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.

ocean isle survives another venable trip. barely.

OK, here we go! The Venables have been going to the same island in North Carolina for many many years (20 or so I think). I went with them once before (Matt had to work) and this year Lottie Sue and I (um, Matt had to work - again) vacationed with them. We had a blast! There were 20 of us in two houses, with the beach right across the street. One of the houses had a pool, so you can see how we were living the high life for seven glorious days. I am currently in withdrawal. Wah.

this is our crazee group shot (my apologies to megan, i did not get her in the shot but she's the one strangling dear suzy on the bottom right)

this is greg and jennifer (parents to andy and spencer), they are newlyweds and had dinner out the night of group photos (next year we'll plan better)

here we are "normal"
(someone forgot to tell andy this wasn't the crazy photo)

And so you know the names of everyone...

top row: ronny, shon, lottie sue, tony, chris, becky and tommy

couch people: andy, jim, sam, spencer, mary ann with lucy and kim

floor people: clay with max, moi, suzy and megan

And so you know how everyone relates, let me give a brief overview. Ronny, Suzy and Sam are siblings. Ronny's wife, Lianne, was unable to attend (boo, because she's AWESOME). She's an actress in NYC and her play opens tonight (break a leg!). Maybe next year! OK, back to it - Sam is married to Mary Ann and they are parents to Clay and Megan. Clay is married to Kim and they have two kiddies, Lucy and Max. As you probably know, Megan is married to Tommy. Suzy is married to Tony, the Greg is Suzy's son and he is recently married to Jennifer. They are parents to Spencer and Andy. Becky is Ronny/Suzy/Sam's cousin and her husband is Jim. Shon and Chris are friends of the family, just like LS and myself. Phew, hope that helps.

Oh right, before I start please take a look at Sam's column from Monday, it's about our trip: Lessons Learned by the Sea and it's pretty neat. He's falling into his new beach duties quite well.

To give you an idea of what we did all week I've written out my typical day. Wake up, feed LS and walk down to the other house for coffee. Maybe stay around and chit or maybe go for a walk. LS goes down for her morning nap mid morning, or we would skip it and go to the beach until lunch. Lunch was around noon and then it was pool time until LS went down for her afternoon nap. I would then pool it and then go home to shower, but I would come right back as it was storytelling time. Dinner was a few hours later followed by a stroll on the beach. LS then goes to bed and we stay up playing games and spinning yarns. It was awesome.

And now, a photo essay...these are in no particular order and there are so many! I wanted to entertain you with my rapier-like wit but my brain is not complying. So accept my apologies if I don't write much and you only have photos to see.

Beach time! Lottie Sue liked to play in the sand and she also loved to be right where the water washes on the shore. I would walk across the boardwalk to the beach and once she saw it she would start squealing with delight. It was super cute.

lottie sue enjoyed moving her feet in the sand

Here is a quick video I took with my little camera, it's raw (and I still know of my promise to edit and post videos - I haven't forgotten). I took the video camera but I couldn't find the charger (story of my life). I still don't know where it is. But let me warn you this clip isn't exciting but you can see LS's chub legs kicking sand.

chubba wubba

what a belly

sam and spencer build a manly sand castle (neighborhood)

tommy and megan play with lottie sue

These are on the beach right before sunset, we took a stroll every night after dinner...

tommy was lottie sue's surrogate dad this week

i'm taking a photo of tony taking a photo, how artsy of me

the gilmores take a stroll down the beach, all together now: awhhhh

mr. and mrs. smith, bring on more awhhhs

lottie sue loved for the water to hit her toes

sam and ronny came over to see lottie sue

i miss the gilmores already, wah - but don't they look super cute?

andy in mid-run, he's about to jump over some water

here we are "normal" at the beach

and now we are crazee at the beach, this better represents everyone if you ask me

Every day around 4pm Sam, Tony and Ronny start smoking/grilling the meat for dinner. They DO NOT mess around when it comes to meat. It's a ritual. It is sacred. You'll laugh your b*tt off, guaranteed.

sam and tony "working" on the meat

ronny striking a pose

mary ann comes back with lucy after her nap

megan holding baby lucy

lottie sue wants to know why megan isn't holding her

i took this shot right before tony mooned me

lottie sue looking crazed

check out these scallops (wrapped in bacon) - they were the bomb

You'll see some people wearing tie-dye items. They are the fruit of our labor completed earlier in the week. Megan brought all the stuff to tie-dye and I LOVED it. It was so much fun! Mary Ann, Megan, Andy, Shon, Suzy and myself participated and we had so much fun. I really loved it. It's a bit messy though but oh so worth it...

mary ann gets down and dirty, and colorful

OK, here are some shots from dinner one evening.

good food, good conversation

And after dinner, social hour(s)...


I took a few photos of Andy and Spencer playing with Lottie Sue, it was so cute. The boys are very impressive kids, they took their allowance money and bought LS a stuffed shark.


And now on to random photos... You may or may not know, but Megan collects Santas. She spotted this one at a flea market.

a $7 deal

tommy and spencer are in a figure-four leg lock

shonnie bear and lottie sue during lunch one day

snackin it up

mary ann and megan double the fun with patty cake

I haven't gotten into it on the blog yet, but the Mowrers and Smiths have a project going on that required us to render our own salt. More to come on that later. But check it out! Megan did all the work and I just watched and gave moral support. She filled a milk jug and bucket with ocean water and boiled it down.

we were giddy over all the salt we were able to get

the bag looks suspect but it's all legal we swear

And I hate to leave this post on a sour note, but all I can say is no amount of beach camaraderie can make up for poor taste.

spencer and andy have been lead astray

We already have our houses for next year and I hope Matt can make it. I've been told that I'm out of the mix if my spouse misses one more year. Yikes.

And let me give a GIANT shout out to Suzy - she made all of this happen and has the best organization skillz I have ever witnessed. She is the Queen of Ocean Isle. Long live the Queen!