I blogged about our blessed beach week that I took with my family recently HERE.  This post has some of the pictures my Dad's friend took for our family on the beach. Thank you Mark Steelman Photography for such wonderful pictures of our family!  They will be treasured always to remember our family reunion!

I am glad to introduce you to a bigger slice of "A Slice of Smith Life" with these fun family photos...

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So it's been a little while since my last post where I said I was going to be taking a blog break in order to enjoy a family beach vacation.  Last week I spent no time on my blog.  Rather, I savored the time with my own children and husband, my parents, my brother and his family who live in Australia, my other brother and family who live in NY and my sister, her husband and baby who live in PA. So we all came together for the first time since my sister's wedding almost 2 years ago !

Since my sister's wedding, our family has added 3 new babies to our family: my own, my niece and my nephew.  I got to meet my Australian niece for the first time and my parents were able to be surrounded by all 8 of their grandchildren for the first time.  There were lots of first for the week! :)

Here are my proud and grateful parents :)

Here are a few pictures from our beautiful beach week filled with great weather, memories, family and fun...

Leah staring at my oldest brother and cousins meeting for the first time.

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 Happy 6th Birthday Cupcake #3! June 2010

Cupcake #3 wanted a pool party for her 6th birthday. We just have the inexpensive $19 Wal-Mart backyard pool and a slip-n-slide so we set them up in our backyard and the kids had a blast. It did help that our neighbors brought over another small inflatable pool so the kids could run around among the 3 choices. So I jumped on the Family Fun website once again and found this perfect ice cream cake for our pool party. This was an easy cake to make besides trying to keep the ice cream from melting everytime I pulled it out of the freezer to decorate for each step. Instead of vanilla ice cream like the recipe called for, I found birthday cake ice cream at the store and used this flavor. Instead of jaw breakers I used gumballs and I used life-saver chewy candy. When I was looking in the store to find something to use as rafts, Cupcake #1 suggested Laffy Taffy. Perfect! Cupcake #1 is so much like me in that she is creative also. So the Laffy Taffy was stretched out a little to resemble rafts and the I rolled one end over for the rafts' "pillow". Then I drew lines in the Laffy Taffy to resemble the seams in rafts. The plastic people are from a math manipulative set that I have. This was a quick cake to make and yummy!


Since we had a cake that was just solid ice cream, I made chocolate cupcakes too and decorated them with blue icing and pool decorations (Laffy Taffy rafts, chewy life-saver rafts, and gumball beach balls). Yummy!

Happy 1st Birthday Cupcake #4! November 2008

Since Cupcake #4 was born a week before Thanksgiving, I thought a fall themed cake would be great to celebrate her 1st birthday. My famous Hershey cake came through again, but I tinted the icing with green food coloring. Then I drew a pumpkin on top with icing and the cake reads "Happy 1st Birthday Little Pumpkin". The pretzel stick stem on the top of the pumpkin also serves as the one in 1st. Then I made the cute turkey cupcakes that I found here on the Family Fun website. These were cute cupcakes to make and a little time-consuming, but so worth the effort because I think they turned out great!

Happy 1st Birthday Cupcake #3! June 2005

Thanks to Family Fun again for the idea to make this rubber ducky in a tub birthday cake! I remember this cake was not very time consuming and I had alot of fun making this adorable cake. The marshmallow Hot/Cold faucets were so cool to make. Again, I made cupcakes and sprinkled blue sugar crystals on them. I then used Clip art again on my computer to print out and cut the ducky pictures taped to toothpicks and I inserted them into each cupcake.

Happy 5th Birthday Cupcake #2! October 2006

I can't remember how I made this cake exactly. I assume I got my inspiration from Family Fun again, but I don't know if I used a Bundt cake pan as suggested in the Family Fun recipe or something else. I guess this is why I started this blog...so I will remember how I make the cakes when I am trying to remember several years later! Luke's birthday is in the fall, so candy corn was a perfect decoration for our snake complete with candy corn fangs and a fruit roll-up tongue.
I also made the cupcakes and iced them with icing that I dyed green and placed a plastic snake on top of each cupcake. SssssssssssUPER fun and yummy!

Happy 4th Birthday Cupcake #2! October 2006

This is another cake idea inspired by Family Fun. Cupcake #2 loved dinosaurs so this was a perfect cake for a dino-mite birthday party!




 
What do you do with a little extra round cake that you didn't use for the dinosaur-dragon cakes? Well, turn it into a dinosaur scene, of course. Frost the cake with brown icing for land and blue icing for water. Stick some dinosaur things from your son's play set on top and it becomes an instant Jurassic Park for a dino-dragon birthday party!