Third Annual Miss G Birthday Cake

My friend Sarah helped move us into our apartment when we moved to St. Louis 2 1/2 years ago. I hadn't even arrived yet, but she said she knew she had found a friend when she saw the box labeled "Kara's Cake Decorating Stuff." The first year we lived here we literally lived across the street from Sarah and her family. Now we're still close, but it's a lot easier to drive.

So two years ago Sarah and I made a cute pink flowery cake for Miss G, the older of her two children. It was pink. It was cute. It had some flowers. It had a lot of sprinkles on it, because that is how you impress a five-year-old. They will not be impressed by gum paste flowers or exquisite details. If you want to really impress them, dump on the sprinkles.

Last year we made a cake for Miss G's sixth birthday. It was also pink. It also had flowers. And, of course, it also had sprinkles. It was accented with a Belle figurine on top, because that made it a princess cake.

This year Miss G is focused on the Rainbow Magic Fairy books, particularly the Jewel Fairy series. Her requirements for her birthday cake were that it be a purple fairy cake. There has been a coup in the color hierarchy and purple is now on top. So, here is the picture of the purple rainbow cake. The fairy will be added tomorrow. It's not an impressive fairy, just a paper figure of Amy the Amethyst fairy. If you want an impressive fairy (or impressive cake) you have to talk to Jewel.

The cake turned out as we planned as is accented by, rather than covered in, subtle sprinkles. Miss G will undoubtedly notice that I misplaced yellow. It should have come after orange, but I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing until it was too late. Not a big enough mistake to end up on Cake Wrecks.

Tomorrow at the birthday party, the cake will have purple jewel lights around it. I think Sarah and I really know how to impress the seven-year-old crowd.

Bad Reporting at its Worst

The Davis County Clipper did an article on Dallas's new tax business. Great. Slight problem. Everything about the article was wrong, and to top it off the writing is terrible.

They made up quotes allegedly by Dallas (no one who has heard him speak would believe them.) They made false claims as to his licensure (he will be a CPA soon, but he isn't quite yet) [but he is a tax expert.] But even worse, they somehow managed to get his phone number wrong, the address wrong, and the date of his open house wrong. Basically, they got absolutely nothing right. You'd have better chances at getting a well-written article if you put a bunch of monkeys in front of typewriters.

Check out Shannon's blog entry about the monstrosity.

Then visit Redwood Tax's Grand Opening party on Saturday January 31, 2009 from 11-4. The address is 420 N. Redwood Road in North Salt Lake. To make an appointment, call 801-295-6789. Walk-ins are welcome. For directions, visit the web page at http://www.redwoodtax.com/ .

Was that so hard to get right??

View From Our Front Door

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Saint Louis has been under winter weather warnings for a couple of days now. We've had a considerable bit of snow, at least for our Midwest standards. Most of the schools were closed yesterday and today. Saint Louis University started two hours late due to weather, but that didn't change the fact that Nick had to be at the hospital by 5:00 AM. Caesar came with me to take Nick to school, but had a hard time getting to the car- the snow is higher than his belly. As you can see, the sidewalks aren't shoveled and the street's not plowed. We had a snow shovel before, but I think it walked away during a storm last winter. I'll try and get a new one today if anyone still has any.

I was really disappointed to find out that Nick had two more weeks of his surgical rotation than I thought- meaning he'll be done five weeks from now, not three. Somehow I didn't know that after his next rotation, plastic surgery, there's another two weeks of surgery at the VA. He's really liking his surgery clerkships but they are very demanding. I think this is what his intern year will be like.

I Feel So Smart

The maintenance guy was here this morning about our dishwasher. It wasn't draining properly; there was always a lot of water in the bottom. I had googled the problem and concluded the problem was found in the installation; whoever put it in failed to remove the "knock out" plug in the disposal. The knock out plug is part of the disposal that if you hook it up to a dishwasher, you "knock out" to create a hole for the dishwasher drain to connect to. If there's no dishwasher, you leave it in place.

So the maintenance guy said, "Yeah, it looks like they didn't knock out the knock out plug." I felt smart for knowing exactly what he was talking about, despite being totally ignorant to the rest of the plumbing world.

I don't feel so smart all the time though. I'm sure you've noticed that I don't wear make-up most of the time. When I do wear it, in all likelihood it was applied in a moving vehicle (with someone else driving), and if we're on our way to an evening event that means it was also done in the dark. Debbie asked me how this is possible. I readily admitted it involves gambling, but if you apply conservatively you shouldn't end up going too far astray. Also, I have trained Nick to alert me to any problems he notices once we're actually in decent lighting.

However Friday night as we headed to dinner, I applied my make-up in the back seat of the car. It was only after I finished applying the mineral foundation that I realized I had actually applied my new mineral blush (which comes in a practically identical container/applicator device) all over my face. Fortunately, this blush has next to no color in it. I wiped off what I could and we'll just chalk the rest up to the glow of pregnancy. Not my smartest moment ever.

Back to Normal, but with a dog.

Kate was only in Saint Louis for roughly 18 hours. She came, she saw, she got her eyebrows threaded. At 6:00 AM on Saturday, she left us for a better party. The Wheadons were in Denver for the Stock show, and even though Kate has never previously expressed interest in livestock, she's smart enough to know where there Wheadons are, the fun is.

My mom and dad are now also home in Salt Lake. We had a nice visit, even if it was on the short side. But the exciting thing is that Caesar stayed here. He's adjusting well to the new environment. He was barking at the front door in the middle of the night, but other than that he's been pretty calm.

The greatest entertainment from my parents' visit came from menu confusion. On Friday, we ate lunch at Sweetie Pie's. They had really loud live music going. You literally had to yell across the service line to place your order. My dad saw Buffalo on the board, and it's too loud to ask questions, so he went for it. Turns out Buffalo is Buffalo fish, not bison. My dad described it as carp-like with more bones than flesh. The rest of the food at Sweetie Pie's was great. We were really there for the macaroni and cheese, which I'm sure is half butter.

After he had given up on eating the Buffalo fish, he googled it. This fish looks a lot like carp too. It also carries the risk of giving you Haff Disease, which there was an outbreak of in St. Louis last year. Once he'd made it a few hours past ingestion, he knew he was in the clear.

The next day we went to another place featured on the Food Network's "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives." It was called Iron Barley and is in the traditionally German area of town. Their menu had no descriptions, just names, which is not all that helpful when the names are "Hill Pig" or other similarly ambiguous monikers. I settled on the Monte Cristo. It's the sandwich that I only get to each about every five years at the Blue Bayou in Disneyland. What I missed though is that it was under the hot dog heading. So it came and I was totally surprised that it was a hot dog. Nick wasn't. He said, "Yeah, I was a little shocked when you ordered a hot dog."

Knowing I don't eat hot dogs, you think he might have mentioned his surprise during the ordering process. But he didn't and the hot dog came. We debated what exactly made it a Monte Cristo, and the only thing we could come up with was the dollop of jam it came with. It was probably a lot funnier if you were there.

At the Assessor's Office. Kate must be Really thirsty.

Update: We took this picture as part of standing in line at the City Assessor's office for over a half-hour. Turns out, we probably didn't need to be in this line, but we didn't find that out until AFTER we waited in it.

My mom and dad and Kate brought out a car for Nick and myself, along with the dog. I think the car was just an excuse to get the dog here. It's a Ford 500. What, you've never heard of it? It was renamed the Ford Taurus after three years. It's the first car I've ever owned in the same decade it was manufactured.

Anyway, they got here about 12:00, and after eating lunch at Sweetie Pie's, we began the quest to register the car. I know you people in Utah are used to their one-stop convenient registration. Here in Saint Louis, we like things to be a little more challenging. And even if you've tried to do all your research online to know what to expect and be prepared, you will find misleading and incorrect information provided by the city to keep things exciting.

By the time we leave Saint Louis, I'll probably have some faint idea of how the whole convoluted process works. Tonight's most exciting episode took place at the Triple A office where we go to do the actual registration after the four other stops have been made. But it would just take more time to explain than it's worth. We got the car registration minutes before 5:00 and we've got the shiny new license plates to prove it.

Another Day at the Garden

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Today has an expected high of 55. A week ago we had a day where we didn't reach 15 degrees. What a world of difference 40 degrees makes! With the beautiful warm weather, I met Janette and Miss A at the Garden. It was still chilly when we started, but by the time we finished it was a beautiful, sunshine filled day. You can tell how cold it has been by the large chunks of ice in the fountains.

We also spent some time in the Climatron, the geodesic dome housing the tropical plants. I can't get any pictures in there because the lens of the camera fogs over. The temperate greenhouse has a great Spanish Fountain that Miss A is a big fan of. It also houses several oleander plants, which are extremely toxic.