Annie's Baby Shower

One of our best friends is about to have a baby boy. We threw a baby shower for her today and it was great, she got tons of cute stuff. I can't wait until we get to see this new little guy in person! I had a severe laps in judgement last week and decided that I would make a cake for her shower. I looked up different ideas and found a lot of baby-block-cakes that looked super cute. I thought it wouldn't be too difficult to make, so I decided to give it a try. I got up yesterday and started baking, 7 hours later I decided to call it good. (Note to self; just because something is square, does NOT mean it will be easy to frost and decorate!) The end product was not as beautiful as I had hoped, but it was the tastiest cake I've ever eaten. ( I took a break from "no sugar" today, I figured if I spent 7 hours making the cake I at least deserved to eat it)

The blocks on the top spell the new baby's name, Asa.
The next few pictures are to show the destruction in our kitchen. I had to stop and breath a few times, anyone who knows me very well knows that I start to freak out when my kitchen is dirty. I just had to keep telling myself that the kitchen would be clean again, and there was no use trying to cleanup while I was still working on the cake.

Over all I am glad that I tried out something new. I learned how to make homemade fruit filling, and the best whipped cream/cream cheese frosting you will ever taste. Both of these skills are invaluable :)

Sights in the Ghetto

Grant and I have always known we weren't living in the "best" neighborhood. The last month has really produced some great photo ops that we just couldn't resist. I was worried about doing this post because I thought we might offend our neighbors, but we have realized that it is no surprise to anyone that we are residents of Provo's ghetto. I am grateful for the place we live. It will always provide a good laugh in years to come, and in the mean time we have been blessed with awesome neighbors. BUT, just in case you too could use a good laugh, enjoy the sights of our ghetto-

(note: all of these pictures are at our 4-plex, imagine the pictures we could have gotten if we had ventured out a few bocks!)

I think this truck has not moved in 6 months.

One of the apartments flooded and they ended up redoing the kitchen, but they never got around to tossing the old cabinets out. They have sat on our lawn for the last 2 months, and then our neighbors got a new washer a dryer, so of course the old ones had to come outside to make room for the new ones.

Our beautiful barbecue, AKA the rust bucket. The rust bucket will not be making the move to Ohio with us. I do think it makes a great first impression for anyone who come to visit us.

Our neighbors front porch. When your apartment is too small just start moving things outside. It had a couch on it when we moved in, then a bed frame, and currently the chair- coffee table- cinder block combo.

And finally the leaf piles. Our land lord raised our rent this year and then said that there was no longer enough money to pay the lawn maintenance guy. So we still have giant piles of leafs in the middle of January, and when ever the wind blows they end up in our stair well :(

On a more positive note, our rampant stray cat population is going down. One of the neighbors got so tired of the cats thinking their stairwell was a bathroom that they called animal control. Animal control was more than happy to bring some traps over, and currently 3 have been caught. Only 20 more to go!

Gamers Anonymous

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately, life really has not been that interesting these days. The biggest event since Christmas happened yesterday. Grant got home from work and our neighbors came over saying that they had a present for him. They had ordered "Tetris Attack" for him online and it finally arrived yesterday. Grant had made me go to every game store imaginable with him before Christmas to try and find a copy of the game, but we had no luck, so you can imagine his joy when he got home and the game was waiting for him. I have always justified Grant's excessive football watching with the knowledge that it could be worse. I could have married a "gamer". I can handle football any day over video games. In the last 24 hrs he has spent 5 hrs sleeping, 3 hrs at church, and I'll be generous and say 1hr showering using the bathroom and eating. That leaves 15 hrs that have been spent playing his new game, with an occasional break to check the scores of the ball games. I think he may have a problem. He keeps telling me that I just need to try out the new game and I'll be hooked as well, but I haven't even gotten to try it out because anyone who walks by our apartment is invited in to play. He played with one of our neighbors until 1:00 am last night/morning, then after I got home from my meeting after church I found a different neighbor's brother at our house. The neighbor's brother Chris, had just come by to see if his family was over at our house. Grant quickly sucked him into the "gamer's den" and got him playing as well. I woke up from my Sunday nap and found Berkeley, the one that Chris was originally looking for, playing too. Berkeley had not even gone home after his church meetings, he just came straight over and started playing. And currently we have our friend Doug over. He had heard about the new game and just showed up. I was in the bath and Grant came in and warned me that someone had knocked on our door. I really wasn't surprised that it was another playmate for Grant. We've become pretty popular over the last 24hrs.

In other news- We got an awesome coupon for Quiznos and had a super cheap date night. I am really starting to love coupons while my "stay-at-home-liz" journey is in effect. Mom, If you are reading please stop now...

I am also going to start selling my body, AKA plasma. So if there are any horror stories please do not tell me, but if their is any constructive advice on how to not pass out or puke I would love to hear it.

And finally I am trying to go off sugar 6 days a week with one of our neighbors starting tomorrow. Ha! we'll see how long that lasts, but we're giving it an honest try. I am eating a brownie right now in preparation ;)