August 1, 2010

Texas Tornado ¹

by Wendy • Cupcakes, Headline, My Life As It Happens

I promise that I am still here!  I can’t believe it has been a month since I posted last but honestly I have needed to step away in order to catch my breath.  2010 has been quite a challenging year for us and sometimes it feels like we are dodging one storm after another with barely a chance to recover before we are hit with something else.  I also never realized how exhausting a three year old can be.  At the end of most days, after we get her tucked into bed, all I can manage to do is drag myself to the couch and either vegetate by watching tv or reading.  So between life hitting us with some pretty big punches and a three year old that I like to call my ‘little Texas tornado,’ I can’t seem to get anything accomplished, much less writing a blog post.

At the end of a pretty busy first half of the year, I was hoping that I could spend my summer reorganizing, refocusing, and re-energizing some different areas of my life.  Well, it didn’t quite go as planned.  June was packed solid with meetings, business trips, and activities for Catherine.  Quickly June was gone.  In early July,  I was hit with a pretty difficult firefighter fatality case and I have been extremely busy trying to sort through the issues that have come up with that.  Also, July is when the annual fire school takes place at Texas A&M and I spend several days there teaching or attending meetings.  I usually call that my hell week because I drive back and forth from south Houston to College Station several times and that’s almost 300 miles round trip.   So, July has been pretty much disappeared in a haze of furor and today I am looking at August.  And while my calendar doesn’t look too packed out just yet, I can’t hold my breath that it will stay that way.

August is typically not a good month for me and my family.  I go into the month holding my breath and praying a lot.  If something bad is going to happen, it seems like August is when it will.  With 2010 being such a tumultuous year already, I feel pretty anxious about what the next 31 days will entail.  I know, I shouldn’t be superstitious, especially since I am a chaplain but sometimes it’s hard not to feel a bit of trepidation when memories from the past still linger.

Since we can’t seem to get out of town to escape the craziness for even a day or two, I have decided to try and make the best of it with what little energy I have left.  A good friend of mine gave me the pool pass to her super cool swimming pool.  It is almost resort like and has a children’s pool with a frog waterslide and sprinklers.  Catherine and I have spent most of the days she is not in school there.  It almost feels like we are at resort somewhere in the Caribbean.  We have also been spending time in Kemah, at the library, at the beach, or doing fun things around town like visiting the dog show.  There won’t be much time in the fall to do activities like this, so I am trying to pack them in now.  It’s been such a great way to forget the three ring circus that has become our life, even if it’s only for a few hours.

I have also decided to go on quest to find the best cupcake ever made.  Well…at least in the Houston area.  With my traveling schedule in the fall, I might hit up some out of town bakeries but most of my quest will take place locally.  John and I will be testing out cupcakes in and around town trying to figure out which one we like the most.  I hope to have the time to blog the experience, but we shall see.  Cupcakes seem to be such a great way to also find a little bit of normal in this abnormal world.

Here are the first three cupcakes we tried and the results:

This was lemon filled cupcake that I bought from our local Kroger’s store.  They have remodeled and the store looks quite fabulous.  The bakery is absolutely beautiful and I thought their sweet treats would be just as fab.  NOPE.  Taking a way the horrible lighting, this pretty cupcake was a huge disappointment.  It was dry and the icing was a yucky mix of whipped cream and buttercream.   I only cut a quarter of it to eat, and I couldn’t even finish it.  On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the best), this cupcake gets a 3.  It only scores that high because it did look pretty.

This cupcake came from Cinnabon.  Who knew that they have ventured into the cupcake world?  They make an awesome cinnamon roll, so you would think that their cupcakes would be just as good.  This one…not so much.  It was a bit dry but the icing was incredible!  I would give this one a 4 because it was pretty and the icing was good.  I wouldn’t buy it again though.

This one is also from Cinnabon.  This cupcake is supposed to be a take-off of their cinnamon roll.  Holy moly, this sucker was phenomenal!  By far this has been the best one we have tried.  The cake was not dry at all and resembled their cinnamon roll but just a bit cakier.  The frosting was to die for!  If you love this company’s cinnamon rolls, then you will most likely love this cupcake.  I can only give it an 8 though because I think that it resembles their cinnamon roll too much.  I would have liked to have seen their cupcakes taste this good.  It does rank up there though!

We have four others that we have tried but I will leave those for another post.

Anyway, keep us in your thoughts and prayers!  We need them!