Easter egg hunt...

The spring is officially started when we went for the annual egg hunt... Kids still get so excited for candy and wait patiently next to the fields for the fire truck to give the signal.
Then it is 2 minutes of chaos and we are done...I love that...

We got to see some friends and enjoy the beautiful weather...

I love this scarf that I have on. My hubby got it for me all the way from Japan...

Valentines day parties...

On Valentines day, both kids had parties at their school. The got dressed in reds took their valentine treats and headed to school after a good breakfast. Since I knew they would be eating candy and sweets all day, I made a point of making eggs for breakfast...
My handsome boy... Not sure what the meaning of the look is...

My cute girl in her signature hair style (side bun) with a flower that came all the way from Hawaii from a good friend that we miss a lot...

Oh my, do I see some hugging going on... That must have been a total mistake...
I told Korman that was a very "cool" sister hug. He seemed to take pride in that...

They had snacks and made fun crafts...

Below you can see the whole idea about Valentines day in her face...

Valentines day treats...

For Valentine's day, I have considered making various different kinds of snacks for different groups like teachers, Sude's gymnastics team, coaches, teachers, kid's classmates. At the end, I made "Buckeye bites"which were enough for everyone. I used two bags of pretzels and a jar of peanut butter. They were a huge hit...

The recipe is from Sprinkles on top...

http://www.withsprinklesontop.net/?p=1583

I made two versions; one with dark chocolate and one with white chocolate.

I filled little bags with peanut butter bites, raspberry chocolate, chocolate covered almonds, and candy for the coaches, teachers, and my special one...
And the rest went to the friends of our kids at school and the gym.

It was an easy and delicious treat for a special day...

Korman - finally the citizen of the month...

This has been a tough year for Korman at school. He has been having hard time to focus and listen sometimes and once in a while gets in trouble for talking too much, not paying attention, etc. He is doing great academically but seems to take his time to adjust socially. We are very lucky; he has had great teachers that truly understood how boys mature differently than girls.

When he was announced as one of the citizens of the month few weeks ago, he was ecstatic, and we were just so happy for him. He came home and told name that he cried when they announced his name, he was that happy....You can imagine how thrilled I was for him.

We went to have the Principal's breakfast and enjoyed muffins and OJ.

The big sister was also there to support and congratulate him...

It was a proud and lovely morning... He is growing into a wonderful and caring boy...

Happy Halloween...

We had a great Halloween. Korman was Obi-Wan Kenobi. In his words; Obi-Wan "General" Kenobi. It was a great fit to him with the hair piece and everything...

Sude was the cheerless leader; I guess kind of like a "bad" cheerleader. She had lots of fun. She got to go to gymnastics with her costume. She had a short practice to be able to go to trick-r-treating.She only gets to wear lipstick on Halloween which is an excitement by itself...

Last year my husband went with them and I got to enjoy my coffee at home.According to Korman it was my turn and I had to dress up. In the last 5 minutes this is what I came up with.
A non-Dora explorer.
I thought it turned out pretty good. We were out with some friends from the neighborhood. We got lots and lots of candy...

Halloween decorations...

We were a little late this year to do our Halloween decorations. I am not sure what has been going on with me the last few weeks but I cannot seem to get organized. Maybe it is the weather, maybe it is the fact that I am lacking a little bit on the exercise department, or maybe it is has been just an insane October; with competitions, parties, and loads and loads of laundry.

What's up with that?

There is also the stress of an upcoming competition. Sude made it to North State competitions which is in two weeks. Every time I think about it I have a knot in my stomach.

Wait a minute... This post was about the decorations... Finally I was able to manage to decorate outside with the kids and inside by myself...

Sude's 8th Birthday Party...

My first born has turned 8 last Sunday. I was so emotional this particular birthday, I kept thinking "She is 8 and in another 8 years, she will start driving" The last 8 years went by so fast , it is scary to think the next 8 years will go that fast also... (By the way, check out those abs...)

This year, we decided to have a party in our backyard with a Carnival theme. She has so many friends from gymnastics, school, and Turkish community. We ended up inviting 22 kids and only one said she could not make it. When that happened, I decided to hire some help. I asked two coaches from her gym to come and help with the games outside so that I can focus on food, etc.

Since I am "organized", I made a list of games that they can play and gave to the coaches... I got a roll of tickets and they were given to kids after every activity. Then, I put out bags of goodies marked as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 which represented the goodies that they could get for their tickets. They got to pick the toys/candy from them and pay with their tickets. They also kept their candy from the pinata and put all of their stuff in their loot bags...

It was so much fun... The best thing was how appreciative and thankful Sude was after the party.
Here is a copy of my activity printout with some pictures...

Make a loot bag
- Use stickers and markers
- Make sure each one of them puts their name on the bag

Game with bean bags
- Draw circles and give a number to each circle
- Draw a line where they need to throw the bean bags
- Give them tickets for the total numbers they hit

Tattoos
- Give a ticket to each kid who gets a tattoo

 Decorate driveway
- Make a large rectangle and have everyone decorate it for Sude

Piñata
- Have everyone ready with their loot bags and they can put the candy in their bags

Swim games
- Diving and getting most of the circles from the pool (maybe 4 at a time) – give as many tickets as the things they get from the pool

Food to serve to kids (in this order)
- Popcorn
- Hot dogs and juice (we had some helpers...)

- Ice cones

- Cake (see separate post)

Carnival (popcorn, hotdog, and fries) birthday cake...

This year Sude had a carnival themed birthday party.
I will have a separate post with the party details and the pictures later.

But a separate post MUST be dedicated to the cake. It was so much fun to make it.
I have browsed the web for a while to find the perfect cake. After combining ideas from different places, I decided to make a cake that is made of 3 items; a popcorn bag filled with popcorn, a hot dog, and french fries.

Ingredients:
3 boxed rainbow cakes
5 white vanilla icing (store bought cups)
4 packets of fruit roll ups
4 tablespoon of corn syrup
1 bag of mini marshmallows
2 teaspoons of cocoa
Green and yellow sugar candies
Food colorings

I have started with baking 3 rainbow cakes the day before I assembled the cake;
2 of them in  13" X 9" pans
1 smaller pan but still rectangular (the cake needs to be thicker for the hot dog)

I used the two bigger cakes to assemble the popcorn bag.
-  I started with cutting off the edges of each cake.
-  Then I split the cakes into two equal parts from the middle.
-  Then I put 4 cake pieces on top each other and sliced off the sides to make it shape like a popcorn bag. (I kept the scrapings to be used to make the hot dog)

- Then I spread icing between every layer and also on top. You can put the cake into refrigerator after the first layer of icing to cover the popcorn bag which would make it easier to spread the second layer.

The icing does not have to be perfect since it is a "popcorn bag". Mine wrinkled a little bit while I was working on it.
-  Then, I used fruit roll ups to make the bag's red stripes.

-  Then I put my kids to work to make the popcorn. You will need a bag of mini marshmallows. I used kitchen scissors to slit the edge of each marshmallow. You need to snip the edge of the marshmallow twice (rotate the scissors 90 degrees after the first cut) to give it a popcorn look.
-  Next I mixed yellow food coloring to a few table spoons of corn syrup. With a toothpick, you can paint some part of the popcorn to yellow so that it would have a butter effect. I painted the inside of the cuts (kids and my husband helped a lot). This is up to you, you can keep the marshmallows white, but they looked very nice with the "butter".
- While kids were coloring the popcorn, I took the smaller cake and shaped like a hot dog bun (see the next picture). I kept the center cake that I cut off to be used to make the french fries.

-  Then I covered the hot dog bun with white icing and refrigerated it for 10 minutes or so.
-  Then I placed all of the marshmallows on top of the bag. Actually Korman did most of that. He may have eaten some of them while working hard... It was a tough job after all.

- While the cake was in the refrigerator, I added a little bit brown coloring to the icing to make the a bun color. I covered the bun with that icing.
- Next, I prepared the hot dog. I used all of the cake scrapes left over from the popcorn bag. I added 1/2 cup of icing, 2 teaspoons of cocoa, a little bit of red food coloring to the cake crumbles and mixed it up in a bowl. I let it sit in the refrigerator until it was firmer and more manageable. Then I rolled it to make it a hot dog and placed it into the bun.

Then I started decorating;
- Yellow and green chopped candy for relish and onions
- Mustard color icing (use yellow, orange, and little green)

- Next, it was time for the french fries. I cut up the middle leftover cake piece from the hot dog bun to french fries shape pieces. I placed them to the top shelf of the oven with broiler on. It only took few minutes to brown them, so you need to be careful. I rotated them few times to make sure all sides were baked. Then I arranged them like french fries.

- Last but not least, I made ketchup with corn syrup and red/green food coloring. But if I had to do this again, I would use icing to make the ketchup for the hot dog. It was the right consistency for the fries but it did not work as well for the hot dog.

The final product was still remarkable...