Our friends little boy turned 1 this week & I got to make the Birthday cake! I love making cakes. Thought I'd share the pictures with you all.

Quick peek into the last week

Emily~made a fresh peach cheesecake with the most delicious oatmeal crust, yum! And worked lots of hours around sick people. The cheesecake made it all okay

Also started taking water aerobics with Mom N a few times a week, it was has been really fun. It's a good thing you are underwater however, cause coordination is not a gift. You can say what you will about this being for old people, I don't care because it is wonderful to finish an hour long workout & not have stiff, swollen knees for multiple days!


Mark~ Worked many hours at the boys home plus got in some great flight time with students. On Saturday he got to fly to Wendover for a air/car show and represent the university. They passed out fliers & answered questions people had about the program and tried to escape the heat. It was much warmer there than here!
Can't you just hear the cars beautiful engines....just imagine with me its really beautiful

Trying to hide from the desert sun, it didn't work to well Mark was really sunburned, but he had a fun time. But what pilot wouldn't enjoy a day of flying & seeing lots of airplanes?


Not post would be complete with out a cute picture of Axton, he's just so cute! This was from Sunday when we had dinner together. Today he & Kris came to Logan to hang out & he learned that I am "EM." We were in Hobby Lobby and he would yell Em and look all around till he found me & than stop, so cute!

let them eat cake....

I love decorating cakes, as most of you know, this last week I finally got to make a few cakes. It seems like I haven't made one in forever, anyway I thought they turned out pretty cute.

worth it?

So as you may recall when my family went to Island Park I had some pretty wicked stomach pain/acid freak-out/wanting to die episodes. Well 10 days ago I met with my gastroenterologist to discuss this thing my body kept doing, I haven't had a full attack since our trip but plenty of little ones that have made life oh so interesting. After discussing things and ruling out Gallbladder problems since I don't have one the inevitable happened I had to schedule an upper endoscopy :(

I've had one of these before and don't really remember it being terrible, so I figured if it helps with the pain I'll go for it. After waiting in the freezing office for an hour in a gown they finally wheeled me back to procedure room where I quickly spoke with the doctor & they gave me "go to sleep" meds in my iv. I don't really have a memory of what happened after that, a few things stuck in my head but most floated away on the anesthesia cloud. My Mom so kindly came down to take me since Mark had to work and you aren't allowed to drive home with anesthesia in your system which I find odd.! She tried to catch me up on what had happened. The scope didn't find any reason for the pain so they took some biopsy's looking for an infection or something & also stretched my esophagus. You are thinking that doesn't sound very pleasant, you are correct! I am just really glad for cepacol spray or I am pretty sure I wouldn't have slept at all last night. I tried to find a picture of dilation of the esophagus but they were all pretty graphic & not I didn't want to make anyone sick so just imagine a balloon going down your throat & stretching it out.

Apparently even on anesthesia I try to work because when I was waking up I kept trying to talk to my dr. I work for about patients & asking my nurse about influenza shots. There was also a conversation about Spanish, I am really glad they see people come out of anesthesia everyday or I'd be really embarrassed for who knows what all I said. But I am wondering if your mind can't even stop working when you are out cold, does that mean you work to hard & need a break?

Well I am off to work for another very long day, should be interesting since I can't actually talk or swallow anything but popsicles so we'll see how the day goes!
FYI this isn't a feel bad for me post I just want to share my yesterday.

Labor Day, BBQ, Peach Days & Greasy Goodness

Labor Day presented us with a day off so we headed to Weston with Dallas & Natalie and James & Emily. We had a yummy lunch of bratwurst, than hit the water slide! It was a great time, and many crashes happened. After we decided our bodies couldn't handle anymore crashes we played some hillbilly golf, you many know it as lasso golf. Due to the house job we had to hurry back by 530, but don't worry the party didn't stop we ordered pizza & watched Better of Dead.

We have been going to meet Natalie & Dallas for dinner in "celebration" of Mark getting a job since well he got a job & we just never have. Friday night we, along with Matthew and Kris & Axton, we headed down to Salt Lake for dinner at Famous Daves. We it was pretty good, they served our dinner in a garbage can lid....I hope it was sanitary! After eating way to much good food we headed back to Natalie's apartment & played some Yahtzee. There were actually lots of toys for Axton to play with so that was great, we only had to hide the dice from him a couple of times. Dallas was the only one of us to get a Yahtzee, but in the end Mark won the game!

We stayed at Matthew & Kris Friday night so the 5 of us could spend Saturday together. We had a yummy breakfast of German Pancakes than headed off to peach days. The parade lasted for 2 hours! We watched about 30-40 minutes before we'd seen enough parade. The Peach Days parade does officially rank pretty high on my list of parades worth seeing, why? They had a complete Star Wars group, it was pretty awesome. We wandered a few, okay lots of booths than headed decided we needed to refuel but didn't want to pay for over priced fair food so we ate at the Chinese restaurant in town.

Seeing Corn Dogs at the fair gave us a craving for the greasy goodness they offer, but frozen ones just wouldn't suffice so we made some from scratch! Oh so yummy! There a few kinks to work out but we'll get it, just have to practice more!

While everyone took naps that afternoon Kris & I had run errands including a stop at a fruit stand for some fresh peaches, can't celebrate Peach Days without eating them! Mark thought making homemade donuts sounding good since we already had hot oil so we had a very unhealthy but good dessert of fresh peaches, hot donuts & ice cream!

family, cake & over active yeast.

With a long weekend upon us we decided to make the most of it and invited James & Em to come visit, which they did! We started our evening with having Pizza Fondue, sounds crazy but oh so yummy. Our cousin Sara came over too with her boyfriend Eric, not only did we get to hangout with Sara but we finally got to meet Eric. They've been dating since may and we just barely met him, we really enjoyed getting to know him. This last week was Em's birthday so we celebrated together, I was slightly unorganized and forgot the candles so we used the 2 from Mark's birthday and she just blew it out twice.

Last November we discovered a recipe in the Hendricks cook book that we really enjoy, a caramel nut roll due to my allergy it has become a caramel almond ring. You prepare it the night before & let it rise than wake up stick it in the oven and there is caramel goodness in 25-30 minutes. Well I forgot how warm our house stays at night if I don't open the windows, and I didn't open the windows in the Kitchen since they don't effect if my room is hot or not I just forgot. It goes without saying the yeast when rise crazy! I even tried punching it down before baking it but still ended up with this.....
Still yummy but I am really glad I had a tray underneath it to catch the drippings or I'd be scrubbing the oven instead of writing this post!

extended road trip

well that is what my Dad kept calling it. We took off this past weekend with my family and headed to Island Park. Once we got there it was a pretty fantastic trip, getting there was a long journey...mostly because I kept having serious stomach attacks/pains/spasms/pain! Don't worry though with the help of my gastroenterologist it'll be okay. We stayed at a wonderful cabin, it was so much nicer than a hotel cause we actually got to cook our food. Upon arrival Jess found an original nintendo, that's right I said original, inside so we spent some time revisiting childhood while we waited for Mark, Mike & Miles to join us. All three of them had to work late so they joined us later. Saturday we floated one of the rivers up there, it was fantastic! My mom had never floated a river before, I just couldn't believe it. Other than few times of my rear end being introduced to rocks it was a fantastic trip. That afternoon we headed up to Big Springs were we walked the nature path up to the actual spring, it was so pretty and they really did have huge fish there...no fishing aloud in the spring. That night we went to Les Miserables at Mack's Inn Playhouse, it was hilarious. I can't wait to see what they preform next year, hopefully we can go again. The cabin had a fire pit so we decided to build a fire that night and roast marshmallows and starbursts, it was at this point we realized we hadn't sat around a campfire all summer...how sad is that! Sunday we got up and decided to visit what we thought was called satellite hill, well that isn't the name & I can't remember the real name but it was awesome. There was giant radar tower on top that they use to track stuff for air travel, it was pretty awesome. The view was also amazing! After a quick lunch we had to head home, but not without one final tourist stop. Mesa Falls, amazingly beautiful! And thus ended our extended road trip!