not much to report

I was talking to Kelly today about the fact that I haven't blogged much lately. Between new babies and traveling and work, life has been pretty busy and not super blogworthy. I mean, I think the babies are blogworthy, but while I was helping with them, I definitely did not have time to blog about it. That, and my sister has serious misgivings about pics of her kidlets on the interwebs, so...no blogging about them.

On top of that, there have been some new developments in the boy department...developments that I'll be keeping to myself for a while because I don't want to jinx anything. But in true Chloe fashion, you can be sure that I'll be sharing eventually, one way or the other.

back on the island

After 19 days (with a 4 day stop at home in between) I am finally home in NYC. It's always this weird, bittersweet thing. I love New York, but I also love my family and the new babies and I'm already feeling withdrawals. But, back to reality. I'm actually super excited to go to work tomorrow (weird, I know) and get back to soccer and The Bachelor watching with my girlfriends, and lots of other stuff. But I will miss my family, and a car, and Sonic Diet Coke, and having munchkins wake me up asking for "wowwy-powwy pancakes". It's too bad I can't have it all all the time, but I guess that's life. Until I figure it out, I'll just appreciate that I have so many places I can call "home".

babies

In case you were wondering why I haven't been blogging, it's because I've been out of town helping with this little guy.

How cute is he? And how happy am I that I managed to get this shot and that my sister-in-law has such good editing skills. We make a pretty good team.

And now I'm in AZ to help with my sister's newest. Lots of babies around these parts. And lots of quality time being an aunt.

a princess cake

When I was in fifth grade, I took my first cake decorating class. My mom was quite the baker, so I had been decorating under her tutelage for a while, but fifth grade was my first formal class. Through the years, I would occasionally use my skills, but then while living in Utah before grad school, I decided to take another class. Since then, I've done very little decorating of cakes...that is until last weekend when I took on a serious challenge: a princess cake for my niece's fourth birthday.

My sis-in-law asked me if I would do it a few weeks out and then sent me an instructional YouTube video (that my niece watched several times...her job was quality control and she was serious about it). I watched it once and then we just went for it. And here's what the process looked like:

I feel pretty good about the whole thing. My favorite part, by far, was my niece repeating to me parts of the video verbatim because seriously, is there anything cuter than a new 4 year old saying things like, "put a nice dollop on the top and then you'll want to take an offset spatula..." Adorable!