Ryan Graduates from Law School

After three years of hard work, Ryan graduated Summa Cum Laude from Marquette University Law School. That means he's in the top 1% of his class of just over 200. Great job honey, I'm so proud of you! :)

Nifty decorative banners

MULS faculty

Dean Kearney, awesome guy. Ridiculously brilliant. Has been absolutely instrumental in Ryan getting his clerkship and his job offer from Foley.

Ryan getting hooded at the Hooding Ceremony. Check out those honor cords! ;)

A handshake, a diploma, and congrats from the Dean. Hooray!

Happy Birthday Ryan!

On May 19th my wonderful husband turned 27! Man we're old. I wanted to throw a surprise party for him, but between my inability to keep things quiet and his generally nosy nature, the surprise wasn't meant to be. However, we still had a great time with his law school friends. It was a great turnout considering it was 2pm on a Wednesday, but then again these folks aren't working. Thankfully, every guest at the party has a job, which is saying a lot given the current legal job market.

Anyway, Jake was very excited to help decorate. He also decided the cake should be a baseball cake since Dad loves the Brewers. In an effort to not spend an arm and a leg, we made our own. We also had sliders and a LOT of beer (thanks law school friends!). It was great to get to hang out with the law school folks before the graduation festivities and busy-ness kicked in. Below are a few cake pictures:

This is quite literally the first time I've ever written anything in icing.

Bird's eye view

Pseudo-fancy border ;)

A Couple of Silly Guys

Playing Together

Since Ben is pulling himself up to stand at everything, Ryan decided to bring up this oldie-but-goodie from the basement. It really is an awesome toy; it's made by Leap Frog and is this really cute interactive music toy table that plays music. Jake always really enjoyed it, and now Ben does too.

Here's Jakey showing Ben the ropes.

Playing music together.

Ben having a blast playing like a big boy with his older brother :)

Look what Ben can do...

Easter Creations

So I'm not exactly that artistic or a great baker or anything, but I'm actually proud of how my Easter cupcakes turned out. In case you're unsure, they're supposed to look like flowers. (PS. This came from a mini Betty Crocker desserts cookbook).

This was the plate we took to the Bachmanns.

This one we ended up keeping - yum!

Here are a few more we kept. I have to hand it to Target - every holiday they have a new, fun jar of sprinkle varieties!

Here's a close-up of the blue flower. It didn't turn out as well as the yellow or pink, mostly because the sugar was more coarse than the other two colors. But I still liked it. Basically, you make cupcakes as normal, then using kitchen shears snip a marshmallow into five similarly-sized pieces. Then you roll the pieces in colored sugar (shown below) and the sugar sticks to the center sticky part. Then you arrange them with a little overlap to try and mimic a flower.

Sweet! Haha.

Happy Easter Again!

(I can't lie - this was taken the day after Easter. We were all really tired after a long night of teething. But he's still super cute, isn't he?)