Commence Freak Out

I realized yesterday that my cruise is less than a month away, which is pretty exciting and I must admit I am a bit giddy with excitement. It will be so nice to get away and relax and de-stress since things have been a bit hairy lately. It will also be the first trip Ross and I have taken alone in the 2 years we have been married (can't believe its been 2 years already!!) and our very first cruise. I am not totally sure what to expect with some aspects of the cruise and there is still a few more reservations to be made but thats not too big of a deal.

Even with all the good points I just mentioned I have started to freak out, but just a little. I bought some board shorts at the beginning of summer and set them aside for the cruise. I tried said shorts on yesterday to see how they are going to fit and they DIDN'T. I know its not been the best summer for working out and eating. Its hard to cook for myself and eat healthy when I am exhausted from my yard work and my kitchen is 95 degrees and then my run isn't . . . . well, it just doesn't happen. Now I have less than a month to get my butt in gear and in my shorts.

Another Weekend Come and Gone

I have never, in my wildest dreams, thought I would be anxious for a weekend to be over, however I found myself ready for Monday to be here. My desire for the weekend to be over had nothing to do with going to work, I do not enjoy getting up before the sun and going to work for the man for 10 hours a day. However, I have found since we have bought our house that our weekends are quite often taken up with house stuff and that stuff is never ending, there is always something that needs to be done. This weekend it was the lawn.


Ross and I spent the previous week ripping out the lawn and the 2 remaining tree stumps in the front. The problem is the stumps didn't want to come out, they fought Ross for 3 days. While Ross wrested with and cussed at the stumps I got the "privilege" of tilling up the front yard and removing all the dead grass and weeds. 3 days and 9 hours later I finally finished and we were ready to put the sod down. We were able to get the sod in 3 trips with the trailer, the hardest part was unloading the sod from the trailer for the next trip (who knew sod was so heavy). I was trying to help Ross unload the sod, what little he would let me help with, and I ended up tweaking my back. I am just so grateful for all the help we got on Saturday morning laying the sod, my dad and sister came and helped and one of Ross friends just showed up to help. I knew it would have taken Ross and I forever with just us and with all the extra help we were able to get 1200 sq feet laid in about 3 hours, and that's with a Popsicle break.

We weren't able to get it all done, probably need another couple of pallets worth, but that's for another time, but it looks so good. A couple times both Ross and I just sat and stared at it, enjoying the view and how nice it looks. A couple times during the lawn removal process I got frustrated and annoyed at the soreness and was ready to just hire a landscaper, but now that its all done and I just need to water I am glad that we did it ourselves and have a sense of accomplishment and am almost ready to tackle another of our many projects, just not for a couple of weeks.

My other big project this weekend was a cake. I really enjoy making cakes and its fun to go through the creative process and see a cake turn into something more fun. My problem this weekend was fitting in the time and energy this weekend to do the cake justice. We were making it for my nephew's 4th birthday and we wanted to try something pretty different. We had been planning this cake since the middle of June and were pretty excited to try the idea and I think it turned out pretty good if I do say so myself.

The whole cake was edible, except for the fish in the fishbowl. Well, I guess you can eat those, but they are not cake or sweet and I think a little boy would have been upset if you ate his fish. We did have some comments about the rocks around the bottom of the cake, they thought they were real rocks and were shocked to hear that they were fondant. My sister and I are looking for our next cake project, it may not be until Jan but that gives us time to come up with a theme. Its for another one of my nephews and it was suggested yesterday that we make a cat cake with a live cat in the middle tier. I think its something we should keep in mind.

Kind of Interesting Trip

Last weekend my brother Jared invited Ross and I to go to Lake Powell with him, and well, its Lake Powell so how could I refuse? Due to annoying employment Ross was not able to get the full time off from work but he was able to join us from Friday to Sunday. We spent Friday night in the marina campgrounds and the rest of the time we did some beach camping. It was our first experience beach camping and for the most part it wasn't bad. The first night on the beach left a lot to be desired. As the sun was setting the wind started and it was brutal. It didn't help that our camp was on top of a hill with no protection. Ross and I had been at the boat filling up our air mattress when it started and almost lost our bed when we got to the top of the hill. We sat holding it for a while hoping to wait out the wind, but the wind was a little more persistent. Because Ross and I didn't take a tent we all ended up in my brother's tent with him, our niece and my dad. It was a 3 man tent so with the 5 of us and most of our gear it was extremely cramped. It was quite the um . . . . . bonding time? It was a very long night. We were so crammed in there that we didn't pull out our sleeping bags and just slept where we were, it was definitely warm enough. Ross and I tried to sleep with shirts over our faces because there would be big gusts of wind that would dump tons of sand through the window and sand blast us in the face, we ate a lot of sand. Halfway through the night I wasn't sleeping so I got up and went to sleep on the back of the boat and it was the best idea I had all trip. I spent the rest of the nights sleeping on the boat.

At our first camp spot Celeste and I found a large pvc pipe that was floating in the water and after pulling it out and turning it over found it was full of fishing poles. The bad part is that there was only 2 full poles and the rest were just pole bottoms. Well, that and they aren't very good quality. Celeste kept the good pole and we left the others behind for someone else to discover.

Ross, Jared and my dad fishing. I was so shocked that Ross was expressing an interest in fishing and he spent a couple of hours fishing with the pole. There was tons of large carp in the shallows around our first camp and they were fun to play with, for a while. They are garbage eaters so they wouldn't take our lures but we tried to entice them with food (apple core, chicken bones and crackers) and a net and Ross got pretty close to catching one with the net at one point. You can kind of see the fish, the greenish thing, in front of Ross, its like an inch from the tip of the net. He followed that fish for a while and just wasn't able to get it.

Sunday we went in search of a new beach to camp on, preferably one away from the wind and after 3 hours of searching ended up back at the beach we were at last year with the house boat. Which was ok with me. It had a sandy beach, plenty of room to swim without worrying about being run over by other boats and was against a rock wall to provide shade for the last half of the day.

Jared and my dad created a shelter with a tarp and a couple trekking poles, it kept the ice chests and food out of the sun.

This is just a random picture of Ross on the tube. Since he had to go home Sunday he didn't get as much play time.

Stuck

Sometimes, if its been a while since I have been on a trip, I start to get the travel bug and unfortunately today is one of those days. They usually happen when I am bored at and of work and then my mind wanders and I spend more time on travel sites than on my work. There are too many places I want to see and so many things I want to try and, well, I just love to get on a plane and go away. I like new spots but its fun to visit places I have been before too. Our next planned trip is our cruise in Sept, which isn't coming soon enough. We get to go to 4 different locations, which include 2 countries we have never been to before. Its also going to be the first vacation Ross and I have been on alone since we were married almost 2 years ago. Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed all the other trips we have taken with both families and wouldn't trade them.

I think sometimes Ross gets annoyed at my travel urges but he puts up with them pretty well. The downfall is that there isn't enough money or days off from work available for all that we would like to see and do. In the mean time we are stuck in our little rut, planning future adventures.

Family

This past weekend was my family reunion and it was quite the experience. I generally look forward to family reunions with it being pretty much the one time a year our entire family is in the same location at the same time. Maybe I should clarify, I generally look forward to the family reunions with my parents and siblings. I am not much for the big extended reunions, since I really don't know those people its generally a feeling of taking a day, when I would rather be doing other things, and sitting around watching those we are told we are somehow related to and being thankful for the gene pool that me and my siblings came from. Just a word of advice: talent shows are never, ever a good idea for family reunions, no matter how clever or talented you think your children are. But I digress. . . . .

This year for our reunion we went to Rockport State Park, just East of Park City. It was nice that it was close since we weren't able to go up on Thursday evening, we were able to get there early enough on Friday to still have a full day of play. Pretty much the only big thing to do was to boat and swim, which we did for 2 days. It was fun to be able to hang out with Jared and his family, we don't get to see them much with them living down in Blanding. Here are some pictures I "borrowed" from Jared. I didn't get any pictures at all during reunion, I was too preoccupied to pull out my camera.

We spent a lot of time in the water, which is what almost all of us like to do. We did play on the boats but on Saturday most of us spent time just floating and swimming around the boat, hanging out and just joking around. The water was very crisp and the longer you were in it the warmer it felt, which was probably just your body going numb. But we spent a few hours just swimming around the boat and jumping off it. During this time Ross almost drowned our niece. I don't remember what he was saying or doing but he had her laughing so hard that she was taking in water and had to keep spitting it up. She was telling me that I need to make Ross do child comedy shows and he should go on "The Next Comic Standing."

I wasn't sure how much playing I was going to be able to do this year since we were taking Havoc. We have taken him camping and he surprised us with how well he did. He is a barker and can make quite the noise sometimes. We actually took him to a firework show on the 3rd to see how he would do. We thought he would be barking so much that we would have to pack up and leave early but he sat on mine or Ross' lap and he just watched the fireworks. He would watch from where they were launched and follow them up in the sky to where they exploded, kind of interesting to watch his head move following the fireworks, he did have a continuous growl while following the trail but no barking. So, with reunion and his first time on the boats and really his first time with a large body of water we were hoping he would adapt and we could still have fun. He did really good on the boat, he just sat on my lap and watched those on the tubes and skis. The only time he really got a little agitated was when I was on the tube. He wouldn't take his eyes off of me. He also ventured into the water up to his shoulders, he would back out of the water once he started sniffing it and got water up the nose. Saturday afternoon my aunt and uncle brought my grandma and their dog up for the afternoon and my aunt volunteered to watch Havoc while I played, which made it much easier to swim and hang out.

By the time Sunday hit I was definitely ready to go home and shower and sleep in my own bed.

Final Cake Class

I'm a little sad that my cake classes are over. It was only 4 weeks long but I learned a lot in those 4 weeks and want to find another class to take. For our final class we were supposed to do a cake from start to finish, but considering the amount of time it took Bre and I to do the last cake we did I wanted to have enough time to try some things and practice my butter cream roses while having help from the instructor, so I frosted, covered and layered up my cakes before class. However, everything that could go wrong did. My house was so hot the butter cream frosting was melting as I put it on the cake, then I ran out of frosting and had to make more, and found out half way though that I was missing a key ingredient, then the fondant was not holding up like it should with the heat and then the fan caused it to dry out to fast as I was stretching it on the cake so it didn't stretch right. But all in all I think it turned out ok.

This is one of my butter cream roses. There is so much you can do with piping, I wish we had more time with it.

My Holiday Weekend

It was such a busy weekend I don't feel like I got any rest and didn't get much time to sleep in, man life is rough. Saturday morning we got up at 5:30 to go to the balloon fest, which turned out to be a dud. In years past its been interesting. You can walk around as the hot air balloons are blown up and once they are all up and before they take off its like walking through a forest of balloons, then they take off and there are games they play and its kind of interesting watching the pilots maneuver the balloons and end up all over the valley. This year there was too much wind for them to be able to inflate the balloons safely. At one point there was a window of like 10 min when there was little wind and all the balloons tried to fill up and take off before the wind hit again. Only 3 made it off the ground, the rest had to deflate and pack up their balloons. It was Ross' first time to go, he has had to work previous years, and it was a little disappointing for it to be a bust. It was kind of cool, when we were walking around one of the pilots took the time to show and explain the basket, the gas and the science behind it all.

Saturday afternoon my sister came over and we spent quite a while making the cake for my nieces first birthday. It was fun and I think it turned out pretty good considering all the things that went wrong and all the changes that were made. It was fun to put to use some of the skills we learned in our cake class and I think it turned out pretty good. It was our first time doing more than one tier and so we had to figure out supports and I was concerned it would collapse, but it stayed up and sturdy. My final cake class is this Thursday and I now have the task of coming up with an idea for my final cake, which I will be doing all by myself so it may take forever.

Sunday after church we had some guests over for dinner. We grilled some carne asada and it was so good. Our first carne asada of the summer. It was so good and I was so glad that it was a cooler, overcast day so our house wasn't roasting while we had company over.

After our dinner on Sunday we had to go over to my brother and sister-in-laws house for the birthday celebration for my niece. I was pretty nervous about the cake because it was kind of heavy and I was afraid it would topple with the big top. But with some slow and careful driving we made it ok.

Monday was the best, it was a lazy morning. Its been a while since I got to just chill and read in bed and I took full advantage of it before going to my parents to help my mom with some projects for the little kids for family reunion this next weekend. At this point I think I am ready for summer to be over, there is just too much going on and I never seem to have time to get everything done that needs to be done, but I guess that is part of life as an adult.