with all the other issues, I felt at peace, and was able to pray that it would work out in the end. And I think it did! God is good, especially when we diligently seek him :0)
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