Merry Christmas (Post Robot Apocalypse) 2008!

Merry Christmas from the Gomm family!

We decided that this year we would perform our favorite Post Robot Apocalypse Christmas song as our holiday greetings! Turn up your volume, press play, and start cringing!




This is a song by our family's favorite artist Jonathan Coultan. Click here for the lyrics.
You can download the mp3 of the OreGomm version of this timeless Christmas classic here.

We wish everyone a:

Merry Christmas,
Happy Hanukkah,
Killer Kwanzaa,
Super Sweet Solstice, and
Happy New Year!

Amanda's Day Job

In December I had a woman at church ask me if I ever babysat...like all day long day-care-esque babysat. I told her I had before but wasn't doing that at the moment. It turns out she was going back to work and needed a babysitter for her 4 year old daughter all day and for her 7 year old son after school. I volunteered and pretty soon I was getting all kinds of calls about watching various and sundry children.

I keep a daily blog for the kids since it gives me a sense of accountability and also some sort of proof to the world that what I'm doing is hard work. It's a private blog since I wanted to protect us all from scary people that would want to steal the cute kids or something but it's been a lot of fun to keep that up to date.

I had someone accuse me (you know who you are) of not keeping our blog very updated so I thought I'd share what we did today at our house:

When It Rains, It Pours, and pours and then leaks all over the floor

Well we got back into town from our GREAT vacation Saturday morning but driving all night long twice within a week was more than my immune system could handle! I came down with a pretty major cold Saturday night and by Sunday morning I felt like poo. This morning I woke up early so I could hopefully have the medicine working by the time all the kids arrived and I think my plan worked. The headache's gone, my nose isn't running THAT much and my throat no longer feels like someone's raking it with hot pokers.

The girls have done really well this morning. They played and played for a couple of hours and I had to call them in for a snack. They've colored and lego'd and pixtered to their heart's delight.

I took advantage of their preoccupation to throw some laundry in the washer. I even threw in Scout's life jacket for a hot rinse. Of course that was a terrible idea. It floated on the top and made the washer overflow. I knew it was risky but I figured it was worth it to have a non-mildewy life jacket.

I was moving all the luggage out of the hall and trying to mop up the mess when the girls all piled out of the room. Why did you move the bags? Why are you cleaning the floor? Why are there all these bags? Why is there water on the floor? Why did you make the washer put water on the floor? Why did you put the bags in the water?

I'm constantly amazed at how disrupted these little ones get by just a little variation in life. All 3 girls will remind me if we miss a song or a do something out of order at circle time. My hope is that with our schedule they will feel comfortable knowing what happens next. That they'll have enough stability in their little lives that when it rains, and pours, and leaks all over the floor, they'll be able to deal with it better than me!

Cakez

I've had cake conversations lately and I thought I'd dig around on the computer and see if I had any cake pictures. Turns out I did and when I remembered all the work that went into them I decided I should post them. I couldn't find all the pictures and I'm sure some of them are sitting in our storage unit in Michigan on a medium we used back in ancient times called "film."

I'm not a pro at the whole cake scene but it didn't seem like Rocket Surgery to me and I decided that it was something I could figure out. I still can't do what they do in the shops but as long as I avoid rectangles and any attempt at "smoothness" I think I'm ok. HA!

Cakes were really important to the formation of the Gomms. I made a cake for Troy's birthday when we were dating and I think that was the thing that clinched the deal :-P So here are the pictures of the cakes I could find.

The butterfly cake is from Scout's first birthday. The woven part is fondant, the rest was me playing around with different sized tips on a frosting squisher thing I had just gotten. That cake was a pain in the bum.

The soccer balls were from Kevin and Natalie's (my sister Sarah's twins) 5th birthday. I had gotten a new ball shaped cake pan but it didn't seem like enough cake so I made the cone too...mmm cake.

The Care Bear cake was from Savannah's 5th birthday. It's not that great except that it's tiny (about 6 inches) and I made one for all the kids at the party to go along with the Build-A-Bear workshop trip.


















The castle cake is already on our blog in the post about Scout's birthday but I figure if you're bored enough to read our blog you won't mind seeing a cake twice. For this one I made almost 300 tiny tiny fondant flowers and enlisted the help of my mom and dad.