My Silly Boys

The other day I decided to be nice and make muffins for breakfast. I made orange muffins with chocolate chips in them. I thought the orange needed to be stronger. Apparently Zane liked them.
 

This morning JR got Nat out of his crib, as I was already downstairs when he woke up. Nat has this thing where if he's playing and finds a pacifier, he will spit out the one in his mouth in order to have the new one he found. He's changed his MO. Now he just uses them both at the same time.

 My boys are silly. I'm going to claim they get it from their father. It's not like he makes that hard to believe.

My Talented Boy

Zane has been asking for play dough lately. I let him have some the other day, and the first thing he did was copy his rolling pin. Then, without direction, suggestion, any promptings whatsoever, he created this.

It was completely his creation. I'm so proud of him. He has definitely inherited some of his daddy's artistic abilities.

Typhoon Kompasu

I planned on taking more pictures to let you all know what we experienced with our first typhoon. I didn't actually take any more pictures, but there wasn't really any reason. Through the whole storm we had no lightning and no thunder. There was plenty of wind and rain, but that was it. It was no worse (in fact, it was easier) than some of the "normal" storms we've had. Don't get me wrong, I'm not wishing for a huge storm with all the accompanying damage or anything like that, it was just kind of pathetic after all the hype. Oh well. I did enjoy JR being home all day. It about drove him crazy, but I like getting to spend some time with him, especially since he'll be leaving soon for 3 months.

Summary: We're all safe, and life is back to normal today. Hope you all have a good one as well!

There's a typhoon coming? Part 2

Last night the radio said the storm would hit us at 7 a.m. Well, it's 7 a.m., and here's what it looks like out my back door.

That's a little more convincing. We're at TCCOR 1. The storm should be here in a few hours.

There's a typhoon coming?

JR and I lived in Lejeune for 4 years. We had some storms go by us, but we were never really close to any. We've lived here and barely had any storms at all, much less major ones. Last night when I got on Facebook I saw 6 or 7 posts from people on the island stating that we were at TCCOR 3, which means there will be winds of 50 knots or greater within the next 48 hours. That means there's a storm a'comin'. This morning I checked the Kadena weather website, and it said we were at TCCOR 2 (winds of 50+ knots within 24 hours). I went out the back door, and what did I see? This.

It doesn't look like there's a storm coming, does it? I sure doesn't to me. A friend said it's always beautiful before a storm because it sucks up all the clouds. That makes sense. All I know is that if the commissary hadn't been so crazy this morning, I might not have believed it.

Triathletes

I've mentioned before that JR and Victor are training for a triathlon. Well, they've already done one. Now they've decided they'll do an Ironman before they leave the island. Again, I think they're crazy, but they'll never be convinced of that. Right now they're trying to convince the world to join them. Here's a pic of them in matching gear after they went for a perimeter ride on their bikes (around the outside of the entire base, approximately 16 miles by time they get home).

And more evidence that they're crazy... all they were talking about is how they weren't really tired yet and how they wanted to go do some more training. Weirdos.

Tank Cake

I made my third cake this week. This is by far the most complicated one so far. It was also my first paying customer. (Thanks, Grace!) I made it for the son of a friend from church. He's turning six and wanted a chocolate tank cake. Being the son of a Marine, I figured he needed a USMC tank. So the first thing I did was Google image search the M1 Abrams tank. I have a window full of tabs of tanks and tank cakes alike. Most of my inspiration came from this picture of a model.

I would have used a picture of an actual Abrams, but it was hard to see any detail in those pictures. The cake I made was Devils Food in three layers but with four pieces. First I used an 8.5 x 11 glass pan. I made two cakes in this pan. Then I got a glass 7 x 5 pan and cooked some more Devils Food cake in it. After they cooled I put the small one in the fridge (my fridge runs very cold). I then took it out and cut the front of it to resemble the top rotating part of the tank. The two large layers were stacked one right side up and another upside down on top with homemade green-tinted buttercream frosting (Note: olive drab is a very unappetizing color). I trimmed the sides to make the angles on the front and back a little more extreme. One of the pieces was "pasted" to the back of the top cake with more buttercream. I then coated the whole cake with buttercream so the fondant would stick to it.

I put the cake pieces in the fridge while I made the fondant. For this cake I had to dye the fondant. Again, I had to make it olive drab, a color I couldn't find here on the island. Instead, I melted some Ghiradelli chocolate baking bars I got at the commissary and kneaded it into the white fondant. Then I added some Wilton Juniper Green tint and kneaded again. I definitely got my workout for the day. Kneading fondant is hard work! I rolled some out and put it around the tank body.

After I fitted the fondant to the bottom piece I rolled out some more and put it around the top pieces. The fondant on the main part was cut at the bottom because I knew I would be moving the cake around. I had that cake set on a cake board that I trimmed to size. The small turret piece was not on a cake board so I cut the fondant a little to large and then folded it under. I wasn't worried to much about seams because the cake is a tank, which is made out of panels of metal. After wrapping and placing the top layer I got out my new gum paste tool set (Love new toys!!) and started designing the details. I rolled little pieces of fondant to make the wheels, the side panels above the wheels, the hatch, the tail lights, etc. I used the gum paste tools to draw in seams for other panels, between the plates on the track, the air exhaust vents on the back, etc.

The cannon was made by wrapping a pirouline in some more fondant. I covered the end that would show and shoved a lolipop stick into the other side to help anchor it into the cake. Next time I will find a better way to support it. I ended up sagging a little by the time the cake was served.

I brought the cake to the party early for final assembly. I put the tank on a large rectangular cake board and then melted some bakers chocolate and smeared it all over the bottom of the tank so it would look like it had driven through mud. Then I put a thin layer of frosting on the cake board and crumbled some of the extra cake over it to make dirt. Here's the final product. I think he liked it.