Butter-cream Frosting, Face Painting, Dinner on the Deck...Random things

Yeah, this post is a little of this and a little of that. Yesterday was Jason's birthday. I made him these chocolate cupcakes with butter-cream frosting and the kids helped with the rainbow sprinkles and the little chocolate jimmies. I will never shed the extra pounds I've been running for if people keep having birthdays thus giving me excuses to make butter-cream frosting. Is there anything better? Mmmmmmmmm. Just thinking about it sounds good. I'm actually not much of a cake person. I would rather just eat the frosting off the top. Actually I shouldn't be writing of frosting and I should be wishing my dear husband a happy birthday. Yesterday was a crazy day (more on that in a minute) and so I didn't get a chance to post until today. Unfortunately he isn't even around to read this or enjoy the cupcakes I made because he left at 3:00 this morning to go to Tennessee for some Army business for the weekend.

Yesterday was also the family carnival/picnic/bbq/party whatever you want to call it for the company Jason works for. It was at Thanksgiving point. I didn't go because I had to work (took off too much time for an extended Yellowstone trip) so Jason took the kids by himself. I got a call from Alyssa. I could hear the excitement in her voice as she was telling me about the clown they had there that was doing face painting. She chose to have a butterfly painted on her face and it had glitter on it too. Not a big deal to some, but to a 5-year-old girl like Alyssa this was the icing on the cake (nice pun!?) They had food and then they also gave all the kids these squirt guns and they had a great time squirting each other. I think there was more going on later like a Peter Brienholt concert, but Jason needed to come home and pack so they didn't stay for all of that.

My last "random" thing. On Wednesday I decided we were going to eat dinner on our deck. We got this old patio set from Jason's family which we equipped with new cushions. We used this set for Alyssa's birthday, but not for a nice dinner outside on a summer evening. So since there were no afternoon thunderstorms in the forecast I decided we should have a nice family dinner outside. In addition to that, I decided it had to be good old summertime foods, such as grilled marinated chicken, salad, cantaloupe and of course corn on the cob. It was nice and its just a little memory I want to look back upon during the upcoming dreary winter, so that's why its included in this post of random topics. When the kids were finished with their meal (which of course wasn't long) they were off playing on the swing set and it was so nice to sit back in the shade, finish my dinner and just watch them play.

My friend Jenny has a quote on her blog: "Enjoy the little things in life...for one day you will look back on your life and realize they were the big things". -Robert Brault

So true, that's why I love little things like this. Not to mention, when I do things like this with my kids, I feel so much like a grown-up and not the 20-something I still view myself as just playing like I know what I'm doing....I actually feel like I know what I'm doing. (Does that make sense to anyone else but me? I'm not much of a writer. I know what I'm feeling, but don't express it well.)