Oregon Trip

So we went to Oregon in June, and I'm just now getting a post up about it. I brought my camera, I really did, but this is the only picture that we got from Oregon. Emmaline took it of the living room from the upstairs balcony, but I was so paranoid about her dropping the camera off the edge I made her hurry really fast so it's all blurry. Luckily my sister brought her camera, and actually took pictures, so I stole the rest of the pictures from her blog. She also has a couple of cute videos from our trip too, one of Emmaline feeding a calf. Here's here blog if you would like to see them: Mike and Lea


This is almost all of the family. My mom is taking the picture, and obviously Royce isn't there, but this is the rest of us. This was the day that we decided to go hiking. My mom has a spot that she likes to hike to a lot, but it was still snowed in too much for us to get on the trail, so this is just a little trail that started off behind a rest stop off 140. (Meadow Lake)Blah, that's so annoying. I don't know why it's blue and underlined. Anyway, this is Uncle Will and Aunt Marissa with Emmaline. You have to admit, it's some beautiful scenery!

This is my Aunt Gabbie helping Emmaline feed one of the calves on their ranch. It's where I learned how to ride horses when I was little, and everything else that goes with that. This was a box that my mom had saved for the grandkids for 6 months waiting for them to come. I think it was probably worth the effort.
Little stinker. We were nearing the end of our hike (I guess it was kind of a long hike for little legs) and Emmaline wanted a little ride, and Mazy was done being carried, so Lea decided it would be easiest if she put Emmaline in Mazy's pack. Silly girl.
This is Aunty Lea and Uncle Mike and Mazy.
Uncle Mike and Mazy!

Mazy "trying" to ride my mom's Great Pyrenees Dali.
Mazy was not shy around the horses. We had to be careful because Gabbie said that some of them might want to bite little fingers. We couldn't even get Emmaline to touch a horse. (Before Gabbie even said anything about biting horses.) Poor little thing gets pretty nervous around some things. But that's okay. Baby steps to the bus.

It's a baby!

So after all of our thoughts and planning and decisions regarding adoption our minds have totally turned around, and we've decided to have a baby instead! We were watching conference in April, and just really felt like this was something we needed to try, and we found out a few weeks ago that we're pregnant! It's going to be a really high risk pregnancy, so we're going to be carefully watched by our doctor (2 ultrasounds and 3 blood draws by 6wks!), but he's a really good OB that specializes in my kind of high risk pregnancies, and is really optimistic about everything, so we're pretty excited! I'm 6wks 4days, and today we were able to see the little baby's heartbeat on the ultrasound. It was pretty cute. I'm due on Feb 26, and we're really happy. (Feeling pretty awful, but still happy.)

The picture's not great, but I can't really tell what things are anyway. It turns out the round circle on the left is just he yolk sack, but I thought it was the head at first. The little bean on the right is the baby, and it's little heart is beating strong in there!

Emmaline

I just told Emmaline that the people upstairs moved out and they didn't live there any more, and she got sad for a second, and then really concerned, and asked, "Did Jarom move out too?"

Lol...it's so funny and so cute. I swear I'm being good and not encouraging it, or let her know how stinking cute I think it is. In case you didn't notice Jarom is one of her cute little friends that she's been fond of for quite some time. Any time anyone talks about marriage she informs us that she and Jarom are getting married. She also says that Hannah is going to marry Ben. So cute. Anyway, that's all. I just thought that was pretty funny.

Updates

It's been a really long time since I've put any pictures up. I haven't been taking a lot of pictures lately. I'm kind of in a phase that I want to live in the moment, and not have to mess with a camera, and just enjoy those family times. Maybe that's not the right attitude, but that's where I'm at right now. That being said, I went through my camera a little bit and got some pictures that have been there forever. This is the first one. I work with the Young Women at Church (12-14yr old girls) and we work on a program called Personal Progress which gives the girls goals, and helps them learn new skills and improve themselves, and part of that is basic homemaking skills and as leaders we work on that with the girls too, and one project is to learn a new skill and make an item for your home, so I learned how to applique and sewed a blanket for Emmaline's room. The project is supposed to take at least 10hrs, and after I'd worked on it for 14hrs, I stopped counting and just finished it.

These are some super cute pictures of little cousins when we went to see Rocky and Carol's brand new beautiful house! We went to dinner, and the girls were playing int he back of Nana and Papa's truck.

This is Emmaline and one of our little neighbor boys from South Korea.
This is when we went to Corpus Christi. This is the aquarium.
Emmaline reading stories to her babies.
This is from Easter at Nana and Papa's house. It's been a really long time since I've put up picures.


This is a little sugar egg we made for Nana for Easter. She found a Wilton cake book from 1971 and let me borrow it for a while, and it showed how to make these sugar eggs, and I thought they were pretty cute so we tried it out.

Good Cake Decorating Links-Revised!

Okay, so here's the right link. And Royce took me through the web-site to make the link shorter, and it's really easy. You go to bit.ly and then paste the long site and it gives you a new short site.
Here you go! (Man, I say so a lot.)

http://bit.ly/aFerKA

So after taking a break from cake/gumpaste/etc, I think I'm ready to get practicing again. I've been looking for a while to learn how to make a plumeria, (for you Kelda!) and I found a really great tutorial, and it's pretty basic and I thought I'd post my findings more in case anyone else out there would like to play around with gum paste a little, because everything I know I've learned from watching Ace of Cakes, Cake Boss, and research on-line.

Here's the link for the gumpaste plumeria. (Frangipani? I don't know what the difference is, if there is one.)

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdkKQS1p39PbhtWjs8xFnQkQ4AKpgtRj6REI9wyqtm5CKda6fSg74OfJ5uPQKyHAtfmyPgiT1NR0T0ZySPyFEff7U40AwT7TB-MPkaUSEB21cU4PLrdQ0ZYlJVJg8tnmq2BSnxs7nNbM0/s400/Satin+Ice+vs+Wilton+031A.jpg&imgrefurl=http://acupcakeproject.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html&usg=__Zo-_0I8VGCTfuyAetwPe0YfN5Y4=&h=300&w=400&sz=12&hl=en&start=37&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=Xn2EmuvbLVYdaM:&tbnh=93&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dgum%2Bpaste%2Bplumeria%26start%3D20%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DNqO%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26ndsp%3D20%26tbs%3Disch:1

Wow, sorry, that's ginormous. I'm sure I could turn around and ask Royce how to make that smaller, but, eh. (Darnit, it's the wrong link. But it takes you to her page, and at the bottom is the link for the plumerias.)

Another resource that's been really great is a woman named Edna, and she has great short tutorials on YouTube, that are step by step. Her web-site is:

www.designmeacake.com, or you can search on YouTube for Edna's Cakes.

As I keep finding good sights I'll post them, and have fun!

Home!

It is so good to be home. It was really fun to see everyone, and do so many fun things, but it's just too long to be away from Royce, and it's so good to be home. I also think I have strep throat.

PJ's

Here's Emmaline's new monkey pajamas that I made for her. You can't see the brown ruffle at the bottom very well because it blends into the carpet, but that's my favorite part. The cap sleeve is a little funky looking, but oh well! Hopefully they will survive the washing machine!