Martha Stewart Can Kiss My Grits

Last night we went to our friends, the Sundahl's, for a "tree house party." Throughout this summer they have been working on a very impressive tree house in their back yard. So with Indian food on the menu, I offered to make the dessert. I'm sure by my title you can already sense my demise.

Yesterday happened to be one of, if not the hottest day of August 2007. I believe that my commentator friend on NPR said that the heat index was 104. That means that with the humidity it felt like "the inside of a mouth." Terrible day to try a new recipe, especially one that involves a ton of butter.

Not thinking I printed out the three recipes, with a total 20 steps that were supposed to produce a great cake. I even watched the video from her show so I would do it all exactly the way she did. During my production I realized that this was also a two person operation. (well three actually because they have a kitchen aid mixer which counts in our kitchen as another person, which we don't have.)

This is what it was going to look like!

All was workable until the frosting portion of the experiment. Our house was just too hot. The butter was too soft and my whipped butter cream frosting looked terrible. Boo and I conjured up a solution however once we got the frosting on the cake it wouldn't stick, also because it was too hot. It wanted to melt and slide off. We tried to put it in the fridge to cool it down but every time we took it out we had the same surprise, a huge pile of frosting at the bottom of the cake. We needed cake suspenders to hold it up. We learned that more in this case is not better and that patching up the sides where it had slid down didn't help. So needless to say our cake was a flop. It tasted fine, but looked awful.

Maybe I should have taken my sissy's advice and gone and bought the chocolate cake at the Costco. It would have looked a million times better. Also, I have learned that Martha's recipes are not for the faint of heart and she should put a disclaimer on the recipe that says in extreme heat and humidity this recipe is sure to fail.

Thanks to our friends who actually ate the cake.

Oh me of little faith

Last night we went to the baptism of a new friend Luis. I was thinking that he is incredibly wise for his years. Before the baptism we had him over for dinner with the missionaries. This wasn't the first time he'd been to our house as Boo had participated in the discussions with him before. But he's only 17, lives with some relatives but takes care of himself while his mother has left to take work somewhere, he doesn't know. Doesn't know his father at all either. We got talking about school and his plans for after graduation. I told him that if it was me, I'd be freaking out and that I thought he was really calm for his situation. I commend his decision for being baptized. I know that he thought through it very carefully. It was a really nice event to be part of.

Cape Cod Day

So one of these years we will indeed make a trip to Cape Cod for more than just a day's worth of activities. Maybe we'll get smart and go in the middle of the week and stay through a weekend?

We were invited to go to Nickerson State Park to do some camping with friends from the hood (neighborhood). Boo and I packed up our beach gear the night before and decided we'd head out early Saturday morning, as to beat the crazy end of summer beach goers. For those of you who have never driven to the Cape on a Saturday in the summer, it really only has two ways on, Bourne and Sagamore bridges. We haven't ever gone over the Bourne bridge, but the Sagamore creates a serious bottle neck for getting on and off the Cape. But if you leave early enough like we did you will avoid all of that nonsense.

Noelle eating some spilled Fruitloops out of the dirt. Ah, I love my scavenger baby!

We hung out at the camp ground for a while before heading out to Marconi Beach. Boo and I tried some boogie boarding.

Noelle just played in the sand and made new friends on the beach, as she wandered off while I was snapping pics of Boo in the water. I think they group she was hanging out with was laying bets on how long it would be before someone in our group noticed she was gone. (disclaimer - no we're not bad parents, its just that the baby sensors were turned off for those who agreed to watch her for us, and its ok, we can still be friends.)

After the beach we went back to the campground and went on a nice bike ride just before dark. Seeing how I was on a tiny little bike the workout was a little more intense than I had planned on. But it was still a really beautiful ride.

- We'll just call this picture "WIFE" the ultimate ball and chain

We ended the night with a tasty dinner compliments of Papa Bokovoy. He even made his own ketchup.

Thanks for a fun day on the Cape. Next time I go to Nickerson I plan on bringing my bike and sleeping in a yurt. Yes three state parks in Massachusetts offer yurt camping, I bet you're jealous.

Blueberry Picking Dejavu

We went blueberry picking again, but this time we went for the smaller more tedious berries to pick. I don't know blueberries very well, but Jen says they're better to cook with. I'll take her word for it. However I'm so smart I put two boxes full of berries on the top of the stroller and then tried to do some four wheeling and dumped my hard to pick berries into the crab grass. It made me swear. Poor Ian's virgin ears. We scooped up as many as we could and then had to go back and pick some of the fat berries to top it off. Good enough for me. When I rinsed them I found a bunch of sticks and grass in the strainer.

We thought maybe the babies would like to just hang out in the stroller, but they didn't fit as well as we would have liked them to.

The Freedom Trail for the Millionth Time

Riley and Tate win the prize. I think I just did the Freedom Trail for the millionth time. We didn't get going until later in the day so we weren't able to complete the whole thing, but we saw some good stuff and and did the Bunker Hill Memorial at the beginning of their Boston tour. It has a new visitor's center that just opened this summer. Pretty cool.

They also saw Fenway Park (which Tate had never heard of, duh), the Museum of Science, and the aforementioned Six Flags. No beach though. We like to go to the beach, but I couldn't convince those boys. I guess three days really isn't enough time to do it all. And its kind of an expensive journey if you try to do it all.

Roller Coasters and White Trash

This summer seems to be a summer of firsts. Blueberry picking and now Six Flags! My brother Riley and his friend Tate skipped on over to Boston after their week at EFY in Palmyra, NY. We made the venture out to western Massachusetts to experience its major attraction of Six Flags New England. I wasn't sure if we were going to the Massachusetts version of Lagoon or if we were going to the Warner Bros version of Disneyland. Needless to say all of these places have one thing in common; the common definition, in demonstration of white trash. Yeah, I said it. Honestly folks, I realize there is a water park attached to the theme park, but is it really necessary to pretend that your swimsuit is part of your roller coaster riding attire? Absolutely not! Not only did I see things I didn't ever want to imagine, but I guess I had no idea that body shape versus swimsuit really doesn't matter to the general theme park population. One word: scary. Maybe I only noticed because we were standing in line for long periods of time and I had a lot of time to evaluate the fashions.

Despite our neighbors in line we got to ride some awesome roller coasters. Superman was so fantastic that I honestly couldn't say or scream a single word. I thought my tongue might fall out. Seriously. It was crazy scary/fun/pee your pants cool. Another fun one was Batman, hence our picture.

L to R: Tate, Riley, Boo (with flamboyant hand pose), Rach

Noelle unfortunately didn't get to come, however we are so indebted to the Jackson's for letting her pretend she was Ian's twin sister for the day.

A very New England thing to do

Last Friday we participated in one of the classic New England activities of the summer. Fruit picking!!! Yes folks, there are many places around where you can go and pick your own fruit. Common varieties would be raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, peaches, and of course apples. Ryan and I have gone with the youth in our ward to pick apples for the annual apple pie making night at the church, but that seems so limited with such a large variety of produce to choose from.

Rachel with Noelle and cousin Ian

So Noelle, Ian, Jen, Lindsay, and Spencer all got our pick on. (sounds like something you'd say about the guy in the car next to you who is picking his nose.) I digress. We found a lovely orchard for picking and with the rainy conditions and cool summer air it was one of the most spectacular things my Utah native eyes had ever seen. I wasn't exactly sure what a blueberry patch looked like and much to my amazement there were loads of berries. I decided that there aren't too many things much more beautiful than a loaded up, ripened blueberry bush. Be still my heart.

Needless to say we ate our fill of berries and took a bunch home too! Definitely a tedious task, but worth the experience and money.

Something to blog about

So we haven't been doing too much in the past week besides pretending to be hermits and staying in our house because its too damn hot to be outside and chances are that it might just be so humid it will rain. I played the inside outside and back inside game while trying to rid our garden of some weeds. I won't be playing that one again.

Besides being completely perplexed about returning to the working world versus raising my child, we've just really been reinforcing that bond between mama and Jelly. However she does put on a good show when Boo leaves in the morning. I even think it makes him feel better about himself to know that she's sad to see him go and so happy when he returns.

Noelle got some more immunization shots today and she totally knew they were coming. Poor girl. But she did get some super-fly band aids that sparkle. But besides the shots, our doc said she seems so much older than she really is and its not because her head is the size of a three year old either, or that she's a little bit tall for her age. Its really because she wanted to chat the head off the doctor with her baby gibberish. Does that sound like anyone we know? Guess not. We're so lucky.