Recital Cake

I made a recital cake for my friend Temalas Senior Vocal Recital. This is the cake I came up with.

The bottom tier was a chocolate fudge cake with chocolate ganache frosting and sprinkled with raspberries for some flavor other than chocolate. The top tier was a lemon cake with a raspberry danish dessert in the middle and plain buttercream frosting. I was pretty excited about the way it turned out. All the designs besides the leaf had to be hand cut because I couldn't find a flower petal to save my life. The bow was alot of work for something that just got thrown away right away but that's ok because it added the finishing touch to the cake that it needed. To get the black that black I painted the fondant with black gel food coloring. I really enjoy this cake making thing and I can't wait to try a five tier wedding cake. I would like to make it square but I would have to buy all new pans. If I make it circular than I only have to by the two larger pans.

Ice Cream and Swimming

This girl is like her Aunt Alexa. She loves Ice Cream!!!!!

Isn't this picture priceless. She is looking right at the camera with such a cute face. She is such a good picture taker

The other thing she loves is swimming. I can't look away for two seconds because she is fearless. Do you like her crazy hair?

This was one of my outfits when I was little. It was cute on her but she kept on pulling at the bonnet so we took it off so it didn't get ruined.

Birthday and Fourth

This is what I woke up to the morning after my birthday. One day my students followed me home from a function and now know where I live. I got 25 forks and some toilet paper and shaving cream on my lawn. At least I know they love me and it gave Jaden someting to do when it needed cleaned up. Another one of my students saw me at walmart, whent and found my car and left me a birthday not on my car for me. Now if they could be that sweet in the classroom :)Every year we go to the fireworks on the river. I make sure we get an awesome spot. I am usually there by noonish and stay till the fireworks show. We are right under them. This year I got something in my eye and it decided to stay with me a couple of days. THAT HURT! Natalia fell asleep right when the fireworks started. She liked the ones at rigby lake though the day before. We always go with our friends and their kids. You can tell we are all having fun.

Ice Cream

Natalia loves ice cream. There is this place called reeds dairy. Jaden loves it and whenever we have visitors we take them here. It's a full function dairy and right where they milk the cows they also sell fresh made ice cream. The cows are right outside the shop and they have other animals. You can watch them milk them and Jadens favorite, see the baby cows. I know I don't have pictures of Jaden but many of you know he runs around so much I can barely catch him half the time. Natalia stole her daddys cone. This is the don't you dare touch my ice cream and try and clean me up look. We got that look more than once.

Oregon Trip.

I took lots of picture in Oregon. These are our crabs that we ate for dinner after we caught them. I don't know why this picture is upside down but I am not in the mood for fixing it right now. Natalia loved playing in the water at Grandma and Grandpa Drakes. She always likes playing in the water though. As you can see Jessica is helping with the situataion. Isn't my little girl cute? She loves sitting in chairs and loves rocking her baby dolls. I love her little pigtails in this picture. I love having a baby girl. I went to the Oregon Store by autzen of course. I had to take a picture just for my co worker Lynda. She's a Utes fan. I think I will blow this picture up and hang it above her desk before the beginning of the school year.  This was my kids first time to the ocean and Tysons first time being able to see it because there was no fog. It was such a gorgeous day. You won't believe it but there was no wind and we actually had short sleeves for a while. The sun was out and no clouds. I don't know where my actual ocean picture whent to but here is the bay and dock. Our lovely crabs that Nathan caught for us. Jaden thought it was so cool. I have to admit that I really enjoy it to. The kids eating saltwater taffy from good old Depoe Bay. While they were all out on the dock I snuck away and drove up to Depoe Bay for about and hour or so. I couldn't resist that it was only 15 minutes away since I drive that much to get to Idaho Falls. I miss that place. One of these days I would like to take my family to stay there for a week. We also caught a starfish in the crab nets and Stef and I decided it was a good thing to keep. (I don't know if she felt that way but she pretended to at least.) I started drying it out at my parents but I don't know what has since happened to it. Nathan was supposed to let it finish drying out and then send it to me.

I took lots of pictures in Oregon.

Pink Hair

Right before we went to Oregon Jessica put pink in my hair for fun. I really like it and have since done it again becuase it washed out pretty fast especially since my hair is allready bleached.

Many Pictures to come

I am going to work on getting everything posted and up to date. Especially since in a couple of weeks I am going to want to put pictures of our trip of Nauvoo up. Give me the week but pretty soon you will know everything. I will start from the beginning and work up to now. Hopefully it doens't take very long.

Eternal Families

Last week on I believe Friday, a little girl that is a month older than Natalia fell into a canal here in Rigby. Here's the story. This little girls grandparents were watching her for the day. They went outside with her and about two minutes later couldn't find her. They called the police and told them that their 16 month old grandaughter was missing and are afraid she fell in the canal on their property. Just down the canal a member of our bishopric was standing in the canal for some reason instead of being at the church helping his wife set up their daughters reception for the next day. While he was in the canal something hit his leg. He thought it was a piece of garbage so he bent down to pick it up. When he picked it up it was this little girl. She had been in the canal for about 15 minutes. They flew her to Salt Lake. On Saturday at 5 PM she opened her eyes and looked around. Yesterday evening she passed away. It is so gut renching and our member of the bishopric was having a hard time with the whole thing. He looked at Natalia and said, "she is exactly that age and started to tear up." She survived for about a week. Jessica and I were talking about why he was in the canal. We though maybe so she would make it through this, and then she didn't. Then we decided that it was probably so she could be found and her family would have enough time to say goodbye to their sweet little angel. It made me cry when I heard she had passed away.
Tysons parents have a canal in their front yard and while it's very pretty it terrifies me. Jaden was so afraid of the water he would have never gotten near it. Natalia how ever is not afraid of the water. It's like a fish when she sees it. I usually make the kids play in the back so I don't even have to worry about the canal . I just have to make sure they don't go past the house. I will be their after Nauvoo for the reception because I am making the wedding cake. I think I will bring the monkey leash thing and make sure she is by my side at all times.
It is so sad when little babies pass away. I am so glad that I know and that the family that just lost their little girl are LDS. What a comfort it is to know that we have eternal families and that if we live righteously we will be able to raise them in the life to come. I don't know how people go on through life without the knowledge of eternal families. I think that is one of those things that keeps you going through this life. I have no doubt that they miss her and have alot of pain. Please pray for their little family, their name is the Zollingers. Paul Mitchell hair academy in rexburg just raised $1600 today at a car wash to help the family. 
Anyway, please keep them in your prayers.

Update

I promise to get pictures up soon. We have been so busy and gone alot. We went to Oregon for Nathans graduation. While we were there we celebrated Jadens birthday and my mom made him a cake with a ninja turtle head on it. I got a cricut for my birthday. We went to Newport and went to the beach and crabbing. I went to Depoe Bay for about and hour or so while the boys froze on the dock. They ended up catching four crabs and a star fish.
We came home from our fun trip in Oregon to cold weather, not very interesting idaho. We have since been going to the lake alot and swimming alot. Today was 93 outside. Very hot! Especially for this area.
We are getting ready to go to Nauvoo, Palmyra, Mt. Rushmore, and Niagra Falls in a week. We are going for Trevor and Audras wedding. I am so excited to get another sister-in-law. I love her, she is so nice and Jaden has a huge crush on her. They usually come for dinner on Sunday and Jaden gets so excited.
They will be getting married in the Nauvoo temple on July 31st.
We are getting ready for school to start on August 15th. I know it's ridiulous. I'm just glad that I am part time so I can still go to the lake every other day for the most part. I will still be coaching cross country and I am trying to get that all ready before we leave becuase that starts August 13th and I don't get back till the 7th and it is so hard to get kids to come to practice before school starts. I don't know why because when I was doing it, it wasn't a question and it wasn't the coaches that got mad about it, it was the other runners. Maybe because my team was good at the time. I will admit my team is one of the worst in the area. I take at least one runner to state every year but they are way ahead of the rest of my team and every coach I talk to says that they got a fast team because of one successful runner and everyone wanted to be like them. They tell me to give it time and it will start to grow on it's own. Especially with what the previous coach was like, but I don't really have time. The school wants to see it grow now and I am trying but running isn't a big thing here. If it were Eugene it might be differant. I think we will have a bigger success this year with numbers, but we shall see.