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Today was my middle daughter’s 5th birthday. She asked for pink and she got a bit of pink.

See for yourself below!

In the spirit of my last post, regarding the split between our blog world and the “real” world, I thought I would share a bittersweet moment in my life.

As I was growing up, my engineer father was always coming up with ideas that he wanted to get patented. I got this message that getting a patent was of great importance and something to really aspire to. Weird huh? I guess its better than emulating something like a beauty queen or basketball player.

I went on to become a scientist. The summer after I defended my dissertation my dad and I drove from Virginia to Los Angeles for my first postdoctoral fellowship. It was a grueling and crushing trip, not because of the miles but because my father could not even remember my name at times and he grew more and more disoriented. I got half way across the country and called my mom in desperation, asking her if she realized that my dad had Alzheimers. She didnt know, she was in denial I guess.

For the next 8 years my father descended into the hell of early onset Alzheimers and then died at the age of 61.

So, when I finally got my first patent a few weeks ago, as you see in the photo above, it made me very sad because I do not have my father to celebrate this experience with. He would have been so fantastically proud.

I am proud to be his daughter.

I hope that you all have been keeping well and finding the beauty of this summer. Take a moment to smell the flowers, chocolate, saffron, freshly washed baby skin, get a hug from each of your children and pets.

Kalyn of Kalyn’s Kitchen tells of the passing of Sher (Sher’s blog was What Did You Eat) this last week and, while I never knew Sher, this makes me sad.

Even tho we share some of ourselves here in the blog world, much is left off (I try not to bore you with my stuff!). When something like this happens, the terrible dichotomy between the virtual universe we create online and the real stuff that happens offline glares out and reminds us that we need to work hard to experience all of our life, not just the stuff in our heads.

Those of you surfing here from Darren Rowse‘s blog – ProBlogger and specifically about my prize for the Birthday Bash, you have come to the right place!

My prize is both eye candy and mouth candy!

If you win, you will receive:

• a signed 8×10 inch print of the peppermint marshmallow puff pastry cookie you see above
• 12 freshly baked peppermint marshmallow puff pastry cookies

I pay for all costs (including making these cookies myself) except for shipping. You receive delicious cookies and a fantastic print that will last forever! I hang mine in my kitchen to inspire me when the cooking muse is getting lazy.

If you want to learn about the giveaway, visit Darren‘s ProBlogger blog and learn about the massive giveaway that currently includes some $60,000 in prizes.

I think he is breaking new ground here and it looks like a fantastic proof of concept regarding social media and Web 2.0, especially the way he does it.

Prizes will be given away over successive days and successive posts throughout each day. The first giveaway post was this morning called “The First Giveaway Begins!”

If you have any questions about my prize please do not hesitate leaving a comment below or email me at nika.boyce at gmail dot com

Technorati Tags: Darren Rowse, eye candy, candy, 8×10, peppermint marshmallow puff pastry cookie, peppermint, marshmallow, puff pastry, cookie, giveaway, Darren, blog, proof of concept, social media, Web 2.0

This last August 22nd, my middle child turned 4 years old.

Life becomes very full when you have three kids, one being all of 10 months, and you homeschool and you are dedicated to starting a new direction in your working life.

So full that time zips past ferociously fast.

So fast that when you look at the newly 4 year old you get a flash back to the pain of labor and delivery and the heart wrenching experience of watching her be resuscitated, dragged from the brink of death.

It seems like yesterday that she was born and here she is a very spicy little 4 year old girl who is about to start preschool.

We threw a Spongebob/ Dora the Explorer birthday party for her. I priced out a Spongebob Squarepants cake at the grocery store but they wanted $21.00 for the crazy thing!

I made my own non-spongebob presents-stacked-up cake and put so many candles on the thing that I was sort of fearful it might burst into a bonfire at some point, taking the spongebob plates, cups, napkins, and plastic tablecloth with it!

Baby Oh, being the sensible little man he is, was quite concerned about this odd practice we were partaking in, setting the dining room on fire.

I also made a little cake just for KD so she got to blow it and the big one out. They had magic relighting candles so the blowing out happened over and over.

This is a good thing for kids and great for moms who want to shoot it (over and over to get the shot).

Many presents appeared for the party. I have to confess that, while it looks like excess, its almost all school stuff. I am a bad party mom to pass off school supplies as presents! Thing is, she adores clothes so she was excited about her new clothes-as-presents and her new Dora backpack and Dora tennis shoes and pretty pink butterfly rain poncho.

At one point, we moved the party outside to beat on a Spongebob Squarepants pinata I had loaded with lunch snacks and raisins (a few chocolate kisses too). Alas, this pinata was politically correct and was not rigged for bludgeoning.

No, Spongebob had these streamers hanging down, between his stubby little legs.

The idea is that kids each pull one streamer and then finally one kid gets the one streamer attached to a drop-open patch on Spongebob’s behind.

The most disturbing part is that I had open and loosen and generally widen the “behind” opening. Spongebob and I never knew each other very well and after this, well, he doesn’t spare me a kind look.

With a little help from Q, Spongebob gave up the goods.

We ended the festivities with explosive little things that blow out streamers. We will be picking that stuff up out of the backyard for some time.

Technorati Tags: kids, homeschool, resuscitate, Spongebob, Dora the Explorer, birthday, Spongebob Squarepants, cake, bonfire, magic, candles, presents, party, school, pinata, chocolate kisses, politically correct, bludgeoning, explosive