Ohio

Although it didn't start off on a great note, Stephen and I had a blast on our trip! First of all, I hate traveling by airplane; I have to take a minute and complain about the first day of our trip because we were stuck in the airport ALL day--for over 12 hours! One thing is for sure, we will never fly with American Airlines or American Eagle again. We both thought Wednesday would be a nice relaxing day--we would leave SLC at 7:00 am and be in Cleveland by 3:00 pm so we'd have the rest of the evening to drive to our hotel and go out to dinner and catch some Zs so that we could get up early to hit the roller coasters.

We got up at 4:30 am to arrive at the airport by 5:00 am; when we were five miles from the airport Stephen got a phone call from a 1-800 number and ignored it because lately he's been getting calls from telemarketers as early as 6:00 in the morning. We pulled into the parking lot and his phone rang again, so Stephen was ready and willing to answer the phone to give them an ear full for calling him so early in the morning. Well, it turned out to be the airlines telling him that our plane had been delayed for four hours so instead of leaving at 7:00 it wouldn't leave until after 11:00. We went inside to see what was going on and they told us our plane would leave around 9:30 so we decided to stay at the airport instead of going back home. Well, 9:30 came and went and the plane was delayed some more; we were at the SLC airport for almost 6 hours before we left. We finally got to Chicago to catch our connecting flight and that plane was delayed by a few more hours, so we didn't get to Cleveland until 10:00 that night. Then on top of that we still had an hour drive to where our hotel was so we didn't get dinner, sleep, or the relaxing evening we had hoped for.

CEDAR POINT
We were so excited to hit all the roller coasters Thursday morning. Luckily school started the day before we got into town so the lines for the rides weren't as bad as what we thought they would be. The longest we had to wait for a ride was 45 minutes. This amusement park is one of the best, if not, the best in the nation. It has some of the longest, fastest, and tallest coasters in North America. We rode the rides for about seven hours the first day and Friday we rode the rest of them and headed into the water park for the rest of the afternoon.

 This is the Dragster--it's 410 feet tall and drops you at 120 mph. Its a short ride, but wow, it make your stomach curdle and tie up in knots!

     
These are just a few of the other big coasters we got to ride. this wooden one called mean streak was so rickety that it knocked the wind out of us after climbing a hill and it came a sudden halt at the end of the ride that if we weren't strapped in we would have gone flying several hundred yards out of the roller coaster. Magnum was my favorite coaster; we rode on that one twice (the first picture) and Stephen's favorite was Millennium Force (the second picture). The only souvenir we took home was a caricature of the both of us. The water park was a lot of fun as well, we spent a good portion of the afternoon on the water slides and the wave pool. There are at least a dozen water slides but the wave pool was my favorite part even though it cut up the bottom of my feet pretty good.

KIRTLAND
We spent a day and a half in Cleveland and Kirtland for the remainder of our trip. We went to the Museum of Natural History Saturday morning before we headed to Kirtland. I love museums like this one; it had animals, birds, and insects from every continent, dinosaurs, rocks and gems, a planetarium, and an evolutionarily wall where they keep the famous "Lucy" one of earths earliest bipedal human beings.

I've heard about Lucy on the history and discovery channels before and find her fascinating. They don't have all her bones, but she is the most complete and oldest biped to this day. She is an adult human who only stands at a mere 3.5 feet tall!

We spent a few hours in this museum and then drove to Kirtland where we toured the Newel K. Whitney store, his home, the John Johnson Inn, the saw mill, and lots of other historic places. My favorite was the Newel K. Whitney's store because it's a lot bigger inside than what it looks. It was so neat to see how they lived and where the prophet Joseph Smith and his family stayed with them. We went inside the School of the Prophets, and the parlor where Joseph received the word of wisdom and many other revelations.

 Newel K. Whitney Home

 The store. Poor Stephen had to stand there facing the sun, lol

                       The School of the Prophets

Even though I have been told all the stories growing up in the church about the life of the prophet Joseph Smith it was really amazing to see everything first hand and walk where he had once walked. You could feel the spirit as we walked through each room in every building testifying that what we were witnessing was true--all the stories we hear in church every week and that the gospel really is true. I loved the stories, or testimonies rather, of the people who saw Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in this very room.

Next stop was the Kirtland temple. By this time in the day we were kind of exhausted and really tired, but took a tour of the inside of the temple. Again it was cool to see first hand the pictures they show you in sunday school. The time an energy those people had to go through to build that temple and then have to leave it a few months afterward was just amazing to look at and hear about. The temple is gorgeous inside and out. We would have loved to go to the John Johnson and Isaac Morley farms, but it was late and we were just way too tired to drive around some more. All the tours had closed for the day anyway, but there's always next time.

  The Kirtland temple in all its splendor

SUNDAY

Our last day in Cleveland was quite relaxing, for the most part, we got to sleep in until we needed to check out of the hotel and spent a few hours in the art museum (it was free). This place was huge! We enter one room and go through the next and the next; it was like a maze that was never ending and it was two floor at that. First, we looked at all the pieces of art and artifacts from around the world including Rome, Africa, England, and Asia. There were things dating clear back from 1 AD and beyond! We saw pottery, sculptures, coins, and jewelry from ancient Rome and Italy, Armour and swords from Medieval times, paintings of Christ, apostles, and saints from the Christian era, and modern American art from artists like Pollock (whom I don't care for), Pablo Picaso, Vincent Van Gogh, and Auguste Rodin.

The Thinker (Rodin)

This wasn't as large as I thought is was in real life. I was expecting a monumental size of this tiny statue, but it was cool nonetheless.

We ended up going to the airport three hours before our plane was to leave because we had nowhere else to go. We got there and waited for the plane, and again, our flight was delayed two hours which meant that we wouldn't make it in time for our connector in Dallas so we complained to the desk and they switched us to Delta which got us home four hours earlier than when we would have gotten home and we only had to fly to Cincinnati and then to SLC.

Our bodies are all bruised, cut, and tired and aside from Stephen getting pulled over, our delayed flights, and muggy weather it was all worth it to get to spend a long weekend with Stephen before he leaves me in two and a half weeks. We so needed this vacation from all the school and moving we had to do this year. I love you Stephen, thanks for the vacation!

A New Beginning

Well, Stephen and I finally made it back to Salt Lake City. It feels like we graduated years ago already even though it was just last week, but it feels so much like home now here in Utah. We got all moved into our new condo and couldn't be happier. We have big plans for the future and can't wait to get started!

Stephen is going back to work with another raise and promotion and I will be looking for work during the day to keep me busy. Stephen is leaving in September to Georgia for six months for FLETC training while I hold down the fort here at home. This is something that Stephen is on the fence with--he wants and needs to go to training to get his badge and gun, but it's yet another six months of school with tests and homework, so it's a good thing half of it is gun and combat training so its something fun that he wants to learn.

We are anxiously waiting for our trip to Cedar Point towards the end of this month to ride some of the nation's longest, fastest, best roller coasters. Then we'll head to Kirtland for a few days of church history sites; I can't wait! Yesterday in church we found out that we have a stake Lagoon day this month where we can get into Lagoon for free including parking, haha so we'll be going to Lagoon right before we go to Ohio; how awesome is that?!

The New 2011 BYU-Idaho Graduates!

My Pride and Joy

...of the semester. This is my final cake project that I finished 10 minutes before class. It's a yellow cake filled with layers of cream cheese icing and strawberry preserves. Everything on it is edible.

Making this cake caused a lot of stress and frustration the past few weeks, but it looks beautiful and was worth all the effort in the end. If only I had some friends and family near to share it with...

Homemade Baked Goods

So here are all, or most of, the cakes and baked goods I have made throughout this semester. I have to admit that I've been enjoying cake decorating more that I initially thought I would, but it's a very time consuming and, at times, frustrating thing to accomplish. I've had some ups and downs with all the cakes I've created and you have to understand that I was not free to pick and choose what I put on my cakes, so some may seem a little disjointed. There were certain criteria that we had follow and certain elements that we had to include on all of our cakes in order for them the get graded. The few baked goods, however, were not graded so I made whatever I wanted with those. I have now started on my final projects so I will post those pictures when they are finished at the end of the semester.

First up is my first graded cake assignment: butter cream. I have to include my story for this cake because, at the time, I was so sad and angry with it, but after it was graded I was laughing about the whole thing.....

Back home in Twin everybody seems to think that Stephen and I have all the luck and we get "big breaks" all the time; nothing bad ever happens to us (which I think is funny because we don't feel that way) but, yes, we have been blessed so much these past few years while going to school it's been amazing looking back at what we have accomplished.


 So with that here's my story: My teacher told us we should have our cakes all made and ready to be frosted two weeks before our project was due so that's what I did. I had to make it two times because I was having problems, but I picked out the two biggest and best layers and filled and iced them so I could stay on top of everything. The cake has been iced for the past two weeks so one Saturday I decided it would be a good idea to finish putting on all the decorations so I could focus the rest of the week on my other homework. (my cake was due that upcoming Thursday) I worked on the cake for 6 hours straight that Saturday and finished it early evening. I put it in the fridge because Stephen and I had noticed that the sides of the cake were getting all wrinkly and droopy--its as if the cake itself, inside the icing, shrunk and the icing on the outside fell and kind of sunk in. A big portion of my grade is how level, smooth, and straight the cake is and now I'm going to lose a lot of points because of what happened.

After church that Sunday I looked in the fridge and saw my cake sitting there and it looked a lot worse than it did previously on Saturday. I got pretty upset by it and for some reason Stephen wasn't very sympathetic towards me he told me, "Suck it up; there's nothing you can do about it, and it's stupid to cry over a cake" those were his exact words, lol That didn't make me feel any better so I grabbed my phone and called Mom but no one answered so I just laid on my bed and started crying. I was just mad because I didn't know what was causing my cake to "fall", I spent 12 hours making it, and Stephen wasn't consoling me. After that, Stephen came into the room and picked me up and carried me into the living room, but as he went out the door he wasn't watching my arms very carefully and ended up smashing my right arm into the wall and scraping it up pretty good. It immediately turned pink and soon dark purple. I now have a GIGANTIC bruise going all the way up my bicep, haha. Stephen felt pretty bad about it. That following week we got our grades back for our cakes and I ended up getting a 95 percent. I guess it really was stupid to cry over a cake!!

My fondant cake

 

Royal Icing Cake

 Raspberry Rhubarb Pie

My first French bread and my midterm project for confectionery. We had to make a  centerpiece that was at least six inches tall entirely out of sugar. I hand sculpted the vase out of white modeling chocolate with the roses made from fondant and the butterfly and flowers on the vase are royal icing. 

It has been fun creating all these "works of art" and my baking knowledge has grown considerably, but I'll be glad when I can take a break from baking and making candies several times a week.

The End is Near

Stephen and I are still truckin' along; I'm getting ready to start my two final projects in cake decorating and confectionery. These will consume the rest of my time this semester which means I will be spending the rest of my Saturdays in the school kitchen. We have five weeks left!! I'm getting anxious for this summer to be over with so I can just move back to Utah. We have been looking at houses in SLC the past few weeks, so we made a list of places to look at over the 4th of July weekend. I'm getting excited for another break from school even if it is just three days. It'll be a whirlwind of a trip because we have to go to SLC for a day and half and then to Twin to see the family for another day and a half. I knew we'd have to make the triangle sooner or later.  That's a lot of driving for one weekend not to mention trips to the gas station, but it's all worth the trip.

I've mentioned before that I love ice cream, so this semester Stephen and I have done really well--some how we got a hold of a few  buy-one-get-one-free coupons to use at two different stores so we go out for frozen yogurt just about every weekend and pick up a redbox on the way home. I love our date nights:)

This last Saturday we took some photos because it's been about a year already from the last time we took some. We took them ourselves which is pretty hard to do if you want some really good ones. I ended up just setting down the camera on a table, rock, or side rail and put the timer on, haha, then Stephen would push the button and see if he could make it back to his spot before it went off...needless to say we only got a few good ones; the others had weird faces or just legs in the shot because he wasn't fast enough.

We are still having fun up here while finishing school; we don't get to do too many exciting things because of school work and lack of funds, but we make do with what we have and have a ball!