Camping & Canoeing

This past Friday night, Andrew and I went camping with Clay & Lindsey for Andrew's birthday.  On the left you have Clay's vehicle carrying Jeff & Chrissa's canoe that they borrowed.  On the right is Andrew trying to clean out the cast-iron skillet after he cooked us all eggs and bacon for breakfast!

Here are the boys in their river clothes.  Stylish, eh?

I didn't get too many pics of the camping part of our trip because it was dark when we arrived and I was about to puke from carsickness.

This is where we stopped for lunch (ritz crackers with turkey & cheese, doritos, & dr. pepper).  I think this is the only picture of Lindsey, since she kept avoiding the camera.  As if we all didn't look fabulous?? ;)

The water was beautiful!

The boys testing the water and then plunging in.  It was quite entertaining to watch.  We have videos of them doing the redneck infinity pool plug :)

Did I mention it was a really really gorgeous day to be out there?  Good cool breeze, plenty of water flowing, a tad warm in the sun and a tad cool in the shade.  Perfection!

The ground looked like it was crawling!  These little guys were everywhere.

And last but not least our little froggy friend.  Frogs are so cool!!

He was just slightly stunned when Clay put him back down. But he hopped away pretty quick when I took his picture :) 

Can't wait to go next year!!  Although next time I'm using spray on sunscreen or someone is helping me out.  Ouch!

Cherith & Andrew's Birthday 2009

This year for Cherith and Andrew's birthday, since there would be nothing as exciting as skydiving, I decided to take on a project that a friend had shown me a couple of years ago on the internet. A girl had make an entire game board (and all the playing pieces) for "Settlers of Catan" out of vegan cupcakes. Since they both love "Settlers of Catan" it seemed appropriate that I should attempt it for their joint birthday celebration. By the way, mine were not vegan, only vegetarian. And I only made the board, not the playing pieces, since we weren't actually planning to play on it as girl on the internet had done.
After baking for a couple evenings and then decorating for a morning, I had to transport 66 of the 84 cupcakes that I had made to the Whitbeck's house for the birthday party. This proved by far to be the most nerve-racking part of the entire ordeal. This is all 66 cupcakes in the back of my car.

Luckily Mom W. came up with a brilliant idea to fill cupcake tins up slightly with something so that I could just plop the cupcakes into the tins and they would be high enough not to ruin the icing. She had suggested beans, but since I didn't have any I used rice krispies, macaroni noodles, and duplex cookies (I didn't have very many of each). It worked great!

The Ore cupcake: Chocolate cupcake, white icing dyed grey, & ground dark chocolate chips

The Water cupcakes: Chocolate or white cupcake, blue & white icing smooshed together

The Sheep cupcake: White cupcake, white icing dyed green, marshmellows

(btw, do you see a pasture of sheep or just one sheep??)

The Wheat cupcake: Lemon cupcake, lemon icing flipped up with a toothpick

(Couldn't really think of a wheat design that wasn't gonna take a ton of work so that's the best I got)

The Wood cupcake: Pistachio cupcake, chocolate icing, pretzels

The Clay/Brick cupcake: Strawberry cupcake, strawberry icing, twizzlers

All set up on the actually game board. Andrew made the wooden board that we use to set the game in.

The cupcakes turned out well, they actually looked better than I had hoped. One corner that I cut was that I did not make the all the different icings, which is what I had originally planned. Instead I bought all canned icing. I apologize to all the purists out there, but I almost always use cake mixes too, so sorry.... um, actually not really :)

By the time we had dinner eaten and settled, the gnats had discovered the wonders of icing! Apparently they were attracted by the chandelier hanging right over the cupcakes :( However, Stephen kindly removed all of them and if a few of us got a little extra protein, it can't hurt, right?

The birthday siblings :) And one little girl who was very ready to eat some cake!

Andrew & CJ - Hope you enjoyed the cupcakes of catan even with the added protein (oh wait! Does that mean they weren't really vegetarian??). I thoroughly enjoyed making them for you :) Love you both, happy birthday!!