Roller Skate Cake

For Genevieve's birthday this year she wanted a roller skating party. Of course that meant making a roller skate cake!

Here's the step-by-step (my own invention after scanning for ideas on the internet):


First, make a 9x13 cake. I made a pound cake because it doesn't crumble much and bakes pretty flat. Box cakes are awful for cut-up cakes. I let Genevieve put some food coloring in it for fun, so don't be put off by the greenish tint!

Make a symmetrical cut: approximately 1/3 of the way across the cake from the top going about 1/3 of the way down, then angling to the same 1/3 up from the bottom.


This gives two boots, which can be shaped with some further cuts:

After a rough icing job, they looked like this:
Then I covered them in fondant: white for the tongue, brown for the heel and base of the foot, blue for the main shoe.

I made wheels out of chocolate mini-doughnuts covered in fondant.
Then I decorated with red licorice whips, red life savers and red sparkle gel.

Two things I would do differently next time. First, I set them too close together. I used the largest pan I had for a base, but there was barely room and one wheel ended up squished between the two boots. Second, I forgot the toe stop!

Random stuff from February

February started out with Aaron getting surgery. He has been sick so much this winter that he finally got tubes in his ears. Sure enough, the surgeon found evidence of another ear infection beginning when he went in there. The surgery took about 15 minutes, and the only bad part was the recovery afterward. The nurses were like "get the mom!" because he was screaming his head off as soon as he woke up until I got a bottle to him, and then when it was empty he freaked out again. After a nap he was just fine, although he was kind of tipsy and goofy from the anesthesia for a while. So far it's working--although he did get another virus of some kind this week, at least we haven't had to go to the doctor recently (we were going every week for a long time; they know us well). It also happened to be on John's (and my mother's) birthday. Here is Aaron that evening having birthday cake:

In addition to all of Aaron's issues, we have been busy with Genevieve's gymnastics schedule. Here she is in her pretty team costume: She has been to her first two meets now, both in the Buffalo area. The first one she was so nervous that she forgot parts of her routines (which she normally can do in her sleep). She ended up with poor scores as a result and was very upset when she saw all the other girls getting awards and she got "a handful of nothing". I felt so bad for her. She just sobbed and sobbed. The next time, though, she did much better on those two routines and ended up winning 3rd place for her level/age bracket in bars and 5th place all-around. Man, was she proud! She has showed off that medal and trophy to everyone who has been to the house since, as well as anyone she talks to on Skype.

The kids really get along quite well...most of the time. Aaron has gotten to the age where he gets into everything and so is starting to become an annoyance to Genevieve at times. He would much rather investigate her stuff or go through the kitchen cabinets than play with his own toys. A couple of weeks ago Genevieve wrote a journal entry about how she hates her brother. And then a day or so later she relented and wrote that she really does love him. Sometimes I hear her muttering nasty things about him and then other times she giggles about how cute he is. Ah, siblings!Well, of course it's winter in Rochester, which means lots of snow. It's been a long, cold winter, and we can't wait to see the end of it. At least it's not dark as much as it was in December. Yesterday John gave Genevieve a lesson in making and throwing snowballs. They even made a snowman but haven't given it a face yet (distracted by hot chocolate, I think). My little bear got into the act for a while too. He seemed to prefer watching from the window, though. A boy after my own heart.This picture is from this afternoon. I just thought it was funny. He fell asleep in the middle of eating a cookie. He didn't even drop it when I brought him upstairs and put him to bed.

Aaron has been busy

Lots of news for Aaron lately. He's been sick a lot this fall/winter. The most recent double ear infection was discovered the day after Christmas (my birthday present). We are very fortunate that he is part of a research study where they tap his ear and culture the bacteria whenever he has an incident. This allowed them to determine within two or three days that he had a Superbug! We had to special order the antibiotic while in Florida and it took two tries to get it right. Since this was his 4th episode in his first year, we are now scheduled to get tubes in his ears. The poor guy is also teething. Lately either he's fussing or he's wildly happy. He cracks us all up when he's in one of those moods.

Here's an example of him shrieking with joy:

He loves to play peek-a-boo:



He's been crawling and pulling himself up for a long time. He has his own special style we call the crab crawl:


And best of all, now he is starting to walk!


Now I have to start planning a birthday party!