Almost Too Much Chocolate Cake

So today I decided to make yet another cake - can you believe it?! :) The main reasons being first, Robert was really sweet this morning and let me sleep in because I for some reason couldn't fall asleep until nearly midnight last night. And second, Robert was a little hurt that the last cake for my last class wasn't for him. Which is a little strange because he didn't really care for the cakes I did in the beginning. Oh well. So I had seen the recipe for this cake a while back on Make It & Love It and made a special trip to the store today to get all the ingredients needed to whip up this sucker. It looks like it will be pretty good, right? I hope he likes it!

On a side note, I have to tell you about an experience tonight because it touched me so much. Up until we had Kaylie, we had never really been sick or out of work or anything that would cause us to really need help. I mean, we had moved a few times and had some people help us, but that was about it. And then when we had Kaylie, I HAD to accept help because I just couldn't do it all. That was a learning experience, but sort of a necessary one, right? To get to my point, tonight as I'm making this fabulously fattening cake, my home teachers knock on the door. They had come home teaching a few weeks ago and had asked about our huge pile of wood. They suggested that they could ask in priesthood if anyone in the ward had a log splitter so we wouldn't have to rent one. The first week was a bust, but on Sunday they found us one to borrow. Well, tonight they came with the borrowed log splitter ready to split our entire pile of wood!! Both of them are in Scouts, so they had the 12 year olds come and help stack the wood they split and did quite alot in an hour! Not only that, but the home teachers are coming back tomorrow after work to try and finish up the splitting. I guess this touches me so much because I'm not a widow and it is obvious that Robert is capable of doing the job, but they found something they could do and went ahead and did it even though we didn't ask them to or say we needed help with it. It honestly was great enough that they had found someone willing to us borrow their log splitter. It, to me, is the example of trying to be like Christ. Christ wasn't asked to take our sins upon Him, but He could see the need and stepped up to fulfill it. I don't know, just some food for thought and a place for me to express how grateful I am for people who are willing to help out not necessarily because we NEED them to, but because it is the Christlike thing to do and is the spirit of home teaching.

Latest Cake Creation

Sadly, tonight was the last night of cake classes - at least for a while! It was our night to bring a cake to design using the things we had learned throughout the class. I decided I liked using gumpaste ALOT, so I made a bunch of these button flowers. The cake is for a girl in my ward who had a baby a couple weeks ago, but better late than never, right? It has been a great experience taking these classes, especially with friends and I hope I can continue to put my new skills to use! Thanks to all those who helped babysit so I could go to class and thanks to Robert for his love and support in my many endeavors!

Locked Doors

Well, we have another story to share. You know - the kind that are terrifying at the moment, but once the event is over you can sit back and laugh at yourself?
Yesterday I had to work in the afternoon and Sam was a little turkey and didn't take his nap before we had to go, so I thought he would be more than ready for bed at 8:45 pm. I was wrong. He stayed up messing around for quite a while, but I figured as long as he is in his room and not doing anything naughty, he will eventually go to sleep. I get done looking stuff up on the computer and I hear his heater going in his room, but no sounds from Sam. This isn't entirely unusual; Sam loves to play with his heater and will sometimes turn it up to 90 degrees. So I go to quietly open the door to turn off the heater and the door is locked from the inside. Ugh. So I go find a bobby pin to try and push the special little spot that will open the door. After 15 minutes of trying and pounding on the door yelling at Sam to wake up and let Mommy in, I still hadn't heard a sound and the heater was still going. At this point I am extremely worried to put it mildly. So I call Robert to see if he is on his way home yet (it's 10:30) and he tells me to go look for a screwdriver to start taking the doorknob apart and he will get home ASAP. I finally get the doorknob off (I was seriously considering just ripping the whole thing out and replacing it later) to discover that Sam was fine, just sleeping like the dead. Robert gets home about a minute after I get the knob off and he has a police officer with him! Turns out he was racing pretty fast to get home and when he told the officer the story, he followed Robert home to make sure that was really the case and let Robert off with a warning! And as if this crazy story isn't enough, just as I am about to sit down and write about this whole event, Sam locks every door in the house, which locked me in the office and out of the bathrooms right as I needed one! Thankfully, Sam was obedient when I started pounding on the door demanding he let me out! What a kid!

Sundays

So when you usually think of Sunday, most of you would agree with me that it can be a relaxing, eating, family-filled day, right? I think we have started a new unfortunate trend for our Sundays that now includes an injury to Sam. The poor kid! And always right before church, too. Today's episode consisted of Robert shutting the back driver's side door and Sam's last three fingers getting stuck between the front and back doors! Of course the car was locked and we didn't have the set of keys with the keyless entry, so it took agonizingly long to unlock the front door, push the unlock button and then open the back door before we finally got the fingers out. Needless to say, Sam was screaming and of course church was right about to start. But after some cool water, lots of tears, and lots of cuddling from Mommy, we were able to go in for sacrament meeting and survived the ordeal. Hopefully it will be the last of the trend, though!

New Thing for Saturday

Our Saturdays are usually just like any other day. Daddy usually works, so Sam and I just hang out and do whatever. But today we got to do something different. Today was the annual Community Potato Pick. But first we had to drop off Daddy's phone to him at work and Sam decided to stay with Daddy and help sort potatoes while Mommy ran over and got just a few potatoes.

I think it is awesome that one of our local farmers donates an enire field of potatoes for people in the community to come and get for free. That, and they dig up the potatoes for you! How awesome is that?! They plant one field of both russet and red potatoes and dig one row at a time of each and people fill their containers until the row is gone and then they dig another one. It works pretty well and tons of people come to get their year's supply of potatoes. I get my year's supply of red potatoes since that is the only variety Robert's farm doesn't grow, but this is also potatoes for my sister's family and possibly her in-laws, too.

Sam had a GREAT time helping Daddy on the farm! Robert found a stick of wood for Sam to stand on so he could see over the side of the conveyor belt where the potatoes are sorted and the workers pick out rocks, allowing Sam to play in the potatoes having the greatest time ever. Here Sam is showing us his potato he picked off the belt that he got to take home! :)

Ouch!

After our home teachers left, Sam wanted to ride his bike outside for a little bit. Thinking he would be ok for a few minutes, Robert went inside to make some lunch and two minutes later we hear the very distinct cry of a little boy who is seriously scared or hurt.

I get outside first to find Sam and his bike in the ditch below the bridge. He must have been riding on the bridge and underestimated and fell off. Our first concern was his ear, since that was the most obvious. He was so sad and just wasn't bouncing back like he normally does so we decided to check for other wounds and find his back all scraped up! Poor kid! He's beginning to calm down after some medicine, a bath and a blessing from Daddy. He sure knows how to keep us on our toes!

What's Been Happening

Sorry it has been a while, Blogger has been giving me grief and I haven't been able to post for almost a week. To begin with, yesterday I finally dove in to the canning world and did 28 pints of peaches and 12 quarts of pears. We'll have to see how we do with the pears, but it was "fun" to do, although alot of work and very tiring (especially with a 2 year old who refused to take a nap)

This is a picture of our pile of wood waiting to be split. It doesn't look like alot, but behind the big pile is a pile of log lengths around 6 to 8 feet long that need to be cut into shorter lengths, then split. Robert keeps saying he is waiting for his little brother, Jake to get here to split all that wood! :)

And this is a brief look at my little cornstalks and a few of my tomato plants. This wasn't a great year for the garden, unfortunately. I wasn't watering enough the first part, then rodents got to all my strawberries during the middle and then we were blessed with a frost about two weeks ago that killed almost everything. What a bummer. So all my lovely tomato plants are dead and the corn is stunted.

One plus side to the early frost was it started turning my pumpkins orange so by the time Halloween rolls around we will have 6 to 7 great sized pumpkins to carve and have adorning our doorstep! This picture was taken nearly a week ago, so now the pumpkin in front is completely orange and the rest are really close.

Picture of my onions. They are considerably larger than last year's onions, but not nearly large enough. I think I have decided that if you have the space, the square foot box is not ideal for root plants.

My carrots. Don't really know what happened here, but again I think the square foot box is not ideal for these root plants.

When I was out taking pictures of the garden, Sam demanded I take a picture of him, too. I found this sweatshirt that has Wall-E on it at a used clothing store, but it looked brand new, so I figured it was a good buy. Now he absolutely LOVES Wall-E and he refuses to wear any other sweatshirt or jacket unless this one is in the laundry! Have a great weekend!

More Projects

So after a day of canning a few peaches and green beans and cooking then freezing corn on the cob, I decided to whip together another cake for a friend because I hadn't been busy enough. I was in a bit of a hurry to get it done, though, so the balls aren't all uniform and the flowers didn't have time to dry and thus laid flat the minute they were on the cake. But a cake is a cake none-the-less and I'm sure it still tasted great!

Catch Up

Sorry no post for over a week, there hasn't been alot going on. This is from a little while ago, but for our anniversary at the beginning of August, Robert decided to get me a new set of pots and pans. We finally settled on this sweet set from Costco and I have been LOVING using it!! It is so pretty, I can't bear to put it in a drawer or cubboard, so I'm keeping my eyes out for a rack of some sort to put on my kitchen wall to proudly display my new cooking army! This isn't all of the pieces, but you get the idea. I especially love the chef's casserole there in the middle because you can use it on the stove and then throw it in the oven, too!

This morning has just been kinda lazy getting going and as I was cleaning off the table, Sam told me he was going to go to work with Daddy because he misses him. I just had to get a picture of where he decided to stow his gun :) So cute! He never fails to brighten my day, that little guy!

In other news, it has finally warmed back up again around here, thus leading to too much time outside and a nice sunburn. I sat outside most of the morning reading while Sam brought out his blocks and his bike and alternated going to work with Daddy on his bike and building airplanes to crash into me with his blocks. Earlier this week, we went to Idaho Falls with Josh and Lilly and played at a new park at a school, made a trip to Michael's for the mommies and then enjoyed dinner at KFC. It was a nice break to the lonely nights we've been having to adjust back to. But to try and help, we take Daddy dinner and ride the combine for a while a couple times a week, so Sam gets to see Daddy SOMEtime! Hope you all have a great Labor Day weekend!