New Post!!

This is no longer what our little boy looks like now he is our big happy smiley 3 month old.

I know I have been so bad at blogging so here is the longest post ever.
We closed on our new house two weeks ago and I have hardly packed up this house. We had our ward trunk or treat that weekend Lydia was a mermaid, Rachel was a butterfly princess and Abram was an adorable little dinosaur. My mom made their costumes again they were so cute but I'm really bad at taking pictures so sorry.




Then we went to California, it was so much fun. Thanks to my mother-in-law we scored tickets to Club 33 at Disneyland and the whole experience was amazing it was seriously the best food ever and I have had great food, but this was ambiance like only Disney can do.
Lydia also got to go to the Bibbity bobbity boutique it was so cute watching her get fussed over by the Fairy Godmothers.




She loved every second. She kept putting her hand over her mouth and giggling. Rachel was a little too young but maybe next time.
So California was great we got to eat at all of our favorite places and I also got to see my sister and her boys.
For more pictures of our Disneyland Club 33 experience and Trick-or-treating in California you can visit my sister-in-laws blog, Josh and Christina Tidwell.
Now we have been home for a week and their is so much to do but it will all get done I'm sure.

My Little Pirate!

Alma took pictures of Abram almost two weeks ago, I love them. She is so creative I'm so glad to have such a talented friend.
We took hm to the doctors yesterday and he still hasn't reached 10 lbs. which is normal I just keep thinking he is already so big but it put it into perspective he is still so little.

Baby pictures!

I kept forgetting to have Tim download the pictures of Abram off his iphone before he went to work, He put some on facebook but I know that doesn't help some of you. For those of you who don't already know Abram was born last Tuesday on his due date at 12:05 in the afternoon. The delivery went great he's cute and perfect. The girls just LOVE their little brother and Lydia is asking when the next baby is coming. (probably because I still look a little pregnant) The recovery is also going great a lot easier than the c-section. So far he wakes up at 1:30 and 4:30 every night to be fed. He's a great sleeper but all of that can change in an instant.


We also bought a house the day before Abram was born so with all of the paperwork and inspections things have been a little bit crazy. It is a cute house and we are very excited though we wont be moving until December when the Kings get home from their mission. Our closing date is Oct. 23rd so we will have time to move slowly and make any changes to the new house.

Tim also took on a crazy freelance project a week before Abram was due it was a lot of work to get done in such a short time but I'm so proud of him (he hardly slept) The game that he did will be carried by Walmart. Exciting stuff huh?

Thanks Abe,

Fourscore and seven years ago (actually about a month ago) we went to the Abraham Lincoln museum in Springfield, IL. It was stinking fantastic! and we would definitely recommend it to anyone and everyone. After a fun day of shows and looking at old stuff through glass we stopped to pose with the Lincoln's for this photo. What a great day!

In-N-Out

I made my dad this "cake" for his birthday today. He loves In-N-Out but we don't live anywhere near one so I thought this would be funny. The buns and the burgers are yellow and chocolate cake and the fries are sugar cookies.

Sugar Roses

I have made gumpaste Roses before but I have never made the gumpaste myself for fear that it was too complicated and that it wouldn't work. But I went to a new cake store and the owner gave me a recipe that she swore works every time. And it did. I also watched an online tutorial from a british lady and she had some great advise. A lot of the time I have to figure things out on my own because I am not a trained pastry chef so it's nice that there are very specific instructions out there, you just have to know where to look. If you like learning about cake stuff cakejournal.com is a great place to go.


Here are some red roses I did this week for a cake and I loved them Roses are not my personal favorite flower they can be kind of grandma-ish especially if you work for Wilton, But I have a new love for them they really are a classic and beautiful flower even if they are a bit overused.

Lydia Drawing

I love having such a talented husband. He drew this of our Lydia last night while I was at mutual.

Grant's Farm

We had a blast at Grant's Farm. We Have lived in St. Louis for almost 5 years now and we had never been there until yesterday. Boy were we missing out, it was small but the girls loved the elephant show and feeding the baby goats.


This is the home that Ulysses S. Grant grew up in.


And this picture is hard to see but it is the Bush family's personal residence. This is as close as we can get. How would it be!

Lydia is 4!

I think Lydia had a very fun birthday. Unfortunately she was sick but I think it's just a cold so we went to the Zoo anyways. Tim took off work and we enjoyed spending the day together and letting Lydia choose everything. My mom joined us at the zoo and got Lydia the cutest Build-A-Bear Kangaroo with a fairy dress and a little joey, Lydia named her Flutter-oo. By the time we got home yesterday both girls were zonked out. and Lydia woke up worse this morning she just said she wanted to sleep so that's what she's doing.




Tim has more pictures on his phone so there may be more to follow but I won't put any pictures of the cake it tasted great but it looked horrible we have all been sick and I just couldn't spend enough time on it.


I thought I would include these in the same post this is what I did for conference weekend. The cookies ended up not tasting good so the "real" cookies are underneath the better looking ones. I was experimenting.

And the stool is something I bought at Goodwill a long time ago I just needed to paint it. I love doing crafts!

Kiley's Cake

What a busy week! Here are some pictures of a cake I made for my niece Kiley it was her 9th birthday. She had a My Girls party they picked up all the girls in a pink limo and took them to their store where they dressed up and got their nails painted and hair done. I think Lydia had lots of fun she couldn't stop telling people at church yesterday.


On Wednesday I taught the Laurels how to make cookie bouquets if you want to see pictures of how they turned out press here.
Today I went to the doctors again and the baby is still a BOY! Yeah something new for us!

New Beginnings went great!

We just had our New Beginnings program for our young women. I am so excited because it went great. The girls did a fantastic job. We found a script for a program that we kind of liked and we thought that if we made a few changes it would work. but when I was talking to my creative husband he started shooting off ideas so fast that we ended up with some crazy fun ideas. And lots of work. But since we have such great leaders who are all willing to do so much it turned out great I wish we had pictures but of course I was a little distracted and forgot my camera.
So I've been debating about weather or not to bore everyone with all of the details then I thought if you don't want to read about it stop reading now.

New Beginnings program
The original idea that we found online was called Virtue Deli, where they took the new value "virtue" and they created a cooking show where they built a sandwich using the values and their colors as inspiration for ingredients on a sandwich.
Our idea was to use that part of it and create a cooking show that was a challenge and had an apposing deli called the Greasy Spoon. where they built a more "worldly" sandwich using ingredients not based on values but whatever they are feeling like eating at the moment. With my husbands help we created some funny and gross stuff to go on the apposing sandwich. And with the girls help it was a huge success we were able to pull in this years theme "Be thou an example" because one of the girls decided at the end that she didn't want to work for a place like the greasy spoon and the girls from the virtue deli invited her to work for them. then our fantasic judges one of which was wearing a tux concluded by telling the girls that in life if you will make good choices and live a clean and virtuous life you will see that it is a much more satisfying and spiritually nutritious way to live and others will fallow your example.
Rebecca made a DVD for each girl if you want to see it it's on her blog It's amazing! (Click on Rebecca the movie is in the right top corner) and my mom made aprons for each girl to go home with (She's amazing!) for refreshments we had sandwiches from the winning "Virtue Deli" (Subway) and chips and cookies. It was the easiest food I have ever done for a young women program.

Locked out!

So yesterday was a little scary at our house. It was such a nice day so me and the girls went outside to play. After playing for a while Lydia said she was tired so I told the girls to take their shoes off while I round up the balls and tricycles, it took me 2 seconds, then it happened my 18 month old suddenly developed super human strength and was able to shut the back door completely (the door sticks so this is very hard to do) then she pushed the little push lock button because she can't resist a button. Had Lydia been inside she could have just turned the handle and unlocked the door but she was sitting on the step taking off her shoes. So Rachel is on the other side of the door yelling for me to open it and I'm trying to get her to turn the handle but she is just too little. So I ran across the street to Susan's house but she wasn't home and I could see Michelle outside playing with her kids so I grabbed Lydia and we ran with my arms waving trying to get her attention when she saw me I told her that Rachel was locked in the house so she came running with Darcy and her cell phone. I called Tim but he didn't answer which meant he was in a meeting I called my dad and he said he could be here in a half an hour. I called a locksmith but nobody could get there any faster than my dad. I coaxed Rachel to the sliding glass door so I could see her and me and Michelle decided that if she got hurt we would break one of the windows to get to her but if she was okay we could just wait. Rachel would cry a little not really understanding why I couldn't just open the door and then she would get distracted by Lydia and Darcy pulling faces at her through the glass. I finally got a hold of Tim and he left work but with traffic he was still 30 minutes away. When my dad got there he couldn't do anything either (although he sure tried, A for effort Dad!) and by that time we figured we might as well wait for Tim because he had a key. So after 1 hour and 45 minutes Tim was home and Rachel was free and I now have a hide a key in my garage. :)

Cake Displays

So this was one of the things that I was working on for a while. These are hung up in the Michael's store in the Valley.


This was a guitar cake I made a few weeks ago. I did a hunting cake yesterday but I forgot to take pictures oops.

Fun Getaway!

So me and Tim took the girls down to Branson for the weekend. We have never been there before and a friend of ours has a timeshare that she was sweet enough to let us use. The resort was awesome and it was so nice to just get away and explore some place new. Tim and I have been working really hard. Tim has a big freelance project due and I just finished some cake displays for Michael's (I forgot to take pictures so I will go do that today so you all can see why I haven't posted anything in a long time.)


Can you believe this was Tim's idea! He saw the sign and he said that he thought it would be funny to get all dressed up. I was a little more nervouse because I couldn't wear the old western prostitute stuff (not that I wanted to), so we went for a more victorian theme. Tim pulled funny faces in almost every picture of course. the employees couldn't believe Tim wanted this one but they just don't know my husband, I think it's funny.


We only have a few pictures of the fun stuff we did. We ate some great food, played miniature golf, shopped and even went to the fish hatchery wich was serprizingly entertaining. Lydia loved feeding the thousands of fish.


This is Tim and the girls getting some of their energy out before we headed home.

Tim's new Children's Book

Tim just received some copies of a children's book that he Illustrated last year. We are so proud of him. Here are some pictures of Lydia reading it to Rachel.

Magic House

We love the Magic House, they have a new story telling exhibit complete with Cinderella's coach and a Jack in the Bean Stock play area.
Lydia and Rachel love the grocery store. I think they like it even more because we hardly ever get to go. (Tim does most of our grocery shopping at the mini grocery store at his work.)


Rachel loves the cash register.