CaceyKlein.com

Today marks one week until our court date!!! We are scheduled for next Wednesday, October 7th and praying that we will pass the first time! Can’t wait to bring our sweet girl home!

P.S. Once we pass court we will probably receive a travel date in 3-4 weeks. We’re guessing that we will travel in the end of November.

Since I was already in the middle of decorating a cake I decided to take a few pictures along the way and share some tips with you. There are a few easy things you can do to make your cake look fantastic!

• Always generously grease and flour your pan.
• Under-bake your cake by a few minutes. It will continue to cook a little once you take it out of the oven and taking it out early will insure that it stays nice and moist.
• Let it cool for 10-15 min, run a knife along the edge, shake gently to loosen it from the bottom, place a plate or cake circle on the top, and then flip the cake to remove it from the pan.
• Using a large bread knife, cut off the top of the cake to make it level.

• Using Wilton tip 12, pipe a circle around the edge of your cake. This will help keep the filling inside.

• Fill with the filling of your choice and then place the other leveled layer on top, crumb side down.

• Now you’re ready to start frosting! I would recommend that beginners start with a white or yellow cake – chocolate cakes have dark crumbs that easily show up against white frosting.
• I like to make my own  butter-cream frosting (you can find lots of great recipes in the back of any Wilton cake decorating book). If you’d like to use store bought then just make sure that you remove it from the container and re-whip it, adding extra powdered sugar until it loses its sticky consistency.
• Wipe off any loose crumbs and start off by frosting the entire cake with a thin crumb layer. This helps lock in some of those nasty crumbs that threaten to ruin your cake!

• Let your cake rest for a few minutes or until the frosting has started to harden. Sometime it helps to place it in the freezer – just don’t forget about it and let it freeze
• You’re ready to add you final layer of frosting! Spread frosting generously until smooth.
  

• Now you have a beautiful, level, smooth cake to begin decorating! Use your imagination and have fun!

• Fresh flowers can make any cake look amazing! And they’re easy to add – just stick them directly in the frosting (don’t put them on too far in advance or they may begin to wilt).
• You can purchase a beginner cake decorating kit or take a class at any Michaels or Jo-Anns. Or check out Wilton’s web-site – they have tons of great ideas!

Earlier this week I finally broke down and e-mailed our agency, asking if we were going to receive an update on Emma anytime soon. Several other families with babies the same age as Emma received updates several weeks ago. I’m so glad I did -they said they sent it to us on September 1st so it must have been lost in cyberspace or caught in my spam filter.

 Here are some highlights from the report (dated 8/1/09)…

•  She weighs 8.5 pounds and is 23.1 inches long. “she is smaller in size compared to other peers in the orphanage”
•  “She is in good physical condition. She is feeding well. She is kept clean & has good skin condition. She can lift her head and track moving objects.”
•  “She makes eye contact with her nannies and smiles often. She is too young to develop certain type of personality, however, the caretakers adore her.”

 Any bit of information we receive is such a blessing! I’m so glad to hear that, although she is still tiny, she is healthy and developing well.  Only 19 days until our court date!

Wow – I knew September was going to be a busy month but I didn’t realize it was going to be THIS busy!

Over the past few weekends we have attended two birthday parties, two weddings and two baby showers. Hence the lack of blog posts recently.

Two birthdays:

In honor of my little sister Laurel’s 10th birthday we took her to get her ears pierced and out to lunch at Panera Bread!

Spence, Elaina, Julia, Lily and Aunt LoLo

The 2nd birthday we attended was for Spencer’s friend, Alex, who was turning 3. It was a fun little party held at our local neighborhood park. Spencer enjoyed playing with his buddies and was very intrigued by the new bike with training wheels that Alex received. We will have to keep that in mind for his 3rd birthday!

 Two baby showers:

I had the privilege of planning a baby shower to celebrate the arrival of my newest little neice, Hailey Jennifer!

A good friend from church generously let us use her backyard – it was a beautiful location for a baby shower!

The 2nd shower was for our friends Dan and Christy who are expecting their first baby – a little girl! They’ve picked a Winnie-the-Pooh theme for her bedroom so I decorated this cake for the shower…

My sister-law Marie did a great job hosting the shower and while she was busy organizing games I got to help take care of my adorable niece, Addy!

And two weddings:

The first wedding was held outside at a beautiful vineyard in CA gold country. It was for the eldest son of close family friends, who I ‘ve known almost my entire life. Somehow I didn’t get a picture of the bride and groom but here are some of us enjoying the reception…

My handsome hubby!

 My parents, aka Nana and Papa

The 2nd wedding was for a young couple from our church. It was a very sweet and beautiful wedding.

They hired me to do their wedding cake. I haven’t decorated a cake in several years and suddenly I did two, two weekends in a row! Wedding cakes are a lot of work but fun at the same time, and the money I earned went straight toward our adoption expenses.

I’ve been having lots of fun making homemade baby food for Emma! I tried it a few times when Spencer was a baby but didn’t have a big enough freezer at the time so it wasn’t really worth my time. Now I have a small chest freezer (which I LOVE) so I have lots of room to fill it up with baby food!

If you haven’t done it before it’s quite simple. Here’s the method I used…

• First I peeled the fruit

• Simmered it in a large pot until soft

• Drained the fruit and pureed it in a blender

• Poured the finished product into ice cube trays and stuck it in the freezer

• Once it was frozen solid I transferred it from the tray to zip-locks

It’s nice to know I have something healthy (peaches picked right off of Grammie and Pop’s tree!) to give my daughter – plus it saves money. Each ice cube tray is equal to 6 jars of baby food, which range in cost anywhere from 50 – 85 cents. Which means I save $3.00 to $5.00 per tray! That can really add up!

If you’d like to try it yourself I would recommend checking out www.wholesomebabyfood.com. They have tons of great recipes, tips and charts that list what foods to introduce at what age.

All this reading really makes you tired…