And now for the story...at last

Good grief! Has it really been since June since I was on here?! I bet the suspense was killing you! :)

I didn't mean to leave you all hanging and wondering what that random thing was that I left a picture of last time. But Heidi is the winner, she answered the question of what it could be. Yay, Heidi! :D

Yes, the picture I showed you was indeed a staircase made out of sugar that Dad constructed to go on Malia's "Frozen" birthday cake. As you are all aware, there is this Disney movie that goes by the name of "Frozen" and it's kind of a big deal, umm, everywhere. 

Malia has especially been frostbitten by the craze and about a month or so before her actual birthday, she requested that Dad build her an epic cake in the theme of "Frozen".

Lucky for us, Dad is basically a genius and has created several awesome cakes throughout the years but it had been a while since we've had something quite like this.

For several weeks before Malia's birthday in June Dad employed the help of all of us (except Malia, who wasn't allowed to know anything about it once we got started) and we got into serious cake-building mode.       Dad planned everything out and did most of the actual creating so I guess you could consider Mom and I the "creative consultants/back-up helpers". Some days it turned into a cross between those tv shows

 "Hell's Kitchen" and "Cake Boss", but I'd say the result was most rewarding. 

I don't even want to think about how much sugar we went through in the process, and the many nights that Dad stayed up well past midnight are a little crazy.

Anyway, in the end we ended up making 2 1/2  yellow cakes which we turned into jello poke cakes, then 2 lemon poppy seed pound cakes, a boatload of frosting, and a few layers of fondant. We found a recipe for homemade lollipops and Dad used that for several different effects.

Obviously things are not totally up to scale, we just kind of mashed several different locations and scenes from the movie all into one place.

And if you'd rather just see how it all turned out rather than reading all the commentary, here we finally have some pictures!

This is an "aerial" shot during the assemblage of this beast.

This is more of an in-depth look over the frozen lake and into the snowy mountain castle. 

Another shot from the top of the finished cake.

We had Malia's birthday dinner after church and I think we had her pretty hyped up to see the cake that had been in the works for nearly a month! 

Dad brought up the cake from it's basement hide-out and then had Malia close her eyes until he could get it in front of her.

Surprise!!!

Time to check it out!

The sister missionaries were over for dinner and it was almost one of their birthday's too, so we kind of had a double party. :)

Except for the action figures, pretty much everything else on the cake was edible. We had the frozen lake made out of the lollipop mix, as well as the staircase and castle. The troll village was fondant, frosting, and chocolate rocks and the big daddy troll was marshmallow and frosting. Then we had rock candy sticks to look like the frozen trees.

This guy was just too heavy to put on the cake, plus the sugar cubes and frosting paste just kept falling apart so Dad just held him up to be seen during the big reveal. :)

Here's the cute troll man! I think he was one of my favorites!

The sad part was that all of us except for Malia got to see the cake so much that we almost never wanted to see it again! (Just kidding). She only got to see it for a few minutes before we cut into it.

 The great thing about Dad is that he never does anything half-way. The exhausting thing about Dad is that he never does anything half-way. :)

  A long time ago one of our cousins used the motto "Go Big or Go Home" to describe Dad. Yep, that about says it all! He just loves having projects to do and things to figure out and create, which has always been for us to see what he'll come up with next. 

  Whew, now I hope you can all rest easy and not have anymore sleepless nights as you think, "What ever could that picture be of?!" ;)

Can you guess what this is?

Today I'm going to leave you all in suspense. :)

Here is a picture of one of Dad's creations, made in preparation for Malia's up-coming birthday.

Clue: It's made out of sugar, corn syrup (aka-liquid sugar), and blue food coloring; when Dad's done with it, there will actually be two of them.

Think about it and I'll be back with more soon. :)

May in all it's glory

Hi everybody! Did you think I'd forgotten about you?

May has come and gone and it's already June! It was a pretty full month and kind of non-stop, which is why there has been a serious lack of blog posts lately. But for your sakes I'll try to keep the commentary from dragging too much and I'll just narrate a little as we go, since, let's be honest, pictures are the best parts about looking at a blog (usually) anyway. :)

To start off the month I rode to Twin with the Ingrams (and a couple Griggs :) so we could get our jig on at the Highland Games at CSI. We had two performances that day and filled the time there by eating some of the best burritos this side of the border, as well as stopping at an ice cream shop in Buhl that is actually calling my name right now!

  During the last performance there, a bunch of my cousins and their kids, plus Grandma Farns all came to watch. It was the best to look out in the audience and see almost one whole side of the crowd filled up with people from my family.

 That's the good stuff.

Mother's Day weekend was quite the perpetual shindig as well. Grandma Farns came up for a couple of days plus we had Grandma Jack over, too. We went to a movie, watched the play of "The Secret Garden", ate, and ate (Dad was in charge of the menu - need I say more?), AND we all got to be here to talk to David on skype. It was his last one, which means that the next time we see him - it will be in person!!!!! 

We all gathered around the computer and waited for "the call" to come in from Brasil.

There he is!! I tried to take others pictures of him, but they turned out kind of blurry. Since this was the third time to see him on Skype during his mission, this round was more of a visit than a "tell me everything since it's been so long" kind of conversation - if that makes any sense. 

We all just talked and told stories the whole time. I told him a couple stories that made him throw his head back and laugh and it was just like he always used to do. 

I miss that guy! Him and I hung out so much before he left so even though I'm totally good with him being where he is, there are still those moments when I just miss him more than usual, so it was good to see that we can still make each other laugh like we used to.

And here we are at the end of the party. It was such a good weekend!

Then even more recently it was Dad's birthday, so of course we did a dinner for him. I got to try my hand at making a butterscotch mousse for the dessert, so I was excited about that.

As long as I can remember, Dad has been a Superman fan, and I think that was always his favorite superhero from when he was a kid. Mom found this sweet bag for him, which he claimed is a self-portrait. :) I helped him bring his ego back down to size by telling him if he stuck out his neck a little for this picture, it would eliminate some of his chins! :) Haha!! 

I babysat one of my best little buddies, PJ, and his little brother Patrick, plus a little girl in the ward, Ava. We loaded up into the car and went to the park for a while. I just die when I see this picture! Time with those boys is pretty much summed up by what's going on in that moment. :)

We had our clogging Spring Show last week and here we all are in our rockin' Western wear! 

And to end May with a bang, Malia and I took a little road trip to Twin and Jerome for a girls' night with a few of our cousins and Grandma Farns. Malia and I got there a little early so we headed to the mall (which is the sight behind us in our "selfie") to wait for the rest of the gang to get there. 

There's a nice theater in the Twin mall so we met up with the girls, got our tickets to the new movie, "Maleficent" then drove over to The River Rock Grill for dinner before the movie. 

Afterwords we stayed the night at Grandma's, watched a couple old episodes of "Sherlock Holmes" with her, and then headed back to Boise on Saturday morning. 

Good times!