Lessons Learned from Making a Ding Dong Cake

1. If you go to bed while the almond bark is drying on the cake you could wake up to find the top half hardened into place slightly askew of where you left it and trails of marshmallow ooze dripping down the sides of the bottom half. This doesn't create a complete ding dong look exactly.

2. You can't push candles through a hardened shell of almond bark without first cutting tiny X's with a knife into the top shell of the cake.

3. You need a sharp knife to cut the cake into wedges. But it will fall apart anyway - there's a hard chocolate outer shell and a creamy marshmallow center.

4. This cake tasted just exactly like a ding dong if even more delicious. It was the sweetest most chocolatey most marshmallowy goodness ever. It was, in fact, unfinishable.

5. There is a reason ding dongs come in small packages and this rule of life should be followed. Only one of Colin's guests, out of all of us eating cake, was able to finish his whole piece. The rest of us were incapacitated.

Nerf wars are currently in progress. I've deemed my area a no-fire zone.
We're having fun!
LOVE

The Great Ding Dong

I'm currently making Colin a birthday cake. He likes ding dongs and wanted a cake that was like a giant ding dong. So here's the idea. I have made two round cake halves of a Pilsbury devil's food chocolate cake. Then I melted a package of chocolate flavored almond bark. I've iced the bottom of the cake which is currently setting. Once it's dry I will flip it onto the cake plate and cut out a section of the middle. I will fill the middle with marshmallow creme - the kind of marshmallow creme from a jar that you never really knew what to do with before. Well, I think its for making ding dong filling because I've never really used a jar of marshmallow filling before. Anyway, after filling that hole I will cut out a section of the other half and heap the marshmallow up a little to fit into the hole in the top half. Then I'll pour the almond bark all over the top and sides. It should be set and solid by morning. We will be totally ready for this party by tomorrow! I'm very excited!

My nephews are coming to the sleep-over party which should be fun. I like the idea of Michael and Justin getting to know Colin better. They need to hang out more. They will essentially be like cousins sort of. Anyway, Chris is picking them up first thing tomorrow after he gets off work which he's leaving early. Then, with the boys, Chris is going to pick up Colin from school so they can be home by 3:30ish to wait for the other guests. I'm leaving work a little early tomorrow - like 4:30 so I should be home in time to join the fun.

We're ordering pizzas for dinner and having ding dong cake and ice cream. The boys will all have a nerf gun war using the nerf gun arsenal that Colin has collected. In the morning, I'll make pancakes for breakfast which is Colin's favorite breakfast. Colin's friends from school and after-care program will leave around 10 - 11 and then we'll take Colin and my nephews out to Jack Brooks Park for disc golf. I think they'll love it!

I formed a team at work to raise scholarships for kids going to UH's Bauer College of Business. It sort of fell together so if you have any fund raising ideas or items to donate for sale on our online auction - please share. We haven't come up with a team name yet. Maybe we'll auction off the naming rights to our team. That should be fun. So anyway, we'll be raising money for scholarships for the next couple of months - till the end of May. Anything helps!

I gotta go check on my ding dong cake. I'll take pictures.

Time Gets Away from Me

Eight days into February before a post. Argh! I'm not meeting my goals at all.
I've added Carmen's new French Blog to my roll and removed Chris since he hasn't posted in more than 6 months. Check out what is happening with Carmen here.

Below are some shots from Christmas that I finally got from Chris; some shots of Carmen, Kevin, and Carmen's Aunt Linda who we partied with at Christmas time; and some random shots from disc golf games we have recently played. Oh and perhaps a shot of Chris with his new Prius.

Chris told me a week or so ago as we drove along in his new car that the Prius truly suits him and he feels very at home as a Prius owner. He went on to explain how it fits in with his Go Green mentality and plan as well as his high-tech geek personality and the secret compartment loving stasher he fancies himself. It's also quite nice in terms of a family car and he feels better about being able to drive all of us around in his own car as it has a lot of space. The Prius really is a nice car. I have to agree.

Colin LOVES him some Granddad! I think that Granddad is definitely Colin's hero. AND he always gets just what Colin wants for Christmas every year. So here he is getting thanked in Colin's favorite way - the big squeezy hug.









Carmen and Kevin. Ah! La amour.

This was the night they stayed with us in Clear Lake.
















Here's an action shot of Chris chunking his frisbee at Jack Brooks Park on hole 11.











Here's Chris in action again on Hole 12 at Spring Valley Disc Golf course.















Here's a pic of me and Honey girl at hole 13 at Jack Brooks Park. What a gorgeous day in January in the great state of Texas.















Here's Chris with the new Prius out at Jack Brooks Park in January right after he bought it. It was actually here that the car got it's first ding. A white car apparently opened the door into the Prius. Chris wasn't too worried about it.















Chris bought me a new disc golf bag at the pro shop on the Spring Valley course. It's exactly like his new bag only pink! And I love it!!! My favorite part about it is that it holds my drink (up to a liter size bottle of water or gatoraid so that I don't have to hold it separately. I can also carry a lot more discs but the first day I had it, I did not see this as all that advantageous. The ability to carry a host of discs begets actually doing so and my bag was considerably heavier as I went from 4 discs to 9.
















Today, Chris and I walked the new course at Jack Brooks Park. It's still a little under construction but is being built to be a world class course with a lot of challenge. This year the World's Biggest Disc Golf weekend is happening in Houston, Woot! but like ON my birthday weekend - so not so woot maybe. Shouldn't it all be about me?

Anyway, while walking the new course today Chris and I carried 2 frisbees each - a new Oddessy mid-range and the wheel for both of us. The course was treacherous and we decided we need new shoes to do those hills. But here's the fun part - Chris found this block of wood that had been marked on three sides by some disc golf buddies but the 4th side of this block said this. We loved it and left it near the hole where we found it.














So that's it for an update.
I found a good price on a new wind shield that I'm going to have installed soon. I did my taxes and I'm getting a nice refund which will go entirely towards my debt. I'm still trying to reduce debt. Chris and I are going to be house hunting and spending the next few months cleaning out Chris's old house and putting it on the market. There's lots of busy-ness all around us.

much LOVE

My Family Frustrates Me

This sort of falls under not having anything nice to say and so I should say nothing at all. But at the same time I'm not going to sit idly by with my feelings bottled up festering. And what better place than the internet for a rant.

My mom suffers from obsessive hoarding disease. Her house is overrun with boxes. There are whole rooms that are unavailable to her and the rest of the inhabitants of the house - my dad and two brothers - because they simply became too full of stuff and eventually blocked off. Except for the main bathroom which just simply became too broken to utilize so it was closed with an Out of Order sign for the last several years. There is a path from the front door to the living room, some space in the living room for a few people, some space in the breakfast room for one person - my dad, generally; some space in the kitchen and my mom's bedroom and one working bathroom. No front two rooms, no dining room, and no clear hallways. It looks bad and its embarrassing. I remember the first time Chris saw my parents house - I was mortified that he had to go in there. Colin has still never been over there and I don't want him to go.

Well my dad had knee replacement surgery a couple of months ago and from that developed a staph infection which hospitalized him for several days until they released him to go home. But home was no place for him. He has not been able to take a shower in a month - he just gets sponge baths. He can't move from room to room easily with his walker because the path between the boxes densely stacked 6 - 7 feet high on all sides is not wide enough for his walker and he had to scoot sideways with a walker to move around in his own house.

This enrages me. I am so angry about it that I could just spit.

Several of my siblings and I decided to take matters into our own hands and coerce my mother into moving her boxes to a storage unit just temporarily until my dad can walk around again and then she can have her stuff back. This ensued fights. It was ugly. My mom screamed at me that I was making her out to be a monster. Which maybe, on some level, I was. Reason didn't seem to work so perhaps I slipped into blame. She agreed to "condense" some of the boxes so that there were fewer of them which turned into 4 solid days of one sibling or another going to my parents' house going through boxes.

She has a problem and no one will stop her. She can't part with anything. In cleaning up my mother's house, I found a pile of broken things covered in dust including 3 broken vcr's that would cost more to repair than they were worth. And she insisted that she wanted all of those things. The next day when she went to church my dad told us to get rid of that pile - into the trash it went. I'm sure she hasn't missed her broken things. She had 2 TRUCK LOADS of boxes of video tapes that had been pulled out from under STACKS of other boxes and out from under the dining room table just to make room for some of the boxes of "inventory" that she allowed me to take to Chris's house for storage insisting the whole time that she needed those movies. Who even has a VCR anymore? And how would she know what movies she has when they've been under all the other stuff for years now? These are just the little things. The things that are mentionable on the web. I'm frustrated beyond my wits.

Unfortunately, the only actual removed items from my mom's house to this day are the video tapes at Chris's and a truck bed full of the trash that she decided she could part with. Some trash she insisted on keeping. One pile of boxes is actually empty boxes that she 'might need' but won't move, even for the health of her husband. Does this make her a monster? I don't know. Define: monster.

None of this inventory / condensing / not agreeing with the plan was part of the plan. The plan was to clear out the boxes once and for all now that there's something that should have been more important than the boxes. It was supposed to be the perfect plan - mom would finally "have" to give up all her crap-filled boxes because times have changed, they are aging, my dad is in very poor health and what a great reason to change old bad hoarding habits! It didn't work.

What was supposed to be a moving truck hauling away all the stuff to a storage unit for my DAD, turned into something totally about my mother instead and an unorganized organization of the stuff. Problem is that there's no place to put anything in order to organize it. Literally - there is no room. There have been so many fights over these THINGS that everyone in the family has now pretty much given up. Its no longer about my dad at all and he doesn't seem to care much when my mom is in the room.

There's also been fights about a storage unit. Some of the siblings don't want to pitch in because it wasn't their idea to put the stuff in storage and my mom is against it anyway. Some of the siblings want to only pay for a 7th of the storage unit because they feel everyone should pitch in. Some say it should only be for a set amount of time during which mom needs to liquidate her inventory and give up this "business." I say mom needs to pay a 7th also since it's her stuff and her business should be making enough in sales to spend a 7th of the cost of storage. Except that she has so much stuff, so many boxes, so much 'inventory' that only the largest 20' x 24' storage unit will hold it all by our estimations and she insists on having a climate controlled unit on the ground floor so that she can go in to get items if she sells them, she wants isles and shelves so she knows where everything is, and she wants it in her name.

Anyway, its tearing us all apart as a family trying to help my dad. I wrote an e-mail to my family expressing my opinions about the matter which was followed up by an even uglier e-mail from my sister-in-law to my whole family. She said to everyone that she agreed with everything I said but went on from there to express feelings that were much stronger and full of anger and hate. So now we have both been ostracized from the family.

I hope all of this can get resolved somehow but I don't have any ideas for now. As it stands, I don't have to do anything anymore. Which is fine with me. NONE of this was originally my idea in the first place. I was approached by Brian & Sheryl and Kevin and Sophia about this. They wanted to invite my parents over to Kevin and Sophia's and have the whole house moved out while they were away so that they could come home to a clear space. I was against that plan and for including my mom in the solution but there's just too much stuff to deal with any of it in a logical way.

May I never be so attached to any THING that is causes a wedge between me and my immediate family members. That's all I hope for personally.

New Year's Resolutions

I've been thinking a lot about goals for the new year and resolutions. It's still early in the year so I'll post some of my ideas here. First of all I have to admit that I only have about a 20% success rate on keeping new years resolutions so I prefer to refer to things I want to be successful with as 'goals.'

I'm a great goal setter! I really do set reasonable, measurable goals for myself that can be broken down into smaller steps that can track my progress towards my goal. I'm also working on some goals for the year. However, this year I'm actually going to make some resolutions. These are things that just don't have steps that can be taken to reach the goal.

First of all, I resolve to stop plucking out my gray hairs. This used to be a great denial method when I was younger and I would [gasp] find the random gray hair. Pluck! and gone. But now? Now I fear I may suffer from thinning hair if I keep this up. I will just have to learn to live with and love my gray hairs just as must as my brown ones or deal with them in another way. Dyes perhaps. Or highlights. Or maybe a super short hair cut? But I can't keep pulling them out so I've got to stop.

Second of all, I resolve to stop cursing like a sailor. I have a problem and I want to make an attempt at sounding more lady like. I used to use foul language just when expressing my most passionate opinions especially involving anger, but I've gotten so bad that I curse even when I'm excited and happy now. ~ sigh~ so I've got to watch my mouth. This includes speaking negatively aloud. I'm going to really try to make an effort to follow the wisdom "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." Except to my sister to whom I shall not give up bitching rights - I mean, the right to gripe.

I also have goals coming about how many books I want to read this year and how much debt I want to pay off and how much I plan to reduce my carbon footprint and what acts of charity and service I will perform this year and how much writing and editing I will do, money I will save, sights I will see, pounds I will lose, classes I will take, lanugages I will learn, etc. But that's a lot more work and I honestly can't be bothered with it today. I haven't decided which thing to take on this year and there is progress to be made on all fronts.

Oh and have I mentioned yet how thrilled I am about Obama's Inauguration? Oh my god, I cried. I think I was the most emotional person standing in the lobby of our building where there is a big screen that played the whole thing. I'm so proud. I thought his speech was amazing. I'm moved to be a better citizen for Obama. What an amazing leader. He is just what we need. I couldn't be more pleased.

LOVE

Not a Post

This is a test to create a post from my iGoogle homepage. If it works I will be most pleased and have to report the wonder of it to Google - because I love Google and routinely tell them how I feel via the Google Survey at the bottom of the iGoogle homepage.

The Beginning of 2009

We started the new year with a bang. There were fireworks and roman candles, turkey burgers, and tons of alcohol, old friends, a tattoo, a breeze of change in my mom's house, and generally too much good food and not enough sleep.

The New Year's Eve Party was at Matt & Julie's place, being outside of the city limits and allowing fireworks to be popped. It was PJNYE - Pajama Party madness! Everyone's PJs were so cute. I was in red snowflake pants and a red top. Chelsea and Colin both wore their new plush robes to the party instead of coats. We made turkey burgers for everyone and everyone else made hor d'oeuvres.

New Year's Day we went to breakfast at IHOP which is a bit of a tradition. Then Chelsea and I drove around for about an hour looking for an open nail shop before giving up on beginning 2009 with perfect, smooth feet. We went to see the Yes Man with Jim Carey and I have to say I was cracking up laughing the whole way through. Some of the funny was Colin laughing. He gets so tickled and I know just how he feels.

After the movie, Chris dropped Chelsea and I off at Bombshell Tattoo on Westheimer for Chelsea's new tattoo. A picture says a thousand words so click here to view. I think Chelsea feels different now. I know I do. After the inking we all went for dinner at Mo Mong! YUMMY!

On the 2nd Carmen & Kevin were back in town from Christmas in Mexico with her parents. This was also the day that my siblings chose to help clean my mom's house out. My mom has obsessive hoarding issues and is currently living in a place that's too packed with stuff to allow my dad full access to the house with his walker. So we're getting her a storage unit for anything that is a product from her inventory and all the old video tapes she agreed could go to Chris's house. In the morning we went through boxes at moms and in the evening we met Carmen, Kevin and some of Carmen's family at Taco Milagro in Houston to catch a salsa band of which Kevin knew some members.

That night Carmen & Kevin spent the night at our place and gave us their whole liquor cabinet full of bottles of alcohol. They had packaged it all up and hauled it in boxes from Rhode Island. We have more types of alcohol than we know what to do with. We have tequila with real worms and tequila without, vodkas, liqueurs, and some absenth. We also were luck enough to get a whole bottle of organic toasted sesame seed oil. I have no idea how that happened to be with the liquor but I'm pleased and feel like making chinese food or something. To say the least, we are very greatful Carmen and Kevin! We appreciate all the drinks and will enjoy every one. Here's to you my friend!

Work began on Monday and it was a bit of a rough start getting back into the swing of things. Carmen and Kevin left for Paris, France today at 2:00 PM and won't return for 4.5 months.

So far the new year has been good to me. That's it for now.
Much LOVE