My crazy big kids looking tiny on Disney's Boardwalk Resort's big comfy couch.

Walking through the aisles of our local Super Target, my husband happened to mention needing syrup. Something struck me in the way he said the word. “SIRup?” I asked?

He said, “Yes, why, how do YOU say it?”

“SEERup!” I answered. My friend was also with us and confirmed that she also said “SIRup” and her mom would too, both of them having been raised in the South. Now since my husband and I both grew up in Massachusetts, I was puzzled. Why on EARTH would he say SIRup?? So he did what he always does in these situations – called his mom. She grew up in the same town as him near Boston and confirmed that it was pronounced SIRup/SURup. I was shocked to say the least.

When we came home, I felt it was my duty to ask on Twitter how everyone there pronounced it. Here’s what I discovered:

New Jersey pronounces it SEERup, as do some parts of Pennsylvania, while others say SIRup. Every southern state that answered – Alabama, Georgia, and Texas, as well as the Midwest, Utah, Arizona and California ALL said SURup. Someone checking in from Arkansas said SEERup, just to throw me for a loop. Then we have the Canadians. Someone from Ontario said SEERup while his wife from Nova Scotia said SIRup. Another person from Montreal said SEERup, but clarified that it was more like “SeerO” because of the French Canadian being spoken at home. Then a friend from England reported it was SEERup. Being an Anglophile, that was really all the validation I needed.

So the mystery continues as to which geographical locations say what. Perhaps it comes down to local neighborhoods vs. whole states/regions? I know my mother does not have a distinct Boston accent that causes her to say “Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd” but she *does* say “bahth” and “tomahto” so go figure! I like to consider myself as not having an accent at all, but my local friends are quick to point out that I say “I sawr him” and “drawrings” vs. “saw” and “drawings” and I will let “idear” slip out every now and then. Oops.

In any event, I thought I’d post here to get a larger cross-section of people and maybe solve this debate? (Btw, either pronunciation is acceptable, just like ENNvelope and ONvelope…so there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’)

Today I’m contemplating my youngest son. He is 11 months old today, so you know what that means – 1st Birthday Planning Time! Clearly, a better mom would have planned this 6 months ago but 3 kids, a husband, 2 blogs and a dog have been keeping me busy. I still have enough time to throw something together, right?

I know parents usually joke that with the first child you do everything by the book: sterilize, keep away from hazards, and record every breath as a milestone…then by child #2 you are a bit more relaxed, you don’t have to wash that binky off every time it falls on the floor…and child #3 ends up eating dog poop off the floor. Well, I’ve always considered myself a pretty laid back mom (and I’ve got the lack of baby memory books and scrapbooking skills to prove it) but what’s different here is that baby #3 is 8 and 9 years younger than his sister and brother respectively. What that translates into is yes, I’m WAY less anal about hovering over him 24/7 but I also know he is the last baby until I have grandchildren, so I want each milestone to be that much more celebrated and treasured.

It is with that thought that the dilemma of the First Birthday Party presented itself. Do I want to do a HUGE party that he of course will not remember and invite every family member and acquaintance? Or do I keep it low-key and just do immediate family and a cake for him to destroy and wear like gloves? The additional issue is that his birthday is 3 days before Halloween, so that time of the month is littered with costume parties and other functions I’m sure. Of course, who doesn’t want to come hang out and eat cake with one of the cutest kids in Florida?

I’m currently leaning toward small-but-mighty party inviting close friends and family…but my husband thinks it should just be us and a cake, so the debate rages on. My eldest son’s was similar to this, close friends, family and co-workers, while my daughter’s was much bigger with a party at Davis Farmland in Massachusetts. Since most of both of our families were up there and we were living in a teeny tiny apartment, it made more sense to do something bigger up there. Of course we’ll end up bringing him to Disney for his birthday too, but that’s not something you can invite the entire neighborhood to given the cost of admission.

How have you celebrated first birthdays in the past? Have any thoughts for what we should do? Any theme ideas or suggestions? And most importantly, how on earth am I going to top a Spaghetti & Meatballs cake?! I know no matter what we decide, it will be memorable (for us) and tons of pictures, frosting and a bath involved! I’ll be sure to share it all here when all’s said and done!

Many of you know that my family has not always lived on Main Street, South. My husband and I both grew up in Massachusetts and though we relocated to Florida right before we got married, we moved back to MA after our first son was born. We then spent some time moving back and forth as we tried to figure out where we wanted to settle down. For about two years, we lived in a tiny apartment in Worcester, MA. During that time, I felt like I was going to go insane, trying to keep a 2 year-old and a 1 year-old happy and entertained. Let’s just say naptime was a very happy time back then. The problem was, getting two kids to nap at the same time, when they shared a room, was next to impossible. What they did do was fall asleep in the car easily. (Something baby #3 has not yet figured out much-but with gas prices, I guess that’s okay.)

To keep my sanity pass the time, I would buckle them both into the mini-van and just DRIVE. One of the many things New England is known for is its scenic roads, so I had plenty of options. Worcester is almost in the center of the state, a little closer to the eastern side, so I could head anywhere and find something beautiful to look at. Of course my very favorite time to take these drives was in the Fall, when the leaves began to turn.

My good friend came from Boston to visit us one day and asked if we wanted to go to the The Quabbin reservoir. I had heard the name but didn’t really know anything about it. It was over an hour to drive there, but I love bodies of water and hills and mountains and sleeping babies, so I was game.

I listened in awe as she told me the tale of the Quabbin reservoir. When Boston and its surrounding cities realized they needed a larger water supply, it was decided that this reservoir would be built in Western Mass, thereby destroying and completely flooding the 4 towns of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, Prescott, and parts of seven other towns in the process. The town’s houses and buildings were either moved or bulldozed, bodies moved from their grave sites (except those of Native Americans) and the towns were simply no more. Something about that is just so unbelievably eerie yet intriguing. I love strange historical stories like that and there are so many others in Massachusetts, like the Great Boston Molasses Flood and the great Mill River flood (both unplanned) which killed so many.

There is a wonderful stone lookout tower with a huge field surrounding it where the kids liked to run around. When it’s open, you can climb the many stairs (which I’ve done carrying a 25lb baby before) and see parts of the reservoir and all the trees. It is such a beautiful site to see and one of the many things I miss about living within driving distance.

Near where we lived in Worcester there was also the Wachusett reservoir, the second largest body of water in the state (the Quabbin being the first). That one was a much closer drive, and unlike the Quabbin, is surrounded by a main road so you can see the beautiful water views from many angles. Some houses were lost in the flooding to build the Wachusett as well, and the Old Stone Church in West Boylston remains standing as a monument to those houses that were destroyed. I’ve driven by the church on many a nap-drive, and though it always seemed spooky to me, I guess people are always getting married there!

Another place my friend introduced me to (what can I say, I hung out in Harvard Square a lot and didn’t explore much in the state until then!) was the Yankee Candle Factory store. Never heard of it? It is so much more than candles. It is a mecca hidden within the hills and valleys of western Massachusetts. When my friend first described it to me, I thought surely she was joking…a Medieval castle room? A Bavarian Christmas room? A Black Forest room where it snows year round? Audioanimatronics? AND unending bins and displays of candles? As if I needed any more convincing, it also was located at the end of one of the most famous foliage roads in Massachusetts – Route 2.

I fell in LOVE with this place. It’s really busy on the weekends because they get bus loads of tour groups on leaf peeping tours but it’s worth the crowds to me. When we were living there, they had just opened a new Home store which has every imaginable item to decorate your home, after you pick up the candles to match of course!

They also have a restaurant and candle-making museum, a pastry shop and cafe inside the themed candle rooms and an all new children’s program – Wax Works. Now we have to go back to see what that’s like!

One of the best parts of driving along Route 2 out to western MA was the French King Bridge. For one, it was gorgeous with views for miles of the fiery reds, oranges and yellows lining the hills and mountains, and for two, it meant we were almost there! (The Yankee Candle Store was a 3-hour drive from Worcester.) The scenery is absolutely breathtaking and a great place to stop on the side of the road, stretch your legs, and get some amazing photos.

If you ever get the chance to visit more of Massachusetts than the historic Boston area sites, I hope you explore some of these places above. This of course is just a drop in the bucket of all there is to see and do there, but if you have two kids 2 and under and need to drive for a while…you can’t beat these choices! It’s no secret I miss Autumn in New England, so I might share a few other stories of our adventures off the beaten path.

It all started with the party invitation...

When we decided on having our daughter’s 9th birthday party at the movies for a showing of “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” it seemed only right that I’d attempt to make a cake to match – a Spaghetti and Meatballs cake of course!

First, I baked 2 cakes, one 2-layer yellow cake for the base, and a chocolate cake to be crumbled up and turned into ‘meatballs’. Any kind of cake will do, whatever you prefer. The cake balls do not have to be chocolate cake if you are dipping them in chocolate, but if you don’t want to do that step, chocolate cake will look more authentic. Next I made a buttercream frosting for the ‘spaghetti’, topped it with thinned out strawberry preserves for the ‘sauce’ and added ‘grated cheese’ of white chocolate. You can use any recipe you want for the cakes and frosting, whichever you have tried and liked – even box cake!

Once the layer cakes cool, scoop out a little ‘bowl’ shape for the ‘meatballs’ to go in when the cake is frosted. This helps it look more real because real meatballs would sink down into a bowl of spaghetti, not balance on top. A step I missed but would do next time is to also shave down the sides of the cake so it’s more like a hill than a regular cake. That way you don’t have any sharp right angles for the spaghetti to break off on, that happened a lot on my cake.

When mixing the buttercream frosting, I added drops of yellow food coloring and about a tablespoon of cocoa powder to give it real spaghetti color. Just make sure the food coloring and cocoa are fully mixed before you add more, just get it to a color that looks like cooked spaghetti to you. I then lightly frosted the cakes so I didn’t have a ton of brown to cover up with the spaghetti. I also plopped a bit of frosting on the bottom of the pasta bowl I used to hold the cakes, so it wouldn’t slip around. Once that’s done, add the frosting to a pastry bag with a round tip (I used a #3 tip, but would probably go up one size next time) or you can use a plastic bag with the corner cut off. Just keep piping it out in a noodle-like pattern until it looks like a bowl of spaghetti.

Next up are the meatballs! For these I used Bakerella’s famous Cake Balls recipe. I’d never tried them, but friends had and swore by their deliciousness. For these I used an instant cake mix, because that’s what the recipe used and I didn’t want to mess these up. The basic idea is crumbling up the cake into a big bowl, adding a can of frosting, mixing together and forming into balls, chilling, then dipping in melted chocolate and letting harden. Oh my, they are SO good. Now normally I’d take great care in dipping them into the chocolate so they were all pretty like on Bakerella, but since these were meatballs, neatness didn’t count and actually made them look more believable. I just used a pack of chocolate chips, but I would not recommend that again because it wasn’t nearly enough and was really hard to use because it hardened up so quick. My friend said candy melts in the craft store work really well.

Here are the completed meatballs on top of the spaghetti. Just arrange the meatballs however you like. I used a lot, but I knew we’d have a lot of kids at the party and wanted to be sure everyone got a meatball. You can use as few or as many as you want. Just be careful because once you place them, you can’t really move them around, the spaghetti frosting will be crushed. Needs some tomato sauce, yes?

For the sauce, thin out some strawberry preserves with water, heating if needed to stir it up, just be sure to cool it back down before pouring it on the cake, or you’ll melt all that great spaghetti! Of course you don’t have to use sauce at all if you have guests that don’t care for strawberry or other fruit on their cake! I took a risk using it with my kids, but they let it slide this once.

The finishing touch is grating some Parmesan cheese – made out of whit chocolate of course – on top of your creation. This is the final detail that really adds to the look of real spaghetti & meatballs. My daughter really wondered if I’d ruined her cake by adding actual cheese to it!

We got some crazy looks walking into the movie theatre with a giant bowl of spaghetti and meatballs. I told my husband we should’ve announced “We’re here for the Pot Luck!” The person in charge of our party actually said – “what IS that?” I guess curiosity got the better of her wondering why people would bring hot food to a kids birthday party in a movie theatre. Once she found out it was a cake, she thought it was hilarious.

The cake also received the 9-10 year-old seal of approval and they all thought it was the coolest thing ever to be able to eat dinner for dessert. It really wasn’t too hard to make, I’d recommend it to anyone that wants a unique spin on a traditional birthday cake. The reaction is definitely worth it!! Oh! And the movie was really great too – really funny, great 3-D effects. Steve the Monkey (voiced by The NPH) steals the show.

the birthday girl seal of approval!