The Reception

Here are a few pictures from the reception. I was too upset to take any with my camera. I took these from my sister in laws facebook. (Thanks Paige!)

Trying to get the family together for photos. Kimball was done with everything by this time. He was starting to sick at this point. He did great through. I am so proud of him. This trip was really hard on him with his sensory issues.

Karl's parents set up a kids table. I thought that was a great. Kimball was often found there coloring away. If he wasn't there he was hiding in the nursery.

I love this photo. This is the older cousins were in love with Cherise. They said she was a princess. I love Phoebes face. It is pure adoration!

This is Jaren, and Warren in the background. While we were getting family photos the boys thought it would be great to act like frogs, jump around say "ribbit" It really was darling. Jaren and Warren are only a month a apart in age and became little buddies over this weekend.

Another family shot. It was a blast, let me tell you!
This is Phoebe with her cousins. She loves them!! Joelle and Phoebe are only a month apart in age, too. There were often found holding hands and playing every game they could.
Okay I am caught up! Enough blogging for one night!

This is the cake at the beginning. I was thrilled and happy. I have been planning this cake for months. It was a four teird strawberry cake with a chocolate strawberry filing. It was covered in a cream cheese frosting and then fondant. The below picture is all the ingredients that was need for the cake. I thought it would be fun to show you all!

This is my sister in law Paige. She is wonderful, she volunteered to help me the whole day to do the cake. I had baked them at home and transported eight cakes five hours north. At this point in the day everything was going great! The cakes were coming together great. It wasn't until we started to stack the cakes that all heck broke loose!

This is me, putting it together the first time. It didn't' take long for us to realise that the bottom layer was not holding up to the weight of the cake. I had never run into this. I have always done everything you are suppose to do. I put the dowels in the cake, and had each layer had a wooden board. So we took the cake apart and added more wooden dowels in the cake to give it strength. We put it back to together. Again we had bulging and puckering and sagging. It was horrible. I was about to have a panic attack. We were then given the idea to take the cake apart, again, and cut out parts of the bottom cake and add cups in to hold it up. So we gave it a try. What else could we do?

This is me trying to put on a brave face. I was praying the whole time this would work. I had no clue what else to do. I didn't know how I was going to face Cherise if this didn't work out. How could I let me little sister in law down???? Okay, Paige held me together, I couldn't have done it without her. We put the cups in the bottom layer, recovered in fondant and put it back together. It seemed to work. For a while. This is the cake when I left to get ready for the reception.


At the time it looked great. Like it would work. I was still sick to my stomach. When I reached the reception about an hour and a half later I was shaking. The cake wasn't holding! I was ready to vomit. Now layer two and three were sagging! We had only an hour till the reception started so we tilted the cake stand to help it not fall over and then had to put a plastic lid folded a couple of time under one layer to hold that end up. What the heck was wrong with this cake? I felt so horrible! Cherise was wonderful and said it didn't matter, she thought it looked beautiful. Those words meant a lot to me. I still felt bad. I wanted it to be perfect. The next picture is a view of the room. You can see the cake looking a little lopsided. Oh I am embarrassed to post this, but I think it will be therapeutic to get it off my chest.


The reception decor was beautiful! To make a very long (and painful) story short, it held together alright for the night. We made the couple cut the cake pretty soon and they started to cut it up. I enjoyed hiding in the kitchen and slicing the horrible cake to death. While in the kitchen, holding back tears, a darling old lady came up to me, she said, that she had been making cakes longer than I had been a live. She said that some cakes just don't make it, but that she had never not been able to make one work. She then told me that I did a great job making it work. I wanted to curl up in her arms while she rocked me. IT was the best comfort I could have heard. I will always hate that cake. I will feel bad for a really long time, but I will get over it. It worked, Cherise is married and happy. That is the best part. One good point, people really liked how it tasted! Point for taste!

Oh and the apron I was wearing?
I made it. I wore it the whole time I mixed, baked, decorated, and resurrected the cake. I gave it to Cherise as a present. I think I will make an apron for every major cake I make and then give it to the person I make the cake for. That is if I ever make a cake again!

Trip To Idaho!

This past month we drove up to Idaho to celebrate with Cherise and Karl for there wedding! It was a fun trip. It had some crazy moments but I am really glad we could go. The first reason was because of family! We were able to hang out with Brian, Paige, and Matt and Sarah. With them came four cousins! Phoebe was so thrilled to have girls to play with. She would spend every minute with Jillise and Joelle. It makes me so sad that we can't be closer! We spent all the time that we could together. We spent time on Karl's family farm. They raise Beefalo. The kids loved to watch them. They actually got to witness a Beefalo give birth! I was getting ready to answer some facts of life questions with Phoebe. When I asked her about it, she said it was funny because the baby fell on its head when it tried to walk and that the mom ate the funny blood stuff that came with the baby. I laughed at that, but that is all she said. Kimball got sick one night of the trip. He throw up the whole night. It was exhausting for him and I. It was the night of the reception. I had been on my knee all night and then up all night catching vomit. The next day I spent most of the day in bed. Even with the puking it was a great trip. The cake was the worst part. That is right, you heard me! I usually love to make cakes, but this one was the cake from hell! That is the next post!

This year during the egg hunt I got to watch from the window. The kids were so excited! I wish I could have been out there with them! Next year. How sad I didn't even have them dressed nice! What can I say, I was cracked out on pain killer! My friend Christy and her daughter were able to come and join the fun. It was cute, my kids would put eggs in her basket! Happy Easter!

Dying eggs this year was simple. With the knee surgery the whole Easter things was super small. I usually like to do something big and fun. Nope, not even a dinner this year. Even though things were small I couldn't let dying the eggs go un dyed!

Say Hello to my Little Fishy Friends!

The Easter Bunny was very busy this year. She/it made the kids stuffed fish. She had a lot of fun making these little guys. It was great to decorate them how every she pleased. She made the pink on for Phoebe, the blue for Kimball and Warren the green one. Warren loves his "whale" He carries in all over the place. We have to cover "whale" up every night and kiss him goodnight too. It really makes me.. I mean the Easter Bunny to see the kids in love with these works of art.