That Takes The Cake

My sister-in-law Katie lives in Austin and loves cake decorating.  She invited me to come along to this event.  We had a blast and saw some amazingly decorated cakes.  Here are some of my favorites...

 

Yes, these are all decorated cakes, made mostly of different edible things.  Lots of them had pictures of the steps that they took in forming the different shapes and decorations.  There were different competition levels for all ages, 6 year olds to advanced adults.  They were really impressive!  TLC was also there with demonstrations from the most recent group of bakers from their "Ultimate Cake Off" show.  And we ate some delicious cupcakes :)

Day 300/600

We now have a love fern, something I've always wanted (well at least since the first time I saw 'How to Lose A Guy in Ten Days')  Thursday we celebrated our 300th day of marriage, and our 600th day of dating. 

Dave surprised me during lunch time at school with a lovely love fern and a nice card.  I promised to take great care of it and never let it die!

Fredericksburg, TX

A while back, Dave got a client from a little town called Fredericksburg, an hour outisde of San Antonio in the hill country.  When he told his bosses, they started going off about what a fun town it is, German and Swiss settled and full of bed & breakfasts.  When Dave told them that he had never been there, they told him that if he hit a certain goal they'd buy him a bed & breakfastout in Fredericksburg.  Dave called quite excited.  He said he was already gonna achieve the goal, he would've done it without the incentive, so he was gonna win us that bed & breakfast.  Well, of course David hit the goal back in October and this weekend we were finally able to find a free weekend to go. 

This was our little place, the Sunrise Chalet.  It was on a beautiful 26 acre property with a creek running through it.  It was full of Swiss decorations, it was beautiful. 

 

We had a great time exploring the property.  We found a swimming/fishing hole that had no water in it and some beautiful orange rocks to climb on.  We then found the famous lookout point.

Even though it was quite warm, I couldn't resist sitting by the nice fireplace. We spent the night out on the town, got some Mexican food, and finished with Blue Bell ice cream.  The next morning we went out walking the main street of Fredericksburg to go shopping and got a few Texas trinkets.  It was such a fun weekend, great work David!

Who would've thought...Snow Day in San Antonio!

So that last big storm that covered almost half of America... we were predicted to get the bottom tip of it.  The last snow they had here was a light dusting in 2004, so everyone was pretty excited.  The night before we were driving around and it was a slushy rain and all the cars on the road were driving incredibly slow and every single car had their flashers on, it was pretty entertaining.  We turned on the news when we got home around 11pm and over 400 accidents had been reported that evening within the city limits, we were glad to be off the streets.

Now in defense of our new hometown, it is built in the hill country.  All of the roads are pretty narrow, very windy(curvy) and hilly, and we don't have any snow plow equipment or salt.  Those don't make very good conditions for snow.

The view from our window in the morning

We turned on the news to hear that all of the freeways were shut down and also all the school districts had cancelled school. Their advice was for everyone to stay home.  That was music to our ears. We had a late breakfast, watched a movie, took a nap and just enjoyed our morning off. We had no idea being snowed in could be that fun.

We finally decided we should probably play in the snow since who knows when we'll see it again.   We attempted snow angels and snowballs, but the snow was almost all melted :(

 

We still had fun though. The previous 36 hours before the rain/snow the temperature hadn't gotten above freezing.  So underneath this thin layer of snow was ice, pure ice. We could barely walk across the street.  It was a fun adventure and a reminder of why we moved away from Utah.

P90X

This will be Dave and I in a couple months :)  We both need to come up with some kind of exercise plan, so instead of spending $60 a month for a decent gym pass we decided to do P90X (free).  We're starting tomorrow, we timed it so we'll finish the day before our anniversary so we can eat lots of junk food to celebrate. Dave has done it before, he was actually just finishing the day that I met and he was looking good!  So I'm trusting him. The only bad thing is that he wants to do the workouts everyday at 6AM (not the most appealing idea to me) But worse, he wants to do the whole diet with it.  I've never done any diet and I'm very sensitive about having the food I want, when I want it.  To be honest, I'm kinda dreading it, but I'm excited to be in great shape again! 

Dave's 26

We went up to Austin to "get our Christmas gifts that we couldn't carry on the plane."  We had lunch at Tom & Katie's with Dave's parents.  After lunch we surprised David with his favorite, chocolate mousse pie.  Then, the second surprise, we had a cheesecake for Katie and her upcoming birthday.

That's Dave in the maroon if you can't tell.

Back in Texas

We flew right into Dallas on a red-eye flight.  Dave's brothers were there to pick us up nice and early.  We spent 5 days there with the whole Roderick family, all three boys and their families.  It was so fun to be all together under one roof!

The Rodericks

We Went To Brazil!

My father served as a missionary for the LDS church over 35 years ago in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  He hasn't had the opportunity to go back since, so my mama planned a great trip down to Brazil for the holidays and we all got to go for our Christmas present.  Brazil is a long ways away, so we took advantage of our time there and went to 4 different places in 3 different time zones, all in about 9 days.  It was a crazy trip with lots of fun adventures and little sleep, and definitely a trip of a lifetime!