a little bit about lottie sue, cupcake MANIA, sydney is a year older & a venable throw down

Greetings and salutations! It's Thursday afternoon and I just put LS down for her nap. I know I put a lot of photos up but I need to write more about what Lottie Sue is doing (and saying). Here are a few items of interest that came to mind, bullet-point style.

• She is truly hilarious. She loves to laugh and make others laugh.
  
• She has food audibles (shout out to the Linkers here) and if she eats something she likes she'll go MMMM-MMMM!!! Over and over again.
  
• She wants to eat whatever we are eating, even if she has the same thing in front of her - the food on our plates must taste better.
  
• She says "peez" and "day you" (please and thank you) without being prompted most of the time.
  
• She calls a cat a dat and a dog a gog. She'll say just about any word you ask her to say and she has a large vocabulary. She also talks about 90% of the time.
  
• She likes to repeat our names over and over again, I will often here her mumbling "Mommy and Daddy. Mommy and Daddy".
  
• She LOVES to be chased around and could do it for hours.
  
• Lottie Sue also loves potato chips, they are not in her usual rotation but if you Matt you know that he would die for a bag of Ruffles Cheddar Potato Chips. If Lottie Sue sees them she goes nutz.
• Lottie Sue loves to look at her butt in the mirror. She thinks it's hilarious.
  
• She loves bubbles. Very much so.
• She calls her blanket "babbit" and is very attached to it and to her pink puppy. Grandma gave her puppy right after she was born in the hosptial. I bought three extra ones on ebay in case we lose one.
• If you are taking her photo, she says "CHEEEEEESE".
• She loves to pretend cook and feed her babies.
  

I'll write down more soon, she's growing so fast it's hard to keep up! This photo is from last Saturday during the big clean. She fought Matt for the dust buster, I promise we are not making her do hard labor.

dusting and saying "CHEEEEEEEESE"

OK, you might have read Carrie's post about her Cupcake Extravaganza so this will be old news to you. But if not...

Mom bought me this book for Christmas - it is awesome.

click on the image to take you to amazon to purchase

I knew that Carrie would be all over it so I told her about it and I was right, she went bonkerzzzzzz. She organized a cupcake decorating party last weekend and it was truly awesome. I had so much fun. We made four different kinds from the book, take a look for yourself...

The first kind we made were sunflower cupcakes. You had to have "the touch" to do them, notice the faces of concentration in some of the photos. They turned out so well!

adorable!

The next kind we made were my favorites, little owls.

patterson creating a baby owl

here is the tray of the flock we made, could they be any cuter???

The third kind we made were creepy crawlies. They turned out particularly well. My favorite is the centipede you'll see below. But these are hard, you have to have a steady hand for sure when making the critters. You lay wax paper down and then trace the bug design with chocolate. This one was a little intimidating but the more you do it the easier it gets. These just scream Halloween.

here is carrie tracing while kat plops in the m&ms

here is my go at them
(you leave them here to dry them place them on the cupcake)

scary! but cute!

The butterfly cupcakes were the last ones we did. I have to leave a tad bit early and don't have a great photo of them. You make these the same way as the critters, by tracing them on wax paper. The chocolate you use is warmed, Kat had a blow out but quickly recovered and started up again.

uh oh, oopsie

here's one hurried photo, these are really pretty

Later that afternoon everyone gathered at out house to wish Sydney a very happy birthday. Mom and Dad brought over the scrapbooks and we had a "this is your life, sydney garlington" show. It was neat to look back at all the good times, Mom takes a lot of pride in her scrapbooks - they are works of ART!

syndey blowing out her candle
(she had the pick of the litter from the cupcake extravaganza)

gramma, papaw, lottie sue and michelle smile for the camera

matt hams it up on the swing with lottie sue

all the mowrer ladies (sans lottie sue), we took about 10 of these and this was the best one

Later on Lottie Sue got into Papaw's wallet and helped herself to some dollah billz. Her excitement level was high.

show me the money

And I'll end it with a few photos from the Venable Valentine's Day Throw-Down. I meant to take a lot more photos, but it didn't happen. But I'll share what came out alright.

shawn and marty, looking good

matt and sam prepare the smoke meat for mass consumption

lottie sue plays with marty (i have to tell you that lottie has a crush on marty, she smiles at him A LOT and is always game to play with him)

a happy max

Alrighty, I hope this post finds everyone well. Word.