After the viewing last week, Lydia, Adelle, Jeff, and I played Pretty Pretty Princess. I took pictures this time and thought I should share. Adelle won (again). I think she's just really good at the game because she's a real princess inside.
At the end, we got a little silly as Princess Adelle showed off to Grandma. I love Lydia's look. And Jeff's. It's great.

On a much sadder note, on Monday morning my brother Dustin's cat Patches had a stroke or something. He was leaving my room to go upstairs and started making really odd and worrisome noises. When I went down to check on him, he couldn't move his back leg. And he was really freaking out. I've never seen him so agitated before. It took him a few hours before the shock wore off enough that he could sleep. I stayed with him all day and fed him. Dustin was at work. And I knew that he would want to see his cat again.

Monday night, Patches seemed to be doing a bit better. He had stopped panicking and could pull himself around very awkwardly with his front legs and use his other back leg a bit, but by Tuesday morning things had deteriorated. He could hardly move. Dustin made the very difficult decision to put him down. I'm going to miss talking to him during the day when I'm home alone. He was a very vocal and generally loving cat.
Goodbye, Patches!

Hey. It's been a while since I've posted. Guess it's time I should post again so everyone knows I'm still around. The past few days have been very different from my normal schedule. Different is a good thing...but I wish it were for happier reasons it's been different. My sister-in-law's father passed away. I wish I could do more to help her...but as I've never lost any relatives, I don't know what to say. So, instead of just saying that everything will be okay, Mom and I have watched the girls a few times while different preparations were being made.

They came over on Saturday a little more subdued than normal (which is saying something, because they both really get excited when they can play with me). Adelle was very much excited about her loose tooth, though. She even called Tasha and told her all about it. I wish I had as easy a time talking on the phone as Adelle does. She's fearless. And adorable. Anyway, we played for a bit and then I decided it would be fun to make cupcakes. I've been debating as to whether or not I want to go back to school and learn to be a pastry chef...so I've been practicing by making cakes and frosting and fondant. I made a really good pumpkin cake the other day and put fondant over it...but man, fondant is a lot sweeter than I thought it was...

Anyway, we went up and made cupcakes from the box. They were white cupcakes, and both Lydia and Adelle helped me measure out the ingredients. We each got to crack one egg, which was pretty fun. Lydia did hers really slowly and Adelle nearly dropped her eggshells in with the rest. They then helped me spoon the batter into the cupcake pan. We made buttercream frosting. Adelle got bored until we started adding the powdered sugar. She thought that was pretty fun. They both helped me keep count of how many half cups of sugar we'd put in--which was good, because I would've forgotten.

Once the frosting was done, I mixed in yellow (it turned out more orange), blue, green, and black per their requests and we prepared to do some cupcake decorating. I was amazed by how awesome their cupcakes turned out. Once I showed them how to make flowers, they were showing me up!

This is Lydia's first cupcake. She made a pirate ship out of gum paste.

This is Adelle's first cupcake. I had some WALL-E decorations that I got on clearance. Her first one was of EVE.
This is Adelle's pretty flower cupcake:
And this is Lydia's awesome flower cupcake!Here's a picture of all the cupcakes Adelle and Lydia took home:

And these are the rest. The girls got sick of decorating, so we had a bunch that were naked! Aah!
Afterwards, we put a little ship I got from Tasha for Christmas in some water to see if it would grow. Here's a video that the girls made up on the spot:



Now....Adelle has been telling everyone about her loose tooth. Today it finally fell out! She was eating an oatmeal creme pie and realized there was something hard in it. Turned out to be her tooth! She was afraid it would hurt, but it didn't. I snapped a picture of her hole. She's excited to be able to squirt water out of her mouth through the hole (I totally didn't give her that idea...).
We played Pretty Pretty Princess a few times today. Guess who won? Miss I-Lost-My-First-Tooth! She was a beautiful princess. She chose pink for her jewelry. Sadly...no pictures. I wish I could've gotten one of Lydia wearing an extra purple earring on her nose...

Adelle and Lydia are real sweethearts. I'm glad they're in my life.

Liz, you're in my thoughts and prayers! I love you.