Whirlwind

Fiona's comment on turning 10 was "I'm so excited to finally be a pre-teen". She's very, very focused on that right now.

I asked her what she'd like to do for her birthday, the big shindig, or have a few girlfriends over for a slumber party or movie. Surprisingly, she chose the latter.  She wanted a kitty themed birthday, and she wanted to go out to see a movie.  Oh, and for her cake, could she please have it be her kitty cat Nimbus? Yeah. Okay. Sounds easy.

I baked the cakes on Wednesday after work. Despite daily doodles and much searching online, I couldn't really find the exact idea that looked doable (for me) and cute.  Finally, as I sat reading Wednesday evening, I looked over at Nimbus as he was curled up next to me on the couch, sound asleep and sooo cute, and decided that was the way to go. With him laying on his side, you can see his cute "chocolate chip toes", all of his beautiful markings, and I wouldn't have to worry about having an upright cake that would fall over like last year's King Julian fiasco.

I carved the cake after work on Thursday, and began frosting it before it was time to take Fiona to get her portraits done at Yuen Lui. This is the first time I've been sort of disappointed with the photos they got from her. Part of it was my fault, I didn't check which lip gloss she chose before she applied it. The BRIGHT pinkish red gloss did not want to tone down, no matter what I did to it. Sigh. As I write this I realize that I still haven't ordered those portraits and I was supposed to do it yesterday.....

I chose a chocolate fudge frosting for the black stripes, thinking it would set up better than my usual chocolate sour cream frosting (which is luscious but not really a decorating icing), and cream cheese frosting for the white and then light brown areas. While the flavor of the fudge frosting was wonderful, and it has a lovely sheen, it sets up sorta hard. Sorta quickly. Yikes. I wound up scraping off quite a bit of it as I worked. Then, when I went to mix more light brown- the white and fudge frostings mixed together- I noticed that the fudge had sorta solidified and despite much stirring and heating it kind of clumped and then it looked more spotty. Sigh. Nimbus is a stripey cat, not a spotted cat.

I finally found a technique that worked. I frosted most of the body with the spotty frosting (it was delicious anyway) except for the tips of the toes and the white triangle on the chest. Then I nuked the fudge frosting til it was liquid and painted the stripes on. Unfortuanetly, I had already piped on the face, which was hardened and wouldn't come off nicely, so he sorta looked like a badger..... a dead badger. I call it the dead cat cake.

When Fiona saw it however, she loved it. I'm so happy at how easy it is to please her.  She really thought it looked a lot like her Nimbus, and she thought it looked exactly like a sleeping cat. Bless her sweet little non-fussy heart.

Friday morning I had to go to work, where I started out by making Fiona's birthday bread. Every year I make a delicious, moist, flavorful apple bread for her birthday. I cut off a nice piece to bring home to her, and put the rest out for the golfers to buy ($1.50 per slice, such a deal!). It's a long story.

Kollin doesn't work Fridays, so he actually got to send her off to school on her birthday for the first time. He made her pancakes, and then was in charge of bringing the birthday cupcakes to school (I'd made those while baking the cakes and then frosting the dead cat cake). He also brought lunch to school and ate with her. Sounds like it was a good time.

After school, the girls came home with Kollin. I had intended to go but wound up on the phone with a friend discussing sex education. Trust me, with our girls all keen on being pre-teens, this is a subject that is never all that far from our minds.

The girls came in like a whirlwind. They were hyped up on party madness and the joy of being together for "a whole lot of hours, just the four of us! And your parents."  They were loud and boisterous and funny, each trying to talk over the other in exclaiming the awesomeness of their time together. I eventually had to employ my Mom Voice to restore a little order (at some point they were screaming and jumping on each other) so we could discuss our plans for the the rest of the day. Moms came with overnight supplies, we chose to watch "The Princess and the Frog" which all but one of the girls had already seen, discussed dining options, and opened presents. Fiona brought out the party bags, which included a pair of kitty ears for each girl, and at that point Kollin and I were reduced to reading lips to try and discuss anything else. We painted kitty noses and whiskers on each girl and set out for the theater.

At some point on the drive over, the girls (who'd all brought along their stuffed animals) began having wedding ceremonies between their stuffies. Someone decided that the bride and groom were French kissing, which then led to a discussion of what exactly that was. One of the girls explained that it was sticking tongues in each others mouth, which was widely agreed to be "completely disgusting" and no one they knew would ever do that. Our kissing expert then shared that you have to kiss like that when you're in France. It's kind of like a law or something.

We had a brief discussion about polite manners in a movie theater. This was of course completely unnecessary and totally embarassing to Fiona, but given their rather high spirits, I decided to go for more Mean Mom points by threatening to remove any girl who got out of hand in the theater. Fiona confirmed that I was just mean enough to do that, so I'm glad to report that they all did very well during the movie.

On the drive back things were once again rocking and rolling with much laughing and kids trying to make innuendos about everything. "Did you say butt?" "Oh my god you're so gross" "No you are" "Oh my god, you said 'thingy'-that's so wrong". Ummm.... what?  We picked up pizza and soda, and then Kollin returned the large vehicle we borrowed from our friend. Thanks Ellen! The girls ate pizza, had cake, and had a big Super Mario Bros Wii (the gift her dad got her ) tournament, thanks to Kathy G bringing over their Wii wheelies. Thanks Kathy!

I cruelly forced them all into their pajamas at 8:30pm. At 9:15 Fiona came out and said she wanted to go to sleep (I was going to let them go a little later as they were still pretty wound up) so I went in and helped her calm down her friends, get in sleeping bags and quiet down. Fiona was asleep by 9:30, but it was after 11pm when I went in and told the other three to be sure to keep it down because I was going to bed and I didn't want them to wake Fiona up. They chatted for quite a while longer, but they were quiet.

The girls woke up at 7ish this morning. Kollin got up and ran down to Wild Wheat to pick up cinnamon rolls. Why buy them? Because Mama was just too dang busy people! I know, a good mom would have woken up at 4am to make them. Well how would I win the Meanest Mom award if I went around doing stuff like that? The girls resumed their Wii playing, taking a forced break for breakfast and getting changed. When I heard squealing and the sounds of slapping I was just about to go in to settle them down when I heard one girl shout "let's get naked!" and decided I just didn't need to go in there.

The girls were picked up around 10:30am, except for Mackenzie who we'd agreed to keep for a while longer so Ellen could take her son to the symphony. Kollin's mom came down and took us out for lunch at the Olive Garden. We dropped Mac off at her house (she wanted to play longer but she had homework and I told her I needed a nap), went home and collapsed. I felt absolutely shell-shocked. I told Fiona to rest, crawled into bed, and passed out for an hour or so. We watched Bambi during dinner (we got it on Netflix because Fiona had mentioned that she couldn't really remember that movie), played some Wii, and then Fiona crashed in bed.

I've been trying to figure out how four girls could wipe me out more than the 10-12 kids we usually have here for Fiona's parties. Is it the age? Was there too much unstructured time? All I can say is >yawn< I'm glad that's over.