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!

Surgery and Emmaline's Outfit

So lately I've been having some bowel problems, long/gross story short on Tuesday I had to go in and have part of a muscle cut out so things could work the way that they're supposed to, and it was just a minor surgery so I thought, I should be fine, not a big deal. So on Wednesday Emmaline and I were home alone together, and it was a lot harder of a recovery than I thought it would be, and Royce is completely swamped because it's the end of the semester and Thursday was his long day so he'd be gone all day long, so Wednesday night we called Nana, and she came Thursday morning and saved the day! She stayed through Friday evening until Royce got home from work. I only got up when I had to go to the bathroom, and she cleaned our house, and did the laundry and took Emmaline to the playground, and I was able to rest and recover very comfortably because she was there. And it was nice to be able to just talk, also. So thanks Nana!

Since I was sitting for a few days straight, I decided to try out another project. I've kind of been on a sewing kick lately, and I thought it might be fun to try and make Emmaline a little outfit (another Personal Progress thing) and here is how it turned out. Her little shirt I made from the material of a pair of exercise pants that got torn in the washer, and her skirt was all made out of some scrap material I'd already had. But it's not too bad for my first attempt at making clothes, but again, there are no pictures of the back, and it's good that the shirt is a little long. :) I did want the skirt a little puffier, but I think I just made it too long, and it would have puffed out a little more if it was shorter, but I wasn't sure how much I would mess up so I gave myself too much extra material at the top. She doesn't look super thrilled in the picture because I kept making her try them on over and over again as I kept sewing different parts, but I told her if she would put it on one last time for the picture I wouldn't make her put it on again until she wanted to wear it.

Aunty Lea and Mazy

My sister and her almost 1yr old Mazy came and stayed with us for a few days while Mike was at a conference in Washington DC, and we had so much fun. Again, I was irresponsible and made Lea take all of the pictures, then I forgot to get them off of her camera before she left, so I just stole these from her blog. She also put up a couple of cute videos, and I'll send a link if you guys want to watch them.












My parents sent the girls a box with books and dresses and toys, so they got to open it together. Emmaline is figuring out that it's her name on the box.