Lali & John's Wedding

Robert's cousin, John, married his girlfriend, Lali, on May 21st and it was a really nice event. They had both the ceremony and reception at the Berkeley City Club. Leah and Quentin had also married there but had done so indoors; John and Lali got married on the second-story terrace, which was a lovely venue. The ivy-covered ceiling and natural light and breeze made the ceremony really beautiful. They chose to play 60s soul music at the reception so that made me happy, too. :o) Robert is a dancing fiend at weddings and so we definitely got some exercise that night! It was a lot of fun and we were happy to be able to share the day with John and the rest of the family.

With Maria and Lali

John

Robert and Angie

I did a very sad job of photo-taking so here's an excerpt from Carmen's album:

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And just as a random aside, for those of you who remember David Hall, we saw him at the wedding! He graduated from Hastings with John and made a point of coming up to me and Robert at both the beginning and the end of the reception to chat. I'm not 100% sure he remembered Robert to be completely honest but he may have - I am always astonished that he remembers my mom back from her aide days at Parkmont. Then again, we did play Spin the Bottle at my 12th birthday party so I guess he should remember me well... ;o) (I kid!)

Our Christmases

Remember when Robert bought me a super awesome camera for my birthday? Me, too. Unfortunately, the box didn't come with an improved desire or ability to take photos so I have no photos of either the Kimball or McCauley Christmas celebrations. (The post's title is a bit of a misnomer... Sorry.) I'm pretty much just SOL on the McCauley photos but Melanie took oodles of photos on Christmas Eve so once I get those bad boys from her I'll put'em up. In the meantime, peruse the few photos I did take. (Apparently, something about dogs triggers my very weak photo-taking gene!)

Robert did a beautiful job wrapping my gifts:


I sported some nifty holiday footwear:


My mom worked VERY hard to get Quigley interested in his bully stick gift:


It didn't take as much to get the dogs interested in the Skineez skunk:


Quigley went crazy on that skunk's ass!


All that playing tuckered the pups out pretty quickly:


Quigley eventually retired to his new Snoopy bed. You know I'm a sucker for Snoopy!


To be continued...

Giants Parade

Robert took a very rare day off from work and went to the Giants' victory parade with Bob and Jose (his uncle) on the 3rd. The three of them left the house before the sun was out and I think they got to the city by 6:45. Completely ridiculous in my mind but (1) not surprising considering the group and (2) they did wind up getting an excellent position, right at the corner of Market and McAllister. Jose provided most of the photos but I sprinkled in a few of Robert's, too (his are the ones without titles). Apparently our camera battery died about 2 seconds into the parade... Robert was super happy, as you can imagine. ;o) I'm really glad Robert went; he was waffling about what to do but such a die hard fan HAS to go to the parade if he has the chance! And he had a great time - he was hoarse for three days after the fact.

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Maria + Tennis

Maria was on the tennis team while she was at Washington and she's still a member of the USTA. As such, she participates in tournaments fairly regularly and Robert and I were able to catch one a couple weekends ago at Central Park. I failed to bring an actual camera with me so these are pretty sad camera phone photos but I wanted to snap something of her match because she and her partner Sabari (I'm sure I'm just butchering the spelling of the man's name - sorry!) won! The spectator seating at the Fremont tennis center leaves something to be desired but it was fun to watch Maria in action.

Dog Territories

Quigley has been at our place a little bit more often the past few weeks so I, of course, have been a bit snap-happy. (We like to have Q over for play time when the weather's too wet to visit the park. We also just like having two dogs running around the house so it's nice that my parents are willing to loan Quigs out to us!)

Here's a lovely photo of my fajita being double-teamed by the Dog Vultures:



A few nights ago I was the meat in a puppy sandwich on the couch. I had Quigley on my right:

And Funk on my left:



That same night, Robert had some work to do from home. He was having a hard time concentrating in the living room so he went off to work in the bedroom. But he didn't get too far from his fuzzy shadows:


But! Quigley better watch out - there's a new puppy in town lookin' to infringe on his territory. When we brought Garfunkel with us to the McCauleys' for a recent party to celebrate Carmen's birthday, Garfunkel got along smashingly with John (Robert's cousin) and Lali (John's fiancee)'s little chihuahua mix, Rocky.



I think Quigs is still #1 in Funk's book but it's nice to know he's capable of having more than one friend.

An Exciting Foray into Cake Pops

I think I've posted about the site Bakerella before but I'm not 100% positive. It seems like I would have and I believe Maria mentioned she found Bakerella through me but maybe it's because I'm a Bakerella fan on Facebook... (None of this matters to any of you so why am I wasting time babbling about it?! Yeesh. Moving on.) Anyway, the point is that I like Bakerella and Maria likes Bakerella and that's where the story begins.

The lynch pin of Bakerella's stable of sweets is the cake ball. The cake ball then morphed into the cake pop and that - or, rather, more specifically the starter chocolate cupcake pop - is what Maria decided she wanted to make for her friend's birthday party. While I was at the McCauleys' on Father's Day she started chatting with me about making the cake pops and I told her I'd be very interested to see how they turned out. I answered a couple of questions Maria had about melting chocolate and then didn't think much else about it. But later that same week Maria gave me a call and asked if I would be willing to help her out with her baking and, of course, I said yes. The cake pops really have long intrigued me... but BOY did they look like more work than I ever wanted to do for a dessert! Doing it with a partner was the perfect opportunity so we set it up for that Friday night and here's how it all turned out.

We were under a time constraint so, unfortunately for us, we had to start from the very beginning (i.e. baking the cake) at 7:30 PM. This made for a looooooong night; all told, it took us about 6 hours from mixing the cake to putting the ribbons on the finished pops. Needless to say, we were all a bit exhausted at the end of it all! It's not even that anything in the process was particularly hard - just time consuming. You have to wait for the cake to bake. You have to wait for the cake to cool. You have to freeze the pops after each step. You have to cool the pops before packaging them. It all just takes a lot of time. Still, we persevered and I think the end product was darn fine! You should refer to the earlier link to see a much more detailed step-by-step instructions on how to make the cake pops. My photos are a little more choppy. But I still think they're a good representation of how we worked.

First, after baking, cooling and crumbling the chocolate cake, Maria stirred the cake crumbs into our homemade cream cheese frosting.


Then we had scoop and mold the mixture into 1-inch balls. (See photo after the one below.) After freezing the balls, they get rolled into logs. This is a photo of the poo log. Had me cracking UP! I was tired.


The logs then got pressed half into a little flower-shaped cookie cutter to make the cupcake shape. On the right and left you can see the molded cupcake shapes; the pre-poo log cake balls are in the center of the tray.


After we froze the cupcake shapes, we dipped the bottom halves in bittersweet chocolate. More setting and then we were ready to dip the top halves in white chocolate and put on the final decorative touches.


Somewhere after the poo logs but before the final white chocolate dip Biji stopped by for a bit (he left the following Sunday so we were trying to squeeze in as much Biji time as possible). We put him and Robert to work, fashioning stands for us to put the pops in while they cooled and making room in the fridge. Here is Biji completing Operation: Transfer Pops.


And here they are! What do you think?


The pops had to set up in the fridge before we could package them and since we were bone tired at that point, we enlisted Robert and Biji's help in finishing up the project. Had we more time (or patience) we would've let the pops set just a wee bit more, as a few that got too warm slid right off their sticks and were sampled by the assemblers. (They were quite tasty! But even with four of us we couldn't eat all the rejects - as you can imagine, they're pretty rich. So some just got to go home to Bob.) Robert transferred all the pops to and from the fridge, Maria bagged'em, Biji held'em and I beribboned'em. We were a well-oiled machine, I tell ya. Biji's Army training really came in handy.


Bagged and ready to chill out overnight.

From what I heard from Maria, the cake pops were a big hit at the party. As they should have been! I think we were all very impressed with our first attempt at cake pop making... and I'm not sure Maria or I will attempt to make another batch anytime too soon.

Robert's Early Birthday

We had the first of... two? three? We haven't finished yet... Robert birthday celebrations last Sunday. A wee bit early, yes, but not too bad. Plus, between my mom being in the hospital and Carmen going in for surgery, it was the only day that worked! We're a mess over here, what can I say? Anyway, Robert's parents threw a mini-party for Robert at their house and I was shocked when Bob lent Robert his 'Today It's All About Me' crown first thing! I never thought I'd see Bob lend the Me crown to anyone.


Dinner was Robert's favorite: meat on a stick and fried rice. It was very good! And we got to take some leftovers home which meant we were able to have a meal after one of our long hospital evenings... Great. Garfunkel, who is never let into the McCauleys' untethered, was let in as a special treat for Robert's par-tay and he was excellent during dinner - he just sat under the table between Robert and me and didn't make a peep. I was so proud. :o) (Garfunkel was actually pretty excellent all day. He did chase one of the kitties and wound up knocking down and breaking one of Carmen's potted plants in the process which was definitely not so hot but that notwithstanding I think his behavior was darn good.)


I said "Robert! Look happy!" And got this face. Really? He must not have been happy at our wedding because I most assuredly would've remembered seeing this face... ! ;o)



Garfunkel did come out from under the table during the cutting of the cake. He just gave it an intense gaze, though - he didn't whine or try to take it down. Good boy!

More Robert birthday extravaganzas to come...

Bob's Birthday

It was Bob's birthday on Sunday and, as you can see by his crown, the day was all about him. Carmen hosted a lovely barbecue for Bob and Robert grilled up some delicious shish kabobs. A few friends and family came over and played a (somewhat) rousing game of beer pong (!) in between trying to keep Garfunkel from eating the ping pong balls. (He didn't eat a single one. :o) ) The Funk actually did very well in his first large social gathering - he seemed to warm to just about everyone and only barked at 3 guys. He even warmed up to them after a while... the dog is quite a Pup-peroni whore. All in all it was a nice way to spend a leisurely Sunday afternoon (I just wish it hadn't been so hot! I was melting). Happy birthday, Bob!

Janet (giver of the crown) and Bob

[I didn't take any photos but this one. Sorry. I wish I'd gotten a photo of the best moment of the day - the moment Robert unwrapped the foil from his plate of beef kabob (foil his mother had thoughtfully placed over his plate as it lay outside, abandoned, while Robert played with the dog) and a big fly flew out. The look on his face was PRICELESS!!! You've never seen a more pained and conflicted face than the one Robert had. He was really quite distressed to dispose of his steak. Quite.]