Oregon Coast

Last week Adam and I spent the week on the Oregon Coast with my parents. It was a WONDERFUL getaway, and much needed! It was very relaxing and we had a great time. Here are some highlights:

We flew into Eugene and stayed the night there and had my parents pick us up on the way in the morning. Our room was of course very nice. Adam still has Diamond, or Platinum or whatever status with Hilton, so we almost always get upgraded. That night was no exception. They put us in a Suite on one of the floors that you have to use your key to get access to. I had no idea that these "special" floors have complimentary snacks at night and breakfast in the morning! Here's the view from the Hotel where you can see University of Oregon Stadium in the background. Adam had never been to Eugene, so in the morning we took a walk to the campus while we waited for my parents.

One of our activities was going to the Aquarium in Eugene. It was raining that morning so I didn't even try to get any pictures outside and most of the inside is too dark for pictures. However, Adam did find his way into the divers helmet! Scary!

We rented a beach house that was less than a quarter mile from the beach. We had a view from our house to the beach (I don't know why I never took a picture! Maybe it was because the view was partially blocked by the Casino! HAHA!). If you ever want to take a trip to the Oregon Coast, I highly recommend the beach houses. The price was great and we actually could have had several more people staying there. Ours was two stories, three bedrooms, hot tub, full kitchen and it also had a foosball table and air hockey in the garage. One of the great things was right out our back doors there were tons of blackberry bushes so one morning we picked a bunch and had blackberry pancakes with blackberry syrup. YUM!!!!

One of my favorite things (besides the beach of course) to do on the Oregon Coast is to go to the Tillamoock Cheese Factory! LOVE IT! You get samples of all sorts of cheeses, I think we had cheese curds, mozzarella, pepperjack, some jalapeno spread, horseradish something or other and my favorite, extra sharp white Cheddar. YUMM! And you can't go to the cheese factory without getting ice cream! Each of us got a sampler so we tried lots of flavors, I think my favorite of all time is Chocolate Peanut Butter, its soooo tasty! Here Adam and I play the farmer and the Cow.. I had to be the Cow since he is tall...

I love how the Oregon Coast is so different from the typical beaches people think of. Its so neat to be able to be on the beach on minute and in the forest the next. Our beach house attracted several woodland creatures. We came home from a walk on the beach one night and found these guys waiting for us:

But perhaps the most fun were these guys we found on our back porch one night. My mom kept saying how she wanted to see a raccoon, and sure enough they showed up!

It started with just one that my dad fed a bag of popcorn, he even tried to open the door and come in! He momentarily left but brought back 4 of his friends! We fed them our leftovers since we were leaving the next day... I am pretty sure we probably shouldn't have done that!
Hopefully the next guests at the house will enjoy them too.

On our way back from Tillamoock, Adam saw a sign for some waterfalls, so we followed the sign down a road, not knowing how far we would have to go or what we would see when we got there. Turns out it was worth it! We found these pretty falls, they weren't particularly large, but they were pretty and it was nice to get in a little hike.

My mom and I in the woods by the falls, turns out its the only good picture I have of my mom from the whole trip! And sadly all the ones of my dad are super blurry.

Do you think Adam would actually follow the directions of this sign?

NOPE

And of course we spend plenty of time doing this:

Enjoying the beach. This was the first night we arrived. It had rained on our drive up but stopped when we got there. I was so excited to have blue skies and nice weather. If you have ever been to the Oregon Coast, you know your lucky to get clear skies! But it didn't stop that night. The ENTIRE next day was clear. No clouds at all and highs in the 70's! There wasn't even any wind! I was able to go for a run on the beach in the morning which was awesome and we even had fun playing in the water.

This is a picture of my parents and Adam seeing if they could make it out to a rock before the tide came in... I think they eventually got there!

See that NO CLOUDS!!!! AMAZING!!!!

Thanks for a great trip Mom and Papa! We had a wonderful time!

Cardinals Game

Somewhere in all the fun over the last month, Adam and I went to a Cardinals Pre-season game. We have a friend that works for the Cardinals who gave us some free tickets. They were pretty sweet tickets, upper deck but front row and on 50 yard line. The game itself was kinda lame in that the Cardinals were playing awful, but its always fun to go to a pro game, especially for free

One of the scariest things I have every done!

And it involved food! No I didn't eat something crazy, I agreed to make my sister in law Rachel's wedding cake! Talk about scary! I was pretty confident I could do it, but at the same time you never know what to expect. It was a crazy few hours making it, and I definitely had some freaking out moments, but once I got everything figured out it was all good! I don't have any professional photos, but hope that Rachel will share some with me. But for now here it is!

This cake used pretty much all the skills I had learned in my cake classes so far, and then some I had to pick up from the internet. It was actually a lot of fun (once I got the fondant on, dang it my teacher was right about using cake dummies!).

I think my favorite part was the Anenome on top. I made that a few weeks in advance and was so excited I got it to turn out.

I am thankful Rachel let me make my first wedding cake for her, I can't imagine if I would have done this for a non family member.... YIKES!

Happy Birthday!

We also celebrated Adam's Mom's birthday in the last month. We had dinner at our house, we had a fun baked potato bar with lots of crazy toppings (including bacon, chorizo, peppers and onions in addition to all the normal stuff). And for dessert I made this super rich cake:

We had a big group (13 if you count Sadie and Brycen), our table is almost not big enough, and we don't even have kids yet!

The cake was chocolate with peanut butter cream cheese filling and chocolate ganache on the outside. Then it was covered in Peanut Butter M&Ms. Very tasty, but very rich!

Wedding #2

One week after Rachel got married, Adam's brother Isaac married Julie. I missed getting a good picture because I was helping pin on corsages, all I really got was a horrible video because by the time I got my camera back in my hand they were ushering all of us up for a group photo! BOO!!!! Hopefully someone will share a good one with me. I did manage to get Adam to attempt to take a picture with me this is what happened:

Luckily we got him to cooperate

And then moved out of the sun and got a much better one

Emily did get a very cute picture of Adam with our Niece Sadie, I'm pretty sure she is the cutest niece EVER!

Wedding #1

We got to be part of Rachel (Adam's Sister) and Jordan's special day as they were sealed in the Mesa Temple on August 27th.

Loved the dress!

This was after the sealing at the wedding luncheon, SO Cute!

I was not happy with my camera that night, everything was turning out blurry. This was the only semi decent picture we got, and obviously someone else took it! Adam is holding our nephew Brycen, he was more interested in the food than the Camera.

Wilton Course 2 Finally Cake

I have now completed 3 of the 4 Wilton Cake Courses... somewhat out of order! Course 2 was really fun as we learned all sorts of new flowers using royal icing. I enjoyed learning about royal icing and what you could do with it... it actually came in handy for my most recent cake adventure. Here is my final cake from the class:

These flowers were pretty challenging for me to make, I've decided I am much better with the gum paste/fondant flowers. The flowers are somewhat flawed individually, but I do like how they turned out all together.

What cracks me up most about this picture is you can totally see the frosting is melting... and I didn't even use any butter in the buttercream (that would have been a disaster!). I guess it must have been pretty hot that night! I managed to keep it from melting to bad by getting it in the fridge. I didn't think we needed the cake around our house, so I took it to Daniel for his treat of the month (his Christmas present from last year). It was might tasty as we gobbled it down between wedding luncheon and wedding and then again between wedding and reception! Sorry Daniel for eating all of your treat!

Playing Catch-up

Well, its been awhile! We finally are calming down after a busy month and I feel like I can finally catch up on some stuff! Between 2 weddings, 2 bridal showers, 2 receptions, a cake class, making my first wedding cake, lots of family fun and then a much needed week of relaxing at the Oregon Coast, I think its safe to say we were busy!

So be prepared for a few posts over the next few days... most likely in random order!

Are you Ready?????????

Can you fell it???? OH YES IT MUST BE!!! Its a mere 1 day away to College Football!! WHOOHOOO!!!!! I LOVE college football; and what better way to start the year off with the first game being BOISE STATE against OREGON on the Wonderful BLUE TURF. (Ok I know, enough with the Cap letters, but I am THAT excited! WOOOHOOO!!! )

Ahhh beautiful.....

For those of you lucky enough to get a ticket to the game and wondering what color you are supposed to wear. ... check this out

For those of you who haven't ever experienced the blue turf in person and wondering if the fans actually follow the pattern indicated the answer is YES!!! Here is a picture from a previous televised game :

The colors schemes change for each televised games; sometimes one half of the stadium is all blue while the other is orange, while sometimes its all blue (like when they play Oregon State) or all Orange. Its pretty much a requirement as a Bronco Fan to own apparel in all Colors. Here's another color scheme...

Amazing!

Have you ever wondered why the field is blue? Most Boise fans know the story, but I tell ya, I get asked a lot so here it goes:


BOISE, Idaho (AP) -Twenty years after the Smurf Turf made its debut, Boise State's blue football field remains an eye-catcher.

And that's exactly what Gene Bleymaier hoped for when he came up with the idea of dying the artificial turf at Bronco Stadium.

"I guess that I'm the type of person that when I paint my house I paint it a different color so the neighbors notice you did something," said Bleymaier, in his 24th year as Boise State's athletic director.

Bleymaier was the driving force behind Boise State's blue football field, which has grown into a tourist attraction rivaling potatoes for popularity in Idaho.

Two decades later, the only non-green field is the subject of rumors and myths, opposition complaints, and pride for Boise State's players.

Bleymaier brainstormed the idea flying home from the NCAA convention in January 1986 and decided if the school was going to pay $750,000 for a new playing surface, it was going to be blue.

"I was just thinking about what we could do and how disappointed I was going to be if we just put in another green field we had seen for 15 years," Bleymaier said.

With the idea in hand, Bleymaier's next trick was getting university approval. He went straight to then president John Keiser and presented his plan, highlighting that a blue field would give the school some notoriety and an unusual home-field advantage.
Keiser went along with Bleymaier's idea and the pair kept the plan quiet until the day it was announced to the public. This was not a proposal the duo wanted available for debate.


"I knew that I couldn't talk about it because it would get blown out of the water. I would not get the support," Bleymaier said. "Really, it was kept pretty much between him and me until we actually announced it. Then, of course, there was all sorts of reaction."

The current field is the third blue surface. Twenty years after its debut, no one can envision a green field returning.

"I can't tell you how many times we get knocks on the door, with people saying, 'I'm from out of town, I'm here for the weekend, I've got to walk on the blue turf,"' Bleymaier said.



Did you know BSU has 6, that's right 6, games on National TV this year? Oh its a wonderful thing for out of state fans like myself!

Although I have a much more important event to attend to tomorrow night, the wedding of my brother in law, you can bet I will be racing home afterwards to watch the game, which is likely the biggest home game in BSU history (thank goodness for the DVR!!!!).

GO BRONCOS!!!!!