YW Combined for a Life Challenge!

The young men planned a life challenge game for our combined activity, there were several fun and exciting things going on. The "judges" dressed up, and it was lots of fun.

Here is Sister Wade threading a needle to sew on a button.

Changing a dirty "for real it was dirty" diaper!

Chickens, yes chickens in the cultural hall, that the kids had to chase and catch!

Eating a sleeve of crackers and then whistling!

Eating popcorn, but doing it in a clean manner!

Eating sardines, this was horrible for most of the people

The final challenge was transferring marshmallows with straws and nothing else!

Happy Birthday Garrett!

Last Saturday we celebrated Garrett's 5th Birthday, yes 5th! It is way scary for me that he is growing up so fast! If you can't tell he LOVES StarWars! It was a great party and a lot of fun. Even Jonathan got into it! He was trying out the masks that they got for the kids!

Garrett's Nana bought him a Darth Vader and an Obi One Konobi cut out! Garrett was way protective of the Obi One!

Getting ready to open presents.

Clara really like the presents, well at least she wanted to chew on the paper!

Mom got him and X-wing fighter! I think it was love at first sight!

A friend of Evets made this R2 cake, it was way cool looking!

Blowing out the candles.

Lately Clara doesn't want anything to do with Timmy or my dad, so when Timmy picked her up, I thought maybe she was over it, she looks pretty happy in this picture, I don't think she was sure what to think about the hat!

After a minute or so the happiness was gone and it was back to scared, crying, I don't like you Clara!

Garrett with his new X-wing fighter. He was so excited that everytime I tried to take him picture he wouldn't look up!

Hunter's Porgram

Hunter had a program yesterday at his school, it was about Utah. The sang songs, played their recorders, and danced. It was so fun and so cute to see Hunter perform. He sang all the words, danced all the songs and did a great job!

Playing the recorder, and dancing a Hip Hop number!

Doing a Buffalo Gals dance

Waiting to get started

Mom, Hunter and Tasha after his performance!

Snowy Weather!

Yesterday we woke up to snow! It was a beautiful site. We have not had snow for awhile and it was breathtaking. We need the moisture we have been lacking this year!

Cake Classes

So for the last 3 weeks I have been taking a cake class at Gygi's. We learned everything, the first class was all about make a cake, from how to make the cake, how to trouble shoot problems, to oven temp's etc. The second class was about making fillings and frosting's and learned how to torte a cake to prepare it for filling and frosting. We made a pastry cream, a strawberry filling, a chocolate ganache, and buttercream icing. The last class we put our cakes together and learned about piping and royal icing and cake construction. It was so much fun. I have wanted to take a cake class for several years and I finally found one that worked with my schedule.

This is my final cake, with drop flowers and dot design.

So we ended up with a Vanilla Bean Pound cake filled with pastry cream and strawberry's with a buttercream frosting.

My family loved it. In fact Jonathan said it may be his new favorite!

YW Hair Extravaganza

On Tuesday we had a Hair extravaganza for our combined YW's activity. They taught the girls how to do an up do, we made cute flower clips and clip holders and we had a lot of fun.

Karley and Gerika

The girls trying to decide what to do with their flowers.
Meagan and her cute flower clip.

We were also taught how to "backcomb" or in my terms rat hair properly. Here we are using our technique on Karley!

The results, she looks, kind of happy???

Crystal Jensen showing us how to start an up do, Alyssa got picked and she looked awesome when she got done!

Beautiful Alyssa!

Karley then braided Gerika's hair and put in some flower clips, very unusual for Gerika!

Katelyn and Nicole doing hair.

Chocolate Cake Yummy Yummy

So last Saturday I finally made the Chocolate Cake I had seen in my Cook's Illustrated magazine. They called it a Diner Chocolate cake and it did not disappoint. In fact it was not as hard to make as I thought I would be! I would love to give you a copy of the recipe, but I think it is too long to post on my blog, so!

Here is the finished cakes cooling on the racks

The decadent choclate whipped frosting!
Frosting the cake on my new turn table was so easy!

The finished cake on my new cake stand

Yummy yummy goodness!

YW Pretty in Pink Finale

Last week we had our finale to our Pretty in Pink month of service! We played a fun game, shared some experiences and played friendship tag on the floor the wrap it up. We then had Pink Lemonade cupcake for refreshments. This month spent doing service was great! We encouraged the girls to continue to get to know each other better and do simple acts of service for one another.

Trying to come up with answers that start with P that no one else thought of.

Friendship tag!

Book Recommendations

So, my friend Laurel kept telling me about a book, that I had to read "The Five People You Meet in Heaven". I started it yesterday at lunch and by last night, late last night I was finished! What a wonderful read. The author is Mitch Albom and I recently bought his newest book "Have a Little Faith". I am now looking forward to reading that book too!

For those of a little later generation, I loved "A Long Way From Chicago" and " A Year Down Yonder" by Richard Peck. It is set in the depression and in the mist of WWII about kids visiting their grandma on her farm during the summer. What a wonderful uplifting read, I would recommend to anyone! They move quickly and are quite short so you don't need "time" to get it read, a few minutes here, a few minutes there!

I will try to keep you more up to date with what I am reading, I forget that people, other then myself like to read! Also look for more updates on what I have been baking and doing in Young Women's!

March Madness Update

So last night I didn't get home from my cake class until almost 10. I was beat and exhausted, by the time I got downstairs and ready for bed, I really just wanted to sleep and finish reading the book my friend Laurel had borrowed me. So I got into bed and settled into for reading 1 Nephi 17-22. What a wonder set of chapter, truly inspiring when he was quoting Issiah. I don't think I have ever really got this! It was wonderful, so for those of you keeping track I have finished 1 Nephi in 3 days! I will keep you up to date with how this weekend goes!

March Madness

Well, I have officially chosen to involve myself in a spiritual March Madness.

The challenge??? Read the Book Of Mormon in 31 days!

So I will be posting my progress here.

Yesterday was the first day and I completed my assignment which was to read the first 9 chapter's of 1 Nephi. It went pretty smoothly until about chapter 7 and my eyes wanted to sleep, but I got up walked around my room a couple of times and went back to reading and finished!

I'm not sure what I want to learn from this, but I really feel like I have been missing something lately. Not anything huge, I just feel a little off kilter so I am hoping that this will get me straightened out! If not, I still get to read the Book of Mormon in 1 month!

Wish me luck, I may need it on Tuesday's when I have Young Women's or on other day's that I have stuff planned, but I know that I am up to the challenge!

Are you??

If you are interested I will post the break down for the whole month! Happy reading!