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It's time for soccer again. This year, Molly's not just doing clinics. She's on a team with practices and games. These are some shots from her first practice.

She's ready to go!

Excuse me, Ava.

Molly and Simon are having fun trying to chase Coach Joe to get the ball away from him.

Five of my friends and I competed in our own friendly Biggest Loser competition. We started January 2nd and competed for 12 weeks. We reported in to each other every 2 weeks with our percentage of weight lost, which was a great way to stay motivated. There was talk of sabotage since I was often baking treats for playdates and passing them on to my friends...I mean their kids! But several of them would fully admit to the occasional self sabotage too!

It was a nail-biter to the end, but after all the results were in, I was the big winner! I lost 15 pounds (or 10.2%, and reached my goal weight!) and was treated to a Girls Night Out at the restaurant of my choice - eating tapas at Ranazul. It was a fun evening and we've decided to continue on for another 12 weeks. So stay tuned...

Molly's teachers asked parents not to bring in cake or cupcakes for birthday celebrations since preschoolers + icing = a big mess! So, in an effort to follow the rules yet still sneak in a bit of birthday cake, I made Mickey Mouse Cake Pops.

You've never heard of cake pops, you say? It's cake mixed with icing and covered in chocolate. How can you go wrong? It's not the most healthy treat, but oh it's yummy goodness! Check out all the amazing cake pops at Bakerella.com.

If you decide to make some, here are a few tips from a rookie:

• I melted my candy melts in a double boiler. When melted, I removed the boiler from the stove, but left the bowl of chocolate over the warmed water while dipping. This kept the chocolate warm and thin.
• The chocolate coating cracked on several cake pops during my trail run. After much googling, I realized that the cake balls were too cold before I dipped them. So, when I made the Mickey ones, I let the balls sit at room temperature for 15 minutes before dipping. I'm happy to report there were no cracks the second time around!
• I inserted the chocolate dipped lollipop sticks while the cake balls were sitting out. The coolness of the cake balls set the chocolate quickly so they were ready to dip.
• I had some streaking showing up while dipping my Mickeys. I thought it was because of the 2 Tablespoons of shortening I added to thin out the melted chocolate. But I realized it was from the ears melting! I used milk chocolate candy melts for the ears, and dipped in dark chocolate. So, if you make the Mickey Mouse cake pops, I'd suggest using the same kind of chocolate for the ears and dipping.

Now go make some of this yummy goodness for yourself!

We decided to have one more family fun activity while G'Mom and Grampa were in town, so we headed to the National Aquarium. Molly loved it, and got excited about almost everything we saw. She just kept running up to each enclosure and exclaiming "Mom, look, more fish!"

We made sure to hit the newest exhibit, Jellies Invasion. There were so many jellyfish!

One of the highlights of the trip was the dolphin show. It's not Sea World, but it was good stuff.

Molly decided that she wanted to use the map (like Dora does).

Molly's checked out some very large sea turtles in the "Animal Planet Australia: Wild Extremes" exhibit, though she wass so close to the glass that we got two pictures of her.