The Kremer Family: Rewind

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

It's been a while since I've posted anything. Where did August go? We've been keeping busy this month. August kicks off the family birthday chain. It goes something like this:

August 2 - Ed
August 17 - Ethan
August 28 - Asher
August 31 - Susan
September 2 - Jack
September 12 - Isabella
October 1 - Ann
October 8 - Michael

And somewhere in there are our and Ed's parent's wedding anniversaries. But, I suppose now the birthday chain will start in July with the newest member of the family, Eviana. Hmm...I guess January-March are popular months to conceive.

Ed's Birthday at Disneyland
We celebrated Ed's birthday by taking the kids to Disneyland for the first time. The good news, Ed was free. The bad news, his birthday was the first day of the new pricing increase. It costs $72!!! How insane! It was a bit crowded and hotter than we'd like, but all-in-all it was a good day. Some of the rides were a bit too scary for Isabella. She's going through a phase of being scared of the dark. Her favorite were Dumbo, It's a Small World and seeing all the characters dance and sing at the parade.

I had to take a picture of my people from Korea. I didn't have my camera out to take a photo of Ed's people.

Isabella patiently waiting for the parade to start. It was so hot her hair rubber band melted!

Hollywood Children's Festival of Arts
We went to the Hollywood Children's Festival of Arts on the lot of Paramount Studios. We barely made it to the end of the festival. I guess that's what happens when you have a little one who still is on a nap schedule. It was a lot of fun. We missed some of the cultural performances, but we did make it to the Russian performance. They had a few Jewish songs and dances and asked the kids to come up. Isabella was shy at first, but then asked to join the kids in the Hava Nagila dance. Since then, she breaks out into song.

Isabella stood in line to take a picture with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

But when we got up there, she freaked out! I guess she's still not into larger-than-life characters.

Ethan's 1st Birthday
Happy birthday to my baby boy! We meant to host a low-key family lunch for Ethan's birthday, but August turns out to be a busy month for everyone. With so many birthdays, we'll be doing a joint birthday luncheon. Instead we celebrated Ethan's 1st birthday at daycare. I made some vanilla cupcakes from my Magnolia bakery recipe. It was fantastic! So moist and delicious. Although I used cake flour for the whole thing so my measurements came out something like this:

3 1/4 cups cake flour
3 1/4 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar (I like to use baker's sugar; it's super fine and great for baking)
4 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla

I also tried making Italian meringue buttercream for the first time and it was devine! I found the buttercream recipe accidentally on YouTube, watch it here or get the recipe here, from Sue McMahon of Women's Weekly magazine. I didn't attempt doing the beautiful decorating like she does mainly because I wanted something simple for Ethan, but of course, it was also because it looked darn difficult and tedious. Maybe for another special occasion. The cupcakes came out pretty cute. Though I have to admit, I did run out of steam. And in case you were wondering, I put lions on the cupcake for Ethan's astrological sign. He and daddy are both leos.