Fun with Fondant or Leah's Cake Walk Returns

A couple of days ago, I decided that I really wanted to learn how to do fondant. So, I opened up my Wilton cookbook and looked up the recipe. It turns out to be very difficult to make and work with, which I kind of already knew, but here is my first effort. Not too bad, I thought. This is something that I would really like to be good at. I think it's fun to have an occasion, some sort of criterion, that I need to design for, and then to create edible art. Too bad desire alone isn't enough.

Petra Walks.... Again!

There and Back Again

Yesterday, Petra and Talia and I went down to Shriner's again for a cast change. I can't remember if I have written about this yet, so I guess I'll give a re-cap.

I was originally registered to go to school part-time this semester. All summer, I just had this thought in the back of my head that maybe I should drop out. It got stronger and stronger as the summer progressed, and finally in August I decided to make it a matter of prayer and fasting. That confirmed my feelings and I dropped out with absolutely no idea of why. A week later, we took Petra to Shriner's, and her surgeon decided to do a casting series and surgery in November. The series involves going down to SLC every other week to get new casts, which will gradually improve the position of her feet, making the surgery easier. A week after that, we decided to sell our house.

So, yesterday was the second cast change. Petra was so glad to get the first set off, she kept saying over and over again, "I'm just so glad to move my legs!!" It made it pretty tough to turn around and put another set on. Oh, well.

We drove home after we were done at the hospital, but we couldn't go straight home because our house was being shown for the first time. It was sort of a bad day for it, since I wasn't home to get everything sparkly clean, but I am so glad that someone finally looked at it! Instead of going home we went to Lazy D's which is a small restaurant in Shelley owned by a friend of mine from the theatre. We always have fun there because there are always theatre people hanging around to chat with. The food is also pretty good. Incidentally, Dusty has designed the web-site for the theatre, and it's pretty impressive. The URL is www.thevirginiatheater.com , if you are interested in checking it out.

For Sale

I have been working like mad for the past few weeks to get our house ready to sell. It has been a very frustrating process. No matter how hard I worked, I never seemed to get anywhere. I had to sort through and box up everything we didn't really need in the house, paint every singe room except for the downstairs bathroom (it was recently painted) and clean everything. In addition to everything I could do (basically the tasks that didn't require any real skill) there was tons for Dusty to do. He had to finish re-modeling the upstairs bathroom (everything in it is new), put a new light in the stair well (it's really dark), put new carpet in the stair well (can you say astro-turf?), and put in a new front door. He also helped me with my tasks as much as he could, but we ended up starting this project just as school started for him. We still have a little bit of work left to do, but, Saturday night, we finally got this place officially listed! I was tickled to death to see that sign out in front of our house. It's happening!

For those of you who don't know, this all started when we happened to find a house in Idaho Falls that we really want. My best friend growing up and her husband just bought a new house, and we went to visit them. Her house has 5 bedrooms, and is very nice. Well, I jokingly told her that we should have bought it out from under them, since we could really use the bedrooms (our current house has 3 bedrooms with 7 kids and 2 adults--do the math.) Anyway, my friend said that there was a very nice house just one street over for sale. As we left her house, we decided to just drive by the other house to see what it was like. We went past the one that she had meant, but we saw another house down the road that sparked our interest right away. We got one of the little flyer things that told all about it, and it showed that there was a large shop on the back of the property as well. Anyway, we just thought about it for a couple of days, and I thought, "I wonder how much that house costs?" So, I called up the real estate agent and asked her. And, it wasn't too bad. So we thought about it for a little bit longer, and I said to Dusty, "You know, I feel like we really should go and take a look at that house." Ever since then, we have been referring to it as "Our House". The shop could be our very own fencing building, something that Dusty has been dreaming about for the past 9 years. And there is an upstairs family room that we can convert to a master bedroom (complete with its own bathroom!) making it a 6 bedroom house.

Now, we just have to hope and pray that our house will sell and the owner's of the other house will accept our offer.

Here We Go Again

Today we went back to Shriner's, and began a new casting series on Petra's feet. We will go back down to SLC every other week to get these casts changed. The idea is to gradually stretch out the skin and tendons to improve her feet in preparation for surgery in November. The more progress we make with the casts, the easier the surgery.

Theoretically, she should be able to walk in these, but as the knees are bent, I honestly have my doubts. However, I dug out her walker, and with some practice, I think that she will be able to manage it. Until then, I'm going to be sending her to school in a stroller, a short-term wheel-chair.

Funny Girl

Yesterday, I painted the girl's room. When it came time for Talia's nap, I didn't want to put her in there because of the paint fumes, so I put her on my bed instead. She fussed for a little while, but then quieted down. I wanted to make sure that she was okay and asleep, so I opened the door and peeked in on her, but she wasn't on my bed anymore. She had climbed down and gone to sleep on the dog's bed instead!

RMNP

RMNP at sunset
Thunder Lake
The guys on a rest stop
I caught a fish!

Ryan called me and asked me to write my side of the Rocky Mountain National Park trip, and so, here goes.

The first day we hiked in from the trail head. It seemed like it took us a long time to get going, partially because we had a hard time getting the trip permit, but we finally managed it. I think that I managed the first 1/3 of the six-mile, up-hill-all-the-way, hike quite well. It started raining part way through, but that didn't bother me too much. I had a poncho, and it was actually kind of fun jumping over the stream that had once been a trail and splashing in the puddles. However, after we stopped for lunch, I started getting really tired. For the whole rest of the hike, I was pretty much just keeping my head down, and going, going, going. It took forever. Then, when we finally got to our campsite, I started getting really cold. My feet were soaked, and even my sleeping bag had gotten wet (despite the fact that it was covered in a trash bag.) I changed my socks, and huddled up in Rob's sleeping bag. I was feeling pretty miserable at that point.

The next morning, was much better. I had slept okay, despite the fact that my toes never did warm up. I was, however, very stiff and sore. We stayed in camp for two days, and during that time, I read (I finished Oliver Twist on this trip--Good book!!), I played my Nintendo DS (until the batteries ran down), I went down to Thunder Lake and fished (I caught 2 fish!), I played cards (31 with the family, and solitaire alone), and I memorized my lines for A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was kind of a neat experience to be memorizing those lines in the woods, because for most of the play my character is lost in the woods. Reed, Rich, Rob, and Dad all went on one or more hikes during that time, but I was kind of hiked out. Mom and I also had a camping cook-off. Reed had bought several dehydrated dinners for the trip. Most of them were of the "add two cups boiling water" variety, but two of them had to be cooked in a pan over the stove. Mom went first and made brownies. It didn't go particularly well. The trouble is that it is very difficult to achieve a low heat with the kind of stove that Dad and Rob brought along. For my cooking challenge, I made "I can't believe it's sausage pizza!", for which you have to cook the crust. It actually went quite well, despite the fact that everyone else stood around giving me advice the whole time I was cooking. So, needless to say, I won the cooking contest.

The final day we hiked down from the mountain. This was a verrryyy bad experience for me. I had slept very poorly the past couple of nights, and when I woke up that morning, I had one of my back/neck aches. It was a pretty bad one, too. I just could not imagine wearing 30 pounds on my back with it already hurting this much! However, I took 4 extra-strength Tylenol, got Mom to coat me down with Bio-Freeze, grit my teeth, and started heading down. Because the trail had been all up-hill on the way in, it was all down-hill on the way out. I just started off at a pretty good clip and refused to stop until I got to the bottom. I did stop to take a couple of drinks of water, but I didn't sit down to rest once. Actually, my back did pretty well, although I did have to take off my left shoulder strap periodically when it started hurting.

All in all, it was a pretty fun trip. It definitely wasn't my idea of a fun vacation, but it was really nice to be with the family (except for Ryan *pout*), and it was a beautiful location that I could never have seen otherwise.