Fun with Modeling Chocolate and Cupcakes

We had left over modeling chocolate after finishing the horse birthday cake, so this last weekend we decided to have some fun with it. We made some delicious chocolate cupcakes and set to work decorating them:

Nate also had fun with the sprinkles:

Celebrating Six Years of Marriage

A week ago we celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary. Since it fell on a Sunday, we scheduled some fun activities for the Friday before. Nate took the day off from work and we drove to Salt Lake to see some cool things there.

First we went to Mrs. Cavanaugh's Factory for a tour. That was quite interesting, and we bought ourselves some chocolates there too. We really wanted to do this for our anniversary since the "traditional gift" for sixth anniversaries is candy and iron. The chocolate factory fit the candy theme well!

After that, my grandparents watched Austin for us while Nate and I visited Red Butte Gardens and the Natural History Museum.  The gardens were fun, but there weren't quite as many flowers in bloom there as we had hoped for. There were still some areas with quite a few though.

 

We also took a rougher trail at the gardens up to a Canyon Overlook point.

View from the Canyon Overlook point at Red Butte Gardens

Another view from the overlook point

On our way back down from the Canyon Overlook, we stopped by the old Quarry House.

Quarry House

After returning off the trail and before we left to get some lunch, we visited the pond area where we saw some more flowers.

I particularly liked these Imperial Fritillarias

After lunch we went headed back to the Natural History Museum. Unfortunately, we didn't have as much time there as we would have liked. But it was pretty cool. We will have to go back sometime.

We ended up going out to dinner Saturday instead of Friday. We exchanged gifts Sunday. Sometimes I have a hard time coming up with a good gift for Nate, but this year I really had a lot of fun with my gift. I gave Nate a fire pit to fit the "iron" part of the traditional gift and a "candy bar basket" to fit the candy part of the traditional gift. We actually don't have any good place in our yard to use the fire pit yet...so we will have to fix that.

Nate also had fun with his gift to me. It was made of several parts, each including a note. I received a Red Robin gift card with a note saying, "Your beautiful voice is like a sweet song bird's." An ipod touch had a note saying, "I love the way you touch my heart." The note with some screen protectors said, "You are a natural lover and protector of all living things," and the note with some headphones said,"I love hearing your dreams and passions." It was pretty creative! I loved it!

I am so blessed to have such a supportive and loving husband! Happy Anniversary Nate!

April Birthdays

A couple Sundays ago, we had family over to our house and celebrated Austin's and my birthdays. We had a nice Cafe' Rio style dinner with various items available for everyone to make their own burrito or taco salad with. I decided to try something I've never done before and get fancy with making my birthday cake. I found an idea for making the horse head shape online and then I made modeling chocolate to form the horse's features. It was pretty fun. We also had a lemon glazed 7-Up pound cake as well.

After dinner we opened gifts. Austin got some of nice new clothes and a number of fun new toys and books.

Austin also got some great garden tools that are just his size so he can help out with all our yard work!

Nate got me a nice large family sized tent that will making camping with a family easier. Hopefully it will last well for years to come. Then on Austin's actual birthday we gave him a rocking horse. (Maybe if we are really lucky in a couple more years we will have a real horse for him and me too...)

Austin is such a fun two year old to have around. He loves to help out with whatever we are doing. He especially loves sweeping, dusting, and putting his laundry away. He is very friendly and will wave "hi" and "bye" to almost everyone he sees. He loves looking at books or magazines and pictures. He likes to sing too. When he gets to church he pulls out the hymn book, opens it up, and starts trying to sing while waving his arm around in imitation of his Dad's conducting. He makes us laugh a lot!