Wedding Cake

This is my first wedding cake. I made it for Natalie's dad, who got remarried about a month ago. It's an interesting cake. The bottom is 1/2 rice krispie treat, and 1/2 wedding cake. The middle tier is all rice krispie treat, and the top tier is all wedding cake. Chocolate with raspberry filling. Mmm, it was good.

The ribbons coming out from the top layer are part of a Peruvian wedding tradition (the bride is Peruvian). Each ribbon has a small charm of some sort attached to it. All the single ladies pull a ribbon out, and who ever gets the charm shaped like a wedding ring, is the next to get married!

It was a lot of work, but as an amateur decorator, it's amazing to do a wedding cake, and so worth it.

The phone

I hate the phone. I really do. I avoid calling anyone, and half the time I avoid answering my phone. I get extremely nervous when I have to call someone, and I often don't. I can't call and set up visiting teaching appointments, I can't call to order pizza, I can't call a neighbor to see if they could watch Katryn. I even have a hard time calling family members sometime.

Sometimes I wonder how I got this way. I wonder if I got yelled at by one too many customer while I was working in customer service. it takes a lot out of a person to get yelled at on a regular basis. I know plenty of people are able to brush it off and move on without any problem, but I wasn't that lucky. I think a little bit of every angry customer, blaming me personally, expecting me to fix unfixable things, to do exactly what they want kind of built up some sort of barrier or something between me and the telephone.

I never answer a call that I don't recognize the number. They can leave a message, and if I get my courage up enough I'll call them back.

I go into a small panic attack when I have to call someplace, like the insurance company, the utilities, or even pizza hut. (I order online. Actually, we now live too far away from anything to have deliveries, so I don't order at all anymore)

Most people don't understand it. Matt doesn't really understand it, he just puts up with it. I don't quite understand it sometimes either, perhaps it's a little OCD on my part as well. I'm not sure.

all I know, is that I don't care much for the phone, I'd prefer emails anyday.

on another note:

We've moved into our new home! yay! we bought a house in a small country town, and like it so far. I love seeing horses trotted down the main street, and dogs just running around happily. They're all so well behaved, and usually stay within one house of their home.

I'll post some pictures of our awesome home soon!

Family Pictures

It was that time of year again, and we got our family pictures taken. My goal since we got married was to have family pictures taken every summer. Preferably May, our anniversary month. 2007 it was in May, last year, i think we took them in september. This year, it was august! perhaps next year will be july, then june, and finally back to May. Or we'll just just to may next year. We'll see how busy we are that time of year.

Thanks so much to Calista, for doing an awesome job, and hiking up to our location, dealing with the construction, and working with our wiggly girl, and crazy dog. And especially thanks to Glenn for coming to hold Indy so we could focus.

Here's a few of our favorites:

A (above)B (above)C (above)

Glenn was having Katryn do yoga for this one: "Reach up tall tall tall tall tall! and touch the ground" she loves it!



Totally typical, if you know Katryn.



I set this one as the backdrop on our computer, because of how close it was of our faces.


Uncle Glenn's sunglasses, one of her favorite 'toys'


Flashing the camera! too bad it's not mardi gras. . . :)


This one melts my heart. I think I'm going to give it to Matt's mom for Christmas.

Anyway, we need to pick one to blow up and hang on our wall. Which one? I numbered the ones in the running as A, B, C. Or if there's another one you like you can vote for that one too. :) I picked those 3 because Indy's part of our family, and so it's not a family picture unless she's in it too.

And I"ll be posting more of just Katryn on her blog later this week. Let me know if you need an invite to read it!

ZOO!

Sorry for the picture overload. There were probably about 300 pictures from the zoo. . .and I love them all!! We had such a fun time, the weather was perfect! Well, it started out cold, but then it got better, and it was really nice! Katryn loved it, and promptly passed out on the car ride home.


Amber, Heather and Jonathan under an awesome umbrella!

All the girls at the sign.
Amber and Tryn on the huge spider. By this point in the day, she was a bit overwhelmed with everything I think, and just ready to go to sleep.

Climbing over the alligator
She enjoyed playing in this egg!

And climbed right through the turtle shell.

Whenever she got out of the stroller, she just ran behind it and started pushing it.

This picture is specifically for Grandma B, the archeologist


Her enthusiasm for the penguins was almost as much as mine. She was gabbing away to this girl next to her about them.

She loved the creatures in this room the best, because she could get right up to the glass and peer in.

I think these cats kind of freaked her out a little bit. . .


We were making monkey noises, that's why we have funny faces :)

The randomness that is us

I recently purchased a new camera. A NICE one. and I've been enjoying playing with it, and being able to actually have the shutter click when I WANT the picture taken, instead of missing all these great shots of Katryn.

Recently her cousin Kyla and family moved to a nearby city, and we stopped by and visited. The girls had a great time playing with each other--sharing waterbottles, riding the horse, playing with Roxy. It was fun.

Here's Katryn and Roxy. EVERY dog she sees, she has to go up to. My parents would say "hmmm, who does that sound like???" While giving me a look. I confess, she got her love for animals from me.

On sunday afternoons, we get together with my brother and his wife and have sunday dinner. It's so nice in the evenings that we just let Katryn run wild. She loves throwing the ball at (yes, at, not to or for) Indy.

And Aunt Natalie's phone. One of her favorite things to pull out of her purse. The other favorite is her lotion.

This is how she looked before we decided to strip her down. Thus saving her white dress from the red juice. I'm so glad too!!

And there you have it. The randomness that is our life, because you know. . ."this is what living like this does" :)

Cedar Trip

A few weeks ago, we went down to Cedar to watch Jonathan's bike race. I've never seen a bike race before, and boy howdy they are FAST. They go about 20-25 miles an hour!!


Katryn was being extremely silly in her carseat. Which was a lot better than the screaming before she fell asleep.

That's Jonathan there on the outside left. You can't tell, but he totally wiped out on one lap and had a huge road rash going up his leg. Read about it here. It's rough, because it's like a 3/4 of a mile loop they race on for about 45-50 minutes, and whoever gets the most laps wins (I think) and they take those corners so fast!

And no, I didn't clean that before I let her chew on it. If I did that, I would have to clean EVERYTHING, because everything goes into her mouth. Still. I thought we passed that stage a few months ago?

She loves when both her and daddy wear their hats. She'll bring his to him to wear saying "hat? Hat? hat? hat?"

And her new favorite obsession. The camelbak!! Couldn't get her to stop drinking from it. Which is a good thing, except for that backwash we got.

While we were down in Cedar, we were able to watch two of Jonathan's races (one was 60 miles!! good grief!) make dinner for Heather and Jonathan, and the Elliss clan (and of course, one certain little boy took one look at my meal, and said "I am definitely NOT eating that") and see Heather's awesome house. It's really a neat house, right by the DI in Cedar, and near the high school she teaches and works at.

Driving around really made me miss being down there. It's still a rather small city, and I know it pretty well. Drove past my old houses I lived in, past the Outpost (long since gone out of business) and I had a WHOLE LOTTA nostalgia going on! it would be awesome if matt could work at the Cedar gamestop, I wouldn't mind living back in that city.

My gamers

This reminds me of when I came home from work one time and found this going on.

My girl's going to be a gamer. . .I can feel it. She already knows that if she pushes the button in the middle (aka--the power button) the xbox starts making noises and the lights on the controller start blinking.

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. Matt manages a game store, and he's going to school to become a video game developer. I suppose I just thought it would wait a few more years is all.