Wedding Pictures

Here's a few pics from the wedding. They're really big so we're going to resize a few of them and put a little slide-show up on the blog, but until then... Oh, and I suppose I should put some more up of Will and Marissa :)

Wedding Pictures (2)

We talked a lot about Emmaline wearing her pretty dress at the wedding, and we told her that Marissa was going to wear a pretty dress too, and then she'd ask if Uncle Will was going to wear a pretty dress for the wedding too :)

WooHooo!

(I can't get her to give me just a normal smile when I take her picture any more...she and Royce both just make funny faces :) )

Yeah! The potty training has begun. I bought her a potty chair about a year ago, and we let her sit with it in the living room, and get comfortable with it, and then she'd sit on it on the toilet, and we talked about using the toilet, and we used stickers, and charts, and candy and special soap, and special wipes, and all sorts of methods. But I've made it a point not to push her, because when she's ready, she's ready. I used to worry so much when she was younger, about her rolling over, and crawling, and eating solid food, until one day I finally decided that kids really do develop at their own pace, and as long as we kept taking her to her check-ups and and she was on schedule enough to not need special intervention, I wasn't going to worry about it. So I've been really good lately, but I have to admit I started worrying a little about her being 3 (in October) and not being potty trained, and then 2 days ago she went pee in the toilet for the first time! And she's done really well yesterday and today too. She's had a couple of accidents, but she's starting down the right path.

The other thing that I think kind of helped, is being more direct. I would always ask her if she wanted to "go potty in the toilet." Then it finally hit me the other day, maybe that's too vague. So I started telling her that she should try to pee and poop in the toilet, and that helped a lot. But anyway, it has been a good couple of days!! (You might be thinking that it's weird to take a picture of her in by the toilet, but at least I didn't take a picture of her poop in the toilet...that's what my mom wanted me to do, but I couldn't do it; it was just too gross.)

"Prophet Song"

We have the little scripture books for kids that the Church publishes, and we (try) to read scriptures with Emmaline every night, and in the very back of the Doctrine and Covenants book, there are pictures of the Latter-Day Prophets. I sang her the song once, and now every night after we read scriptures we have to sing the Prophet song. So here she is...she normally doesn't let me record here when she's singing, but I finally caught one. :) (She was trying to sing it really fast, so if you can't understand her, that's why. But, a song too fast is better than no song at all!)

We've started packing, and Emmaline's been ending up in some weird places.
More OCD.

We went up to Four Mile creek last night and walked around

Crazy month!

So I've just sat down to put some pictures on the blog again, because it's been so long, and I looked, and it's barely been a month! It has been so crazy...we had the wedding, a week to the coast, Aunty Lea visiting, a reception in Roseburg, and then one at our house...it has been so crazy! I'll put pics up of all of these activities once I get them...Lea has some, Will has some, and then we're waiting for Will and Marissa to get the CD of the wedding pictures. Just a side note, if you need pictures taken, have Chris Becerra do it! He does an amazing job...and he's fun to work with, because he's Chris. :) But the pictures are just beautiful.
So hopefully we'll get some more pics up soon, and if not, once we get settled in Texas I'll update it more. (It's also been a while since I've blogged because Royce installed Linux instead of Windows, and he loves it, and has been fine tweaking his stuff constantly, along with taking over and ruling a barbarian nation, and then today he fell asleep, so I stole the computer from him. :) The day that I walked into the bathroom and he was sitting on the toilet with the computer on his lap, I knew he really was "white and nerdy," but he says that he heard about Mike doing it first, so he figured it was okay. :) )
So enjoy the pictures, and I'll update you on the wedding some more later.

Where would any chef be without a tasting helper?

Oops

For some reason I have troubles with blogspot...I couldn't get the pics to come up on the last post, so I'm trying to get them up a couple at a time...so just read the bottom for info about these pics. :)

More Cake

Here's my next attempt at fondant. I've always(always...haha, for the last two months that I've been working with fondant :) ) liked the cherry-blossom look on fondant cakes, but I thought it was a little out of my reach yet, and then at Will and Marissa's reception in Roseburg, a friend of theirs made the cake for them, and it had cherry blossoms on it, and I though, hey, she's not a professional baker and she made a cherry blossom cake, maybe I can at least attempt it. So here you go...here's my first cherry blossom cake. It took a lot of time, but turned out pretty well considering. I did have some problems laying the fondant on the corners of the cake, so I just looked it up on-line, and apparently you need to give yourself lots of extra fondant over the edges, and then you don't get that "ruffle" effect. I also found a great video demonstration, so I put a link on the side. So you'll notice how the branches are strategically placed on each corner :) And the great thing about the cake is that it's my mom's yummy German Chocolate cake, and I just put the coconut/pecan frosting in the middle of the cake, then the chocolate buttercream icing for the crumb layer so I could get the taste of German Chocolate, and the smooth look of fondant. So I'm thinking by the time Ronda gets married, I might be up to a wedding cake...so watch out Ronda! I'm the crazy aunt that likes to make wedding cakes. :)

Happy 4th of July

Haha...here's my 4th of July fruit "pizza." A couple of stripes turned up missing before I could take a picture. It's not too spectacular, but it tasted pretty good.
Emmaline and Daddy watching fireworks.

We were out on the deck a few days before the 4th of July, and Emmaline wanted to sleep out there, so we decided it would be kind of fun, so we set up the tent on the 4th of July, and watched the fireworks from the deck, and stayed in the tent. She was so excited and then as we were getting ready to go to sleep she wanted to go back in the house, but we convinced her to stay on the deck. We just pulled out mattress off the bed and put it in the tent, and put her crib mattress in next to us...and when we had to go to the bathroom we just walked ten feet into a clean bathroom with running water...that's my kind of camping :)