Catch-up post (cake class and disastrous camping)

So once again I have fallen behind on my blogging and I'm sure that my many many faithful followers have been anxiously awaiting another post so here you go:

For Memorial Day we always try to go camping and this year we were bound and determined to continue the tradition even though the weather worked very hard to try to get us to stay home. We went back and forth all morning about whether or not we should go because the rain just wouldn't stop and the forecast gave us no reason to hope for that to change. We finally just made the decision to go and take our chances. I think that overall we had a good time and we were glad we went but it was kind of a disaster and we ended up having to come home at like 2:30 in the morning because Kacey and I were semi-drenched in really cold water all over our bodies and through our layers of clothing (really it was because of me that we came home - I'll admit it, but honestly I was seriously wet and it was seriously cold).

Aaaah...how cute are they? This is a fitting first picture to have for this post because Kacey and Joe just got engaged this week - YAY! I am SO excited that my two best friends are getting married this year and I couldn't have picked better guys for them to marry.


Nicole and Osiris are getting married in less than a month - woohoo! This disastrous camping trip was so fun with all six of us there.


When I was 19 (I think) I was at Costco with my parents and I saw this tent for sale. I thought it was so neat (I still think it is) so I told my parents that I wouldn't be mad if they got it for me for my birthday. Being the fabulous parents that they are they got it for me and it has gotten pretty good use ever since then. It is a really cool tent with four separate rooms or you can leave it as one big room. It is really easy to set up and I love it!


Here's Kace making her famous dutch oven potatoes. As we were driving up to the mountain the rain stopped and it stayed dry for the first little while that we were in camp. We got a good fire going and then some good coals. We put the dutch oven on and started cooking the bacon and onions but then it started POURING! We had to grab all of our stuff out of the rain and we all huddled under a tree and wondered what we should do...should we stay and hope that it stopped or should we just pack up our stuff, count our losses and go home? We decided to stay. Luckily the rain stopped after 15 or 20 minutes (maybe longer...hard to say) and the boys worked very hard to get another fire going, this one even better than the first and we put the dutch oven back on once we had some nice coals. There are very few things that I like more than a nice fire-cooked hot dog and some dutch oven potatoes so once I finally got to eat, it was worth the wait. Kacey and Nicole both ended up being sick and throwing up in the middle of the night and we were wondering if maybe we didn't cook the bacon long enough...still not sure


It rained most of the evening, sometimes really light and sometimes a little harder but we were determined to tough it out. Here's Nicole and Osiris trying to share an umbrella that looks like it's probably not shielding either of them very well...still a cute pic though


I had to include this picture because I am wearing my awesome 49ers hoodie that Kacey got when she was in like 7th grade and then she gave it to me a few years later. It is literally getting so thin and worn that pretty soon it's going to be translucent, but until it falls apart I am going to keep wearing it because I love it. It's especially nice when I wear it with my awesome 49ers sweat pants that Zeb gave me when they were too small for him. That is a snazzy outfit if I do say so myself


This is just a lovely nature picture that Taylor took of the trees and fog. We went for a very short walk to see a nearby river and we saw this beautiful fog. We all just stared at it for a bit. So pretty


Here's the boys working hard on building fire #1...little did we know that it was all going to be in vain...



Catch-up part deux

My sister Marilyn has a friend who teaches cake decorating classes so Marilyn talked her into teaching classes for us at her house. We met at Marilyn's house once a week for the month of June and she taught us a lot of basic techniques in cake decorating. It was so much fun. My sister Noelle and sis-in-law Heather also did the classes and then a few other friends of Marilyn and Heather also came. It was such a fun class and I think we learned a ton of cool stuff.

We threw Nicole's bridal shower last weekend and Noelle and I decided to make her a tiered cake. We had not had any fondant lessons in our classes up to that point (we have now been taught how to correctly make/use fondant and we're pretty much experts) but we decided to take on the challenge and try a fondant cake anyway. We picked a cake design that we found online and we just went for it. The above cake was our final creation. It had some serious mistakes and weird spots but overall it turned out ok for our first one we think, and we had lots of fun making it. Yes, it is supposed to be crooked - it was a topsy turvy cake (not to be confused with my topsy turvy tomato planter that is flourishing and should soon give me some DELICIOUS garden fresh tomatoes). Unfortunately in this picture you can't really see the kissing Nicole and Osiris heads on top of the cake but they were a last-minute touch that really took the cake from so-so to fabulous! I forgot to take my camera to the actual shower but it ended up being so much fun and a few of our friends that we don't get to see too often were there so it was so great to catch up and reminisce about old times. I love my friends so much!


I forgot to take a picture of my first cake that I decorated in class but I decorated the above cupcakes in one of the classes using some techniques that we were taught. I freaking LOVE cupcakes; I think they're the perfect food and I am constantly craving them!


Here is Noelle's final cake creation. As you can see she mastered the fondant technique and her cake turned out awesome!


Here are Heather's super cute flower cupcakes. She was much better at making the flowers than most of us and I think these cupcakes turned out so dang cute.


Marilyn, Jensen and Lexi's cupcakes were so patriotic and so neat! I loved how they turned out - so fun!



Here's my final cake creation. I opted for a buttercream frosting instead of fondant and then covered the top with a jungle of fondant flowers. It was so much fun and I really want to hone my skills and try to get better so if anyone has any special cake requests I would love to try making different cute designs.


Also, today after our final cake class we had our monthly food storage/emergency preparedness class. I was in charge of this month's class and I decided to do emergency kits for our vehicles. We included jumper cables, flares, flashlights, blankets, food, water and first-aid kits. I didn't take any pictures because I was talking and demonstrating but I know that others took pictures so if you really want to see pics of our kits you can stay tuned for the posts on my sisters' (in blood and in-law) and/0r Mom's blogs. Bring on the earthquake/tornado/flood/whatever - we're ready! (I hope I didn't just jinx it)

Yellerstone

Warning: picture overload yet again with this post!

Last weekend we went to Yellowstone with Kacey and Joe for a fun long weekend. We stayed in the cutest little cabin in West Yellowstone and had even more fun than we had anticipated. The weather wasn't as cold as we had feared and everything was very uncrowded so it made for a very exciting, relaxing and refreshing trip. We will definitely go back!
We spent one full day in the park, driving around and looking at neat things. We saw lots of cool animals...millions of bison (at least it seemed like millions by the end), lots of elk, cool birds and we even saw a wolf. We were too slow with the camera to get a picture of the wolf (well we got a picture of the tail) but we really did see one, which apparently is pretty rare because there's so few of them in the park. We were pretty excited when we saw him. We did not see any bears in the park but on the way home we stopped at "Bear World" in Idaho and we got our bear fix there. We also saw moose, white elk, deer, wolves and some smaller animals at Bear World. On our last afternoon we rented bikes from a little shop and rode the bikes around the town and on a cool bike trail; this turned out to be very fun and we were so glad we did it. West Yellowstone is such a cute little town. We ate SO much junk the whole trip and really just had such a great time. We would definitely recommend going up there for a weekend for anyone who needs a little getaway.

Seriously though, how cute is this cabin?

B-e-a-utiful views and I'm not even really a nature person

Old Faithful herself in all her glory

Joe and Taylor in their rival hoodies (Joe-Utah, Taylor-BYU) doing some awesome tricks with their bikes

BEAR WORLD!

Taylor was not seriously injured, nor were any animals in taking this picture

CUTEST baby bear cubs ever! I wish you could see them better in this picture. I almost couldn't walk away from them

Teenage bears

I asked Kacey how many cinnamon bears she could fit in her mouth and chew and swallow. She did 10 but I'm pretty sure she could have done more.

Awww...how cute are they?

Enjoying some delicious food at the Old Faithful Inn

Random events

This post will include a lot of randomness. I have had a few get-togethers and events with pictures I'd like to posteritize (it's ok to make up words sometimes).


We threw a baby shower for my sister-in-law Kera the other day. She is going to have a little girl in a couple of months. The shower was at Noelle's house and she made the whole thing so cute. Below are a couple of pictures from the shower.



Earlier in the day, before the shower, we (my mom, sisters and sisters-in-law) got together for one of our monthly food storage prep days. This day we made freezer jam. We made jam for hours at Heather's house and she was a great teacher. We ended up with around 100 pints of jam - DELICIOUS! We try to get together once a month for these little classes. I've missed a couple of times because I've had to work and last month I forgot to take pictures of Marilyn's gardening class. Other classes have included bread-making and canning. I may be forgetting one or two...but we've been doing it for a few months and I already feel much more prepared for whatever disaster might come our way.



Next up is the Easter egg coloring from last month. We invited Nicole, Kace, Cass and their boys over. We had some yummy pizza and then we had fun coloring the eggs (mostly the girls had fun). We weren't able to pull Osiris away from the game he was watching on TV and we barely pulled Taylor and Joe away long enough to color a couple of eggs.



The next pictures are quite old. A couple of months ago we went snowmobiling in Idaho with Taylor's dad and Megan, Jared and kids. The snow was great and we had lots of fun!






Lastly, these next pictures are also quite old. A couple/few months ago Taylor went to some UFC fights with my bros and bros-in-law so the girls decided we should get together for a very girly girls' night. Noelle had all the fixins to make sure we did lots of stuff we wouldn't do with the boys around. We made good smelling bath salts and salt scrubs. We ate LOTS of goodies and we watched a chick flick. It was a lovely girls' night in