We talked about her cake and decided to go for a white cake (Tyson's favorite) with cream cheese frosting (Joslyn's favorite.) For the decoration of the cake, she wanted white fondant with pale pink roses on top. So I looked up a tutorial of how to make fondant roses and went to town! I also called Kira and got several tips on how to make all this happen, her friends sister makes cakes and Kira helped her make her own wedding cake and has helped her with other ones too. So glad I had her as a resource! The above picture is the "base" of the roses.
This was my first completed rose! I was so excited with how it turned out, but it didn't even end up making it on the cake haha! I ended up watching several tutorials and tried several of the different ideas, they all turned out pretty similar though. It was interesting trying to do the things they were doing without having the exact tools they had. I would just find things around my house that I was able to make work similarly to the actual tools they used.
I wanted different sizes of roses, so here are my first two full bloom roses.
My mini cupcake pan worked great for my drying rack! If you don't know you have to let the fondant dry for a couple days so it will be firm and not move or flop on the cake. That's why the cake took the whole week! I would make a few flowers every day!
The day came for the cake! This is Wednesday, the wedding was Friday. Who knew this was how cake makers do it?! I sure didn't! But between the internet and Kira I found that that's how it's supposed to be done!
Then the night before the wedding I put the white fondant on the cake and decorated with the fondant roses. Joslyn got the ribbon for the base of the cake and also the S cake topper. She used the ribbon for some of the other decorations too, and it was very nice to have it to be able to get the right color for the roses. When I first added the dye to the fondant for the roses I wanted to cry! She wanted a pale pink, so I got a pink food dye, I figured red wouldn't be able to give me the pale pink. I added 1 toothpick of the gel dye, and at first it was bright pink!! Luckily when it was finally all mixed in it was the perfect color! I'm so glad I only added that much, I had been thinking I would probably need a couple toothpicks of the dye before I had started mixing it!
I put the flowers in the back to cover up the seem of the ribbon. I also made all the cupcakes the day before the wedding, she only wanted 100, so I had to make 4 boxes of them. At first she had wanted white and chocolate cupcakes, fitting the black and white idea, like the brownies and blondies, and it also fit their favorite kinds too. But looking at pictures of cupcake tower cakes we noticed that the chocolate ones you could totally see the brown through the cupcake wrapper, so we decided to do strawberry and white cake instead to fit her colors better. She had pale pink, cream, and burlap for her colors.
Her wedding was at 11 on Friday, since Hunter has morning Kindergarten he was still able to go to school, but we had to pick him up from school instead of having him ride the bus home. While Ben went and got Hunter I was getting the girls and the frosting for the cupcakes ready. Then we got to the town hall for the wedding. This is the judge presenting them as husband and wife. Right after this we had a few family pictures, then we rushed back to our house to frost the cupcakes and bring them and the cake down to set up for the luncheon at 1!
Here are some of the cupcakes! So we ended up doing strawberry cake with cream frosting and white cake with pale pink frosting. I hadn't told Joslyn this before, but I hadn't ever frosted a cupcake with a piping bag before this, haha! I did tell her later though, she was glad I hadn't told her before!! But don't worry I did practice before the actual day so that I knew exactly what I was doing! I think they turned out pretty good, especially with how fast I was trying to get them frosted so we could get back and get them set up before 1! I didn't want the frosting to be gross from sitting out for a day before, and talking with Brandi who has a lady that makes cupcakes a lot in her ward this is how she always does it too, makes the cupcakes and frosting in advance but then frosts them a little before they are going to be eaten. I love my sisters being willing to be my excellent resources!!
We also had a bit of drama with the tower, the night before the wedding I asked Ben to set up the tower so that we knew exactly how it went so we didn't have to worry about figuring it out the day of. The cupcakes cover it up pretty well, but they made this tower with glass bowls glued to the circle glass cutouts. The very top tower was just the cutout, so the 2nd layer had a bowl glued to the top and the bottom where all the rest just had it on the bottom. When Ben went to grab that 2nd shelf out he grabbed it by the edge of the bowl and it just snapped/shattered off in his hand! It was too late that night to go try to find another bowl to fix it, so the morning of the wedding Ben went to all the local stores trying to find a bowl similar so he could fix it. He didn't end up finding one that matched very well, so he just got a set of glass bowls and we picked the one out of the set that worked the best. But we couldn't get the rest of the bowl that was still stuck glued to the cutout off! So we ended up having to flip the bowl upside down and glued it on covering up the shattered bowl. Again we didn't tell Joslyn about this til after! She helped us get it set up and said that she noticed that that one was different than the others but she had just thought the people she borrowed it from had done it. Luckily the cupcakes completely covered it up and you really couldn't tell at all! Then on the refreshments table we noticed a bowl that looked a lot like the ones used for the tower, just a different size, so we ended up finding out from Ben's mom (she did all the refreshments) where she got the bowl and we were able to go buy one that matched the others on the tray a few days later. Then after a lot of tugging, prying, using razor blades, and using chemicals, to try to get the broken piece still glued to the cutout off we decided we were out of luck and were going to end up having to buy a new glass shelf piece too! So finally I just told Ben to go for it and if he broke the tray oh well since we were thinking we were probably going to have to buy a new one anyways. He ended up getting it off! It did take a little chip out of the tray, but once the new bowl was glued back on it you can barely see it, and really only if you are looking for it! It was a couple weeks of trying so we were very relieved we could finally give the fixed tower back to Joslyn to give back to her friend!!
I love how the cake and cupcakes turned out! It was a crazy week, but very satisfying seeing the end results! And then what felt like a few short minutes later...
All that hard work was cut into! Haha, kind of a bitter sweet moment. All that trying to get it perfect was just cut into, but yay they have a pretty wedding cake to get to do this to!
Got to love when you feed each other cake! They were both pretty nice about it!
Kind of a funny side night, a lady in the background of these pictures is the JW that always comes to our house. She was coming every month for probably about a year to drop off their pamphlets and I haven't seen her since the wedding, where did she go?! Makes me wonder if they aren't supposed to go to family of their other members??
Then in the evening of Joslyn's wedding day Aspen had her first dance recital! This picture is actually from the dress rehearsal the day before.
This is my friend Tami's daughter Suzy, we didn't even know each other had signed their daughter up for dance, so it was a fun surprise that first practice when we both showed up for practice! Tami is the friend that always does our family pictures. I was trying to take a picture of Aspen and hadn't even noticed Suzy near us when all of a sudden she was there and posing for the picture! Haha, you can definitely tell her mom is a photographer! It cracked me up!
Then I wanted one with just Aspen so I asked Suzy if I could get just Aspen now, she looked at me in surprise for a few seconds then walked away! It was pretty funny! I sure think that I have the cutest little reindeer ever!
She really did so good! I felt like for a 3 year old she really knew the dance pretty well, she would watch her instructor to make sure she was doing the right thing but she really did great! I may be a bit biased but I felt like she was one of the best dancers in their group! She sure loves to dance! She is the one in the middle in the above picture, the one started to squat down.
We have pictures of all of our kids doing this, it took Timber forever to finally do it! The other 2 did it really young, but every time Ben would try with her she would bend her legs. So this was a pretty exciting day when she finally did it!
Got to love how flexible baby bodies are! All her water was about drained out but she was still going for the drain, even if it meant bending clear in half!
Good morning!!
Who needs a 3 person stroller, all you really need is a scooter and a strong grip to hold on! Haha definitely made it a lot harder for me to push the stroller!
Hunter had been having a rough time following the rules at school, so his teacher talked with the counselor at school and they came up with having a chart for good behavior. She would give him either smiles or frowns for not throwing fits, following the rules, and keeping hands, feet and mouth to himself. We would at home do some kind of prize for when he did good, usually something pretty simple, like if we were going out to eat that night and he had done good then we let him pick where we ate, or sometimes a treat, etc. Then we set up with him if he got all smiles the whole week he would get to do something big, we gave him some examples and he decided on getting to go to Jumpin' Jacks, it's a building with a whole bunch of different bounce house things set up in it. Finally in December he got a full week of all smiles so we got to go! There was only one other family in the whole place and they only stayed a short while so we had it pretty much to ourselves!
Aspen got to the top of this...
then panicked and was stuck there til we finally could convince her to just go back down! Later Ben went through it with her and helped her over it.
Can you see Hunter clear at the top?
And now at the bottom of the slide.
There's Ben helping the kids tackle some of the blow up things.
Timber concentrating hard on standing up!
The kids even had to test out the "little kid" area.
And we helped Timber slide the bottom section of a slide, she loved it! They had a great time!
Time for a Christmas tree!!
This is the one we ended up getting.
And here's the one Dwayne found for their house.
Here they are back at the truck.
Seeing Santa at the ward Christmas party.
I made Hunter stay with us this year so I could get a picture!
Aspen's first hair cut!! Yes, I know it's very long over due. I just couldn't bring myself to do it before now!!
Poor girl was so nervous!
Hunter hates getting his hair cut and she has been seeing him getting his cut and the scene he makes for it, so she was very scared.
When we were close to done she finally believed me that I wasn't going to use the buzzers on her and calmed down.
All done! Just enough trimmed to save in her baby book... that is non-existent. Haha I still have saved all the "essentials" for the baby book, just never actually done it!! Maybe it will have to go into this when I get this printed.
Cute as can be in daddy's hat.
It's just become her thing to bend in half to get the drain!
Ben put the lights on the tree right after we got it set up in the house, but it wasn't until a couple days later that we finally had time to decorate it! Can you see his two little helpers hiding behind the tree?
Time to decorate the tree!
Hunter made this at school, I hadn't ever seen one of these before so I thought it was pretty cool especially when he told me how easy it was to make! His teacher gave him a paper with the picture of the candle on it and he traced over the lines with glue, then the teacher spray painted the paper. So simple!
Sleeping with a sucker hanging out of her mouth!
Hunter had his Kindergarten Christmas program and this is how he spent most of it. He did finally participate in one of the songs:
long enough to have his antlers on, then he saw me recording him and hid his face, and since he was hiding his face he was left standing up while everyone else had sat down for a little while before he finally realized it and sat back down! One of the other teachers had noticed him looking at me and she turned and asked what was wrong with him, she had thought he was sad because his parents hadn't come or something then saw him looking at me. I had no clue, til after. Turns out one of the kids had brought treats for their birthday and when they had tried to give him one he told them he didn't want one, but he really did he was just busy at the moment they were handing them out. So then he was sad when they came in to do their program because he hadn't gotten a treat! We are trying really hard to convince him that he needs to use his words, and that he could have just went and asked her for one or told her to set it next to him because he couldn't grab it right then. Unfortunately this is far from the first or last time this kind of thing has happened, hopefully some day he will actually try using his words!! Once we got back into the classroom a lady that is in my ward and her daughter is in Hunter's class came over giggling and said, "I bet you're glad you came to this!" Haha! She has a son that is similar to Hunter so she totally gets what I go through with him! Once I got figured out what the problem was in the classroom, I told him he could go ask the girl if he could have a treat, which he did, and right after she gave him one he was happy as can be! Little turkey! He didn't have to be grumpy ever if he would have just told someone what was going on!
After Hunter's program he was done with school, so he was able to come with us to the libraries Christmas party.
We met Brandi and Tucker there. They were doing a Polar Express theme.
This is the kids getting to make music with pie pans.
Then they got to make a graham cracker train.
Hunter was loving it! Aspen just had me do hers.
Then Santa came!
Hunter looks huge on his lap!
Santa reached out for Timber so we got her in there too, she kept staring at him like "who are you!?"
They were pretty excited to see Santa!
Then they got to get hot chocolate and some cookies, and eat those and their trains.
Santa had given them all a candy cane, Timber was loving biting on hers that wasn't open...
Or so I thought, she had managed to make a little hole in the wrapper, so she was really liking it since she was tasting it!!
Their one and only bath together, Timber was done and we were about to take her out of the tub when two more little bodies jumped in! Only I few months after this we started keeping boys and girls separate in the bathroom til underwear are on, kind of a sad day when we have to start teaching that! It means they are getting way too old, too fast! But better to teach now before they start noticing things, right?
Our first time doing Aspen's hair scrunchy curly, she loved it!
So me and one of my counselors decided to take the Ward Christmas Party invites over to the non and less-active families with primary kids. We took my car. The last house we went to I pulled into their driveway, and heard a loud noise. I asked my counselor if she had heard that, she hadn't noticed anything. So after we dropped off the invite I went to back out of their driveway and my car was having a hard time reversing and wouldn't really let me steer it either. Turns out that loud noise I had heard was my drive line breaking! We ended up having to have Ben come pick us up, luckily we were only down the street from our house since all the kids car seats were in the car with me! Ben's brother Tyler happened to be in town for the holiday break. So over the next several days/weeks he was my chauffeur picking up and dropping off our car. After we got the drive line fixed they recommended an alignment, so we were able to pick it up and drive it for a couple days until our alignment appointment at a different shop since our mechanic doesn't do alignments. Then at the alignment appointment they found that we didn't have something on our car that will help keep it in alignment for future. So then we had to take it back again once those parts were in to get those put on! It was quite the process! But I'm very grateful it happened close to home! They said that how the drive line had broken it had to have had something happened to it a while ago and it had just been getting worse and worse, they said that pulling into a driveway couldn't have broken it like that unless it was already weak and about to break anyways. So I'm very glad it happened at low speed, close to home, with no kids in the car!!
Blow outs :( This was probably one of the worst ones ever!! I hadn't realized Timber had blown out when I laid her on my bed to change her diaper. Then I thought I got her pretty well wiped up and tried rolling her out of the mess... ya she still had some on her so ended up getting even more on my bed! It was horrible!
Christmas Eve we had Santa hats, snowmen, and stars for breakfast!
Sister shared her baby with Timber!
We went to the Ewell's for their annual Christmas Eve dinner. Then opened PJ's and did some Christmas stories/activities.
Over the Christmas break we decided to try again with potty training Aspen. She had an accident right before we were going to open jammies, hence the no pants! But... this was her last accident ever! She has done great ever since!! She finally decided she wanted to wear underwear and be a big girl and she did it! I'm guessing the little boy in her preschool that would keep telling her she was a baby since she still wears diapers might have helped her in deciding she was ready to be a big girl! We only did pull ups at night for a couple weeks after this too. She went from never really wanting to use the toilet to being a champion of underwear!
Timber of course only had eyes for the ribbons on her jammies.
So of course Hunter thought he needed to come help make a hole.
But it was still only the ribbons in her eyes.
So we made a bigger hole..
and still just the ribbon. We of course expected this since it's what all our babies have done, but our older 2 thought it was hilarious!
After getting them dressed in their jammies we went to go look at Christmas lights.... This year there was a little detour. Dixie had presents for Joslyn's kids (including her 2 new step kids) and she new her boys were going to be going to their dad's house for 2 weeks the next day so she wanted them to be able to get their Christmas presents. Since Joslyn and Tyson don't celebrate Christmas they didn't come over for any of the festivities, so Dixie had us all take the festivities to them. Then after we watched them open their presents we continued on our looking at lights drive.
This is what awaited us Christmas morning.
And here is our tree Christmas morning.
Good morning sleepy girl!! She was in a bit of a zone the whole morning!
I love that you can totally tell from her lips what she is telling me she got in this picture!
And I love her hand presenting her mystery Lego guy to Ben, such a dainty hand!
This is about the only thing Aspen asked for, so we were very excited for her to open it.
She ended up not having much of a reaction though haha!
Hunter helping...
Timber open...
Her Anna baby doll. Aspen was pretty excited to check that out, it went perfectly with her coveted Elsa doll she had just showed little reaction too!
Hunter with a big bag of Pokemon figures!
And once Elsa was out of the box she finally showed how she really felt about her!
A big present...
It's a Fisher Price Princess set!
A different Fisher Price Princess set is in this big one for Timber, the girls have loved playing with them, and not going to lie, Hunter plays with them sometimes too!
And Hunter's big one is a remote control truck!
Time for daddy to open one...
A new coat, he had been complaining for weeks that he had lost his, so I think he was pretty happy when he opened it! Side note, that Monopoly Crazy Cash game next to Ben's legs I got on clearance at Walmart for $7, best $7 I've spent! The kids love it! Especially Hunter! It's an actual board game that he can totally play, and Aspen mainly likes when she lands on the spot that she gets to get money from the cash machine, you put in a little credit card thing and it shoots money and chance cards out.
All done at our house! Dressed in their new Christmas clothes! My parents came and visited us at our house right after this, then right after they left we headed over to Ben's parents. Then we went to the Watson's for their tamales and taquitos. I loved the taquitos! My secretary lives with Watson's, Sister Watson is her sister, so she is right in the action of making all that food. I told her I want to come help next year and see how they do it all, Ben would love if I knew how to make tamales!
These are the jammies my mom gave the girls for Christmas.
This is them in the morning.
It took...
a few tries...
to get a good one of them both smiling!
The day after Christmas we had a Robinson Christmas party at Brandi's house. We had our traditional prime rib dinner then played some family games. The kids had horse races by age groups, above is Tucker, Aspen and Kyler.
Hunter's group was Sophie, him and Talee. Hunter got mad and ended up throwing a huge fit and running into the house when he didn't win. It was the first time some of my family had really seen him act like that, they thought he had gotten hurt or something because of how he was acting. It was definitely a rough year for us and Mr. Hunter. We dealt with lots of fits and arguments, which is what his teacher at school was also dealing with. Luckily his Primary teacher worked with him pretty well and he got to where he was usually pretty good for her. He did have some struggles there too, but not near as many as at home and school.
Then the old men, Grandpa Keith and Uncle Al, did a horsey cane walk!
This game was hilarious! A person would be in the middle of the room and have to close their eyes, then everyone in the chairs would change seats. The person in the middle would then go to a seat with a pillow extended and the person in the chair would have to put the pillow on their lap for the person in the middle to sit on. Then the person sitting on them would ask the person in the chair to make the sound of something, usually an animal of some kind. Then they would have to try to guess who they were sitting on. If they got it right the person in the chair would go to the middle, if wrong they have another turn in the middle. It was pretty funny watching my mom sit on Talee! Talee was having a hard time not giggling and giving away who she was!
I love this cute bug and her crazy hair!!
And I just can't seem to get enough of these cute hands!!
I let her hold an apple at dinner and she loved it so much she didn't want to give it up...
Even while she was in the tub she wouldn't give it up! We finally had to sneak it away from her!
This is the bulletin board me, my counselors, and secretary made for the Primary theme this year. We ended up adding a few more names to the empty spaces towards the bottom too. We were so glad this year we only had this little board to do and not the huge main one too!
Our New Years was pretty chill. We don't have our kids stay up late, Hunter is an absolute bear the next day if he doesn't get a full nights sleep, as you can guess from the picture above of Aspen sleeping with a sucker she wouldn't be able to make it, and Timber's just a baby. Also our kids don't even know that that is something you do yet, and I'm going to keep it that way as long as I can! Haha! So since we are pretty well confined to our house for New Years it's always very calm. This year Tyler came over to hang out with us, the 3 of us ended up watching a Studio C marathon. If you haven't ever watched Studio C, you need to! It is so funny!! Really that's how we rang in the New Year, watching that and snacking on a bunch of snacks!
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