Fun with family!

My sister came into town this past week and we had a lot of fun!

I already posted the picture of the whole family in the masks, here is little Naomi trying hers on. 

All the little cousins love Christian...
We took the kids to one of our favorite places..the Drive In Movie Theater. We saw the Hannah Montana movie...and I thought I would just be enduring it, but I ended up liking it. It was clean and had a good message....I could get over the fact that she has a nasaly raspy voice that is normally irritating. 

The second movie was Race to Witch Mountain, the little ones were asleep within the first 20 minutes (mostly because it was already 10 pm).

The girls got their first highlights..I did them very natural! The rest of the pictures were after the highlights.
It was a beautiful day for the park!

She is fun size!
Grandma and all of her little rugrats...so hard to get a picture where everyone is looking and not making a silly face. This was the best (Nathan was picking his nose in all of them!)

The biggest child



The boys found these while playing in the water.
This was a last minute idea so we didnt have the kids in matching clothes. The kids were playing outside and we only had a few minutes left of good light so we "made them" sit still for a few minutes to get some blue bonnet pictures! 
Naomi's first blue bonnet pictures!
She was the only one that didnt run off after 30 seconds!
Starting to get a little itchy...

I had some frosting and fondant left over from a few cupcake orders recently so we let the kids decorate their own cupcakes! The did a great job!

Family

Let the fun begin.....

Oh Happy Day!

So many things to be thankful for this Monday morning...my sister and her kids are coming today for the week. I am really far behind on housework, but sisters dont care!

Yesterday was Easter and we had the most amazing church service. After a few long and tiring weeks, it was so refreshing and uplifting. Bought the new worship CD the team just released and it is awesome. New music always makes me happy!

Spring is in the air! I love this weather! Cool in the mornings and warm*ish* during the day. And our yard is covered in blue bonnets! Everything is blooming...ahhhh, I love it!

And I now am the mother to two awesome teenage boys! Dylan had a birthday on Saturday!

Here are some recent pics...here is to a wonderful week for everyone!

Christian and Cali...I think Cali is getting ready to throw up some gang signs?

Dylan's cake. He was pretty specific about what he wanted. I think he was afraid that I would make it flowery? It couldnt have the number 13, just the roman numeral for 13. And he wanted as much chocolate as I could make. It has three layers, two chocolate and one cherry...and then chocolate cherry frosting, chocolate fondant and white chocolate decorations on the top and sides! Pretty chocolatey!! 

Singing Happy Birthday at Grammy's house! We are doing a party in May for both Trinity and Dylan's birthdays. They both wanted it at the same place (Its an indoor pool with a waterslide!) but that was the earliest they had open for us to rent the place. 

Easter Egg Hunt at Grammy and Pops. She hides money in those eggs as well as candy! I may need to join the hunt next year...

Look at what Cali found!

And look who we saw on our way home! One of my favorite little boys, Timothy! Riding along our road with Daddy. We raced him home, and he won...

I havent posted any cake stuff recently that I have done for other people so here are some of them....cupcakes for a wedding shower

Cupcakes for a little baseball playing Rangers fan...his cupcake is the one in the bottom left corner!
And cupcakes for one of the cutest four year olds I know!

A Piece of Me

Ever wonder what it is we do when we say we are "working a show"? I am going to show you anyway....  ;)

11:00 AM Arrive and unload the boxes from the truck. This was the Britney Spears show so her road guy brought in about $550,000 worth. 

We have to open every box and count it all to get our beginning numbers.

Thats a lot of Britney.

The back breaking begins...

We couldn't keep Danny away from the panties. He's Out.

12:30 PM It is all laid out and is ready to be counted. This part takes a while.

Michael entering numbers. He and Devin count all the product at the beginning and agree with Britney's peeps on that starting number. 

About this time, we always go look at the stage being set up. It is pretty cool to watch. This stage was "in the round" meaning that seating was 360' around it. More seating that way.  This show was the 2nd largest attendance in the building to date. (U2 is still #1) 

1:30 pm We then have to split the product between however many stands there are for that show. This show had to be split 7 different ways. Every stand is accountable for the product they are given and has to turn in the correct money to match what was sold by the end of the night. If our money is short, it comes out of our pay. 

2:30 pm When we get to our stand, we have to set it all up. I do the display and pricing and the rest of the crew (there were 5 of us that night) organizes the product so we can sell quickly. We have all worked together for so long now that we know how we all like it to be. It takes us a while to get it all organized. I was so busy that I didnt take many pictures of the process.

3:30 pm Folding...and more folding.  Isnt this what you always aspired to do when you grew up..fold PussyCat Dolls shirts..Eww. Probably got diseases just touching the shirts.

They like to call themselves Team Bean. And they have adopted Christian...they are such a bad influence..haha.

We are just East Side. We have no cute name. We only know that we always bring the biggest numbers. This is our gift, this is our curse, who are we? We are East Side.

5:15 All set up. Bring on the masses.

6:00 pm Doors open to a bunch of spray tanned, half naked, bratty teenage girls and a few guys that kept hitting on our son. Ugh.. Not my favorite show, if you cant tell :)

Seriously, it looked like this for almost 6 hours.

8:30 PM Getting stuff from the Merch truck to refill everything we are out of. Somehow he knows what is in there. 

9:00 PM The show. Never got to go in this one to watch.....mostly because I didnt really care to. Probably just looks like any strip club show...not that I have been to any of those. I Swear.
9:30 pm First Drop. I get a chance to sit down (while the rest of the stand is still slammed) to sort through money. I shoulda taken a picture before it was sorted because when we are this busy, it is just shoved in a bag all sorts of ways. Also, they make us wear the shirts we are selling. This one had red glitter all over it which I found in various places for a week and several showers later. Why would people pay $40 for this crap? I am glad they do though...
Just so you get an idea....just our stand grossed $81,000. This means that each of us had about $16,200 go through our hands in 6 hours. We have no machines except our sharp minds (!!) and a few calculators that we hate to use because it slows us down. It keeps my mind working but it is usually fried by the end of the night and I cant even remember my own name. Quick and accurate is the name of the game. But there is always cupcakes...

So, like I said, brain totally fried and forgot to keep taking pictures. But it is basically the opposite of setting up. We have to take down the stand, count it, and then go turn it in. I count money while the rest of the crew counts all the left over product. We agree on turn in numbers and then box it up and put it in the truck for the next city. We usually roll out about 1 am. It is such a long day that never seems to end but I dont mean to complain, having work is good. And having people that you fully enjoy being around for 14 hours straight definitely helps! Sometimes, we have cool bands that are actually talented. I will try to bring my camera to one of those someday...

Sorry guys...still obsessed

Dylan did the last few posts. It is Sherri again, probably quite obviously. I am sleepy, so completely exhausted and on my way in to work again but found this today and it *sparked* my attention.

A little something for the ladies.....somebody got a clue and started eating again...thank you Edward.

and this...LOL

Let the countdown begin...well, you know it began for me last summer but now I have something to look at while I count down. Midnight Madness round two...who is in? Please go with us! I already have cupcake ideas that I will make to keep us awake!