Our Busy Busy Lives

So, we are back from florida, and i have to say it was absolutely fantastic! We got too see almost every member of the Rogers family while we were out there, we were only missing one uncle. We got to go to the beach every single day that we were there and the beaches were heavenly! We found all kinds of wildlife and McKay go to swim with the dolphin's! We saw dolphins a number of times and McKay caught some action shots of the dolphins catching some fish while we were boating one of the days. We also got to ride around in a golf cart, eat a ginormous brunch at the country club, play around in the pool and play lots of card games with our family. We also got to watch a very entertaining little play that my younger cousins put on.

There is always a little bit of drama when the whole family comes together (like some fighting cousins and grandpa telling his grand kids there was no way they were going to make it to college, Yikes!) but it was really nice despite the drama. It is always nice when my grandparents open up thier home to us, they opened it up so much that they didn't have room to stay in their own home! I was so happy that McKay was able to come with us, because i think he may have had more fun than i did!

When we got back from Florida we had to cram in studying and finals because we were gone for the last days of classes and our reading days. Our finals didn't quite go as well as we had hoped, but it's okay because at least they are over! And lucky McKay is done with finals for a very long time because he graduated on Thursday/Friday!

McKay's graduation was so much fun (kind of). We got to pack into the Marriott center with the 6,700+ graduates and all their friends and families on Thursday for commencement (we could not find McKay in the 6,700+ sea of blue caps and gowns). After commencement we went out to dinner at an Indian Buffet that we absolutely love and then we went to his parents house and played a few rounds of Bang! Then on Friday the whole family went to McKay's convocation which was also in the Marriott center. I had all of our fancy camera equipment and was able to get a couple of fun shots of McKay even though he happened to be sitting on the opposite side of the building. After that we had a big family BBQ and played some more Bang. I think every one had a good time and McKay was able to have a memorable graduation.

We then had Sunday to just relax, go to church and play games. But during all of this we have been packing to move. Our apartment is a complete disaster area! About 3/4 of our belongings are boxed up and piled in our living room where our sofa's and TV used to be. We were able to get rid of our 60 inch big screen television on Saturday and sold it for $30. Isn't that a steal! I have to finish packing everything up this after noon and then tonight we will hopefully have people come over to help us move all of the boxes to our nice big new apartment after we get the keys tonight. I am so excited and overwhelmed with everything that has been going on, especially since i started classes again this morning. If anyone wants to help us move things or help me scrub down walls please please PLEASE feel free to come over and help me. I will be doing moving things for the next 3 days! Ahhhh!

Off to Florida!

We are off to Florida! YAY! I am dying to get to the beach! I'll definitely post some pictures when we get back next week.

Wuhan Here We Come!

So it's official. We are moving to Wuhan China in August. CRAZY! McKay was offered a job teaching at the university last week. Right after he got the job McKay put in an application for me to work there as well. On Monday they offered me a job teaching English at the university as well. We sent them an acceptance letter on Tuesday so it is official. It has all come together in less than a week!So fast and so easy! I guess it must be fate. We have to be checked into our apartment by August 24th so we will be leaving sometime before that. We will be teaching for two semesters with a 3 week break in between that we will use to travel around China (I'm really excited about that part). We don't know when we are coming home for sure yet, but we know it will be the end of may or beginning of June sometime. Hopefully there will be lots of adventures to report while we are there. AHHHHH!!!! I am moving to CHINA! I am so excited and so nervous! Wuhan here we come!

Here are a few pictures of the university and the city.

Gumpaste!

I realize it has been a while since my last post, midterms got in the way of my writing. However, now they are over and i am working on a fun little project in my spare time. I am teaching myself (with the help of some video's on you tube) how to make flowers out of gum paste, which means I am making sugar flowers! I have only finished some roses so far, but I am in the process of making some calla lilies. I don't know why, but for some reason the cake decorating bug has bit me again. I seem to go in cycles. There have been a number of times in my life where I have been really excited about and really into cake decorating, and then periods where i don't even think about it. I am hoping that this most recent decorating bug will stay with me for a while. At the moment I think it would be absolutely amazing to make wedding cakes for a living. Maybe I will end up making my way to culinary school.

Anyway, here are some pictures.

I have made some small buds, as well as some medium sized and large roses. I do not have a cutter to make the right kind of calyx for a rose, so I have just been using a daisy cookie cutter, and I think it is working just fine!

Lets Make Some Cake!

I love baking. Actually I love, love, love, love, LOVE baking. I am torn between what I want to do with my life. Do I want to sew wedding dresses? Or do I want to go to culinary school and end up making wedding (and other) cakes? I don't know yet, but in the mean time I am baking up a storm. The other day after talking about cake decorating, I was told referred to a really cool site by Krystal called cake central. I cannot tell you how much I love this site! My first time on the site was Friday night, and i ended up staying up to reading recipes and forums and look at pictures and videos until 2:00 a.m.! You got me hooked Krystal!

Well on Friday night I saw that someone had posted information about wrapping a cake with chocolate. I saw the cake and instantly decided "I HAVE to do that". So two days later I have been given a chance to make a magnificent cake, because McKay happend to invite some people from the ward over for desert. I ended up making a chocolate cake, iced with chocolate ganache, wrapped it in white and dark chocolate layers, and covered it in white chocolate shavings (they were supposed to be curls, but my chocolate was too brittle). Chocoholic Heaven! Maybe that is what i will have to call it.

To get the layers of chocolate around the cake i had to spread the chocolate on a piece of plastic, then wrap it around the cake and place it in the fridge for about 15 minutes. You have to repeat that for each layer (I found out that white chocolate sets much faster than dark chocolate). I ended up using the left over chocolate i had to do some piping along the bottom because i didn't want to waste it.

Here is the cake chilling in the refrigerator to let the chocolate harden.

This lets you see all of the chocolate shavings on top. I was going to cover it with chocolate covered strawberries, but they were $4.00 per package and I am not made of money.

If anyone wants more detailed instructions on how to make this cake just let me know and I would be happy to fill you in.

Random Statistical Results

For the research methods class I am taking this semester I had to gather some random data and then perform some basic statistical analysis on that data. I had to get answers from 40 people, so I used the fastest method i new of to gather that data...mass emails on facebook. It worked really well! Thank you everyone who sent me their info! I figured I would share some of the useless statistics and information i gathered from that study.

First off, these were the questions...

1- What year are you in school?
(younger than college, freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, grad, other)
2-Which do you like better?
(Hamburgers, hot dogs, don’t like either, like both the same)
3- What is your age?
4- How many siblings do you have?
5- I was supposed to ask gender as well, but I didn't really have to ask to know

So it turns out that out of the 40 people sampled

-17.5% of people prefer hot dogs (7/40)
-62.5% of people prefer hamburgers (25/40)
-10% don't like either (4/40)
-10% like them both the same (4/40)

-out of the people who prefer hot dogs, only one was a girl. I found that a little funny.

also, the number of siblings ranged from 1 to 14 (way to skew the numbers Kelsi!) with the average being 3.63 siblings.

There were 13 boys and 27 girls who participated. Ages ranged from 16 to 34.
mean- 22.1
median-21
mode-20
(I guess that data is very telling of how old most of the people that I associate with are)

McKay wants to go to bed now, so I guess that is the end of the useless statistics. Well maybe they aren't completely useless because they got me a good grade on the assignment. Thanks again everyone who helped!

MR. OREM

Tonight I got to be a judge for Orem High School's Mr. Orem pageant. Because my wonderful sister in law Kira is the student council adviser there she was in charge of getting judges, and when one of her judges canceled she called me! It was so much fun! Some of the guys had hilarious skits. One of them did famous dances that spanned the last 50 years. I could not stop laughing! Then there were a bunch of lame-o jocks who played sports on stage for their talent. Really? I don't want to watch you shoot hoops on stage, especially if you loose the ball and it rolls off stage and into the audience (he didn't get my vote). It was hard deciding who the winners were since all we had to go off of was a group dance number, their skit and one random interview question. One guy was asked what his dream date would be and he said dinner and a movie, because everyone likes to eat and watch movies (I didn't pick him either). Even though it was a bit challenging it was a ton of fun! Thanks for using me as your last minute back up judge Kira!