Niagara Falls, Family Vaca Pt. 1

A week ago we got to take a trip to upper state New York and stay with my 2nd cousin in Rochester.  The awesome thing about where she lives is she is only an hour from Niagara and maybe 30 minutes from Palmyra, which I will be featuring in my Pt. 2 of my Family Vaca hopefully tomorrow, but we'll just have to see how things go...

 There really is no words to describe this view!  I was completely overwhelmed by the vastness of the Falls.  I seriously thought we would drive an hour to get there, site see for a couple of hours and then drive an hour home....4 hours, tops!  But that did not happen, this was an ALL day affair, and so totally worth it!!

 View from the other side of Niagara, you can see Horseshoe Falls in the background, which I personally thought it was cooler looking than Niagara.  But when your comparing which is more awesome-er, there really is no loser here.

 Even the kids were in awe.  This railing took you right up to the waters edge right as it fell over the side.  In the background you can see a green pillar with a bridge that connects it to land, that's where we were standing when I took the previous photo.  It was an extremely windy day, so windy that as we walked across that tall observation deck, every time I picked up my foot to take a step the wind would blow my shoe so that I thought it would blow right off!  In fact, Tobie lost his glasses while we were up there (the screw needs to be tightened on one side, making them very loose on his face), but blew them right up against a bar which stopped them from flying off the edge! Talk about lucky!

 Kids posing...I know they don't look too enthusiastic, but seriously they were.  There is Canada in the background on this pic.  I kept singing "O, Canada!" while we walked around the place, unfortunately the title part of that song is the only part I know.  I'm sure I got some weird looks singing "O, Canada!" over and over as I walked around, but I just couldn't help myself!

 This is from the Cave of the Winds.  Super cool, and a must-do if you head up there.  You take this elevator to the bottom of Niagara, then you hike up these stairs you see behind us to the top deck called the Hurricane Deck, accurately named that because the gushing water falling down on you also packs quite the wind power and it actually feels like Hurricane force winds!  The kids loved it, even Charlotte didn't want to walk away.  And you see those ponchos...yeah...that's just for show.  I think the park has those to give you a false sense of security.  We got soaked!  I recommend wearing swimming suits.

 The other must-do thing is take the Maiden of the Mist boat ride.  These ponchos are a little more sturdier, but let's be honest, Poncho vs. Waterfall....Waterfall is going to win...every. single. time.

 The boat ride takes you right beside Niagara and actually into Horseshoe Falls.  Niagara has a lot of rocks at the bottom, so they can't get too close.  But Horseshoe has nothing at the bottom, they told a story on the boat of a 7 yr. old boy who fell in and went over the falls in nothing but his swim trunks and a life vest and he made completely unharmed!  It is that smooth...but while in there the water at the bottom looks like the water in a washing machine.  It's churning and spinning and you are constantly getting sprayed, which is why we don't have good pics of inside that one, all these pics were taken with our iPhone's and we do not have waterproof covers.

 There were rainbows EVERYWHERE!  There were even double rainbows!  So pretty!  This is right before heading into Horseshoe Falls.  See, no rocks at the bottom.

This is after the boat ride heading back to the dock.  Charlotte loved it, even though she looks like a drowned rat!  In fact all of my kids loved it, including the 2 BIG kids! Ha!  It was so much fun, much more fun than a water park even!  This place really is majestic!  Theo and I talk about going again, but then going on the Canada side.  I really hope we will some day, I need to learn the rest of that song for just in case! ;)

God's Grace is Enough

This is an excellent talk given by Brother Brad Wilcox...I can't even give you highlights because no joke, this whole thing is awesome.  I sincerely hope everyone who visits this blog will watch this short 30 minute clip.  You will not regret it!

Arrow of Light

 I truly am proud of my Tobie and this great accomplishment, he received his Arrow of Light.  It helps that he really enjoys Scouts and it's always an added bonus when you have your Dad as your Scout Master pushing you...ha!

 Here's the incredible good looking Scout Master pinning Tobie...heehee...;)

 And here is Tobie struggling to get my pin on.  I think I took over after a minute or two because I didn't want to get blood on my shirt.

Theo got the idea to build a "bridge" for the boys to walk over to represent their crossing over into Boy Scouts.  He had a boy represent from each of the levels of Cub Scout come up and place a rock on the floor.  After the Tiger, Wolf, Bear and Webelo placed their rock Theo put 2X4's down and had the boys walk across it with the Mother's helping along the way.

It was a nice ceremony, and ended it with eating the Arrow of Light cake. :)  Now Theo and Tobie have been getting ready all week for Scout camp next week.  Tobie will actually be having his birthday while he is at camp.  I don't know how I feel about that...but Theo assures me it is going to be so much fun Tobie won't have time to be homesick.  I hope he's right, Theo has so many fond memories of Scouts that it isn't hard to get him involved in all the activities with Tobie.  I'm a little jealous, but really, with 4 girls I have a LOT of Girls' Camps to look forward to!

A Month of Cake

  I haven't been blogging so much this past month because with all the end of the school stuff and then being just plain ole lazy because I didn't have to get the kids out the door every morning.  And I got to admit, it's been super nice!  But I wanted to share some of my cakes that have also been keeping me busy that I haven't posted them.  This first one is a Mythbusters cake that I did for a friend's son's birthday.  I really loved the logo part, if I do say so myself! ;)

I put caution tape and different types of warning signs around the cake.  I wanted to make the 7 stand up, but couldn't get it just right.  So I came up with the flames coming out of the back of it, which I think looks really awesome anyway.

This is from a Multi-Party that I hosted.  What's a Multi-Party you ask?  That's a great question!  I'm officially pinning this term for parties where you want to have several consultants of different products come and do a party.  Do you have a lot of friends that sell different things, Thirty-One, Scentsy, Pampered Chef....but can't conceive of having an individual party for all of them?  Well, just lump them all together and you have a Multi-Party!!!  Great idea, right?!  I had a Scentsy, Thirty-One, Barefoot Books and Paparazzi consultant come over and set up their stuff in my house AND I made a cake and cupcakes to promote myself!  It's a win-win!  They got the orders, I got the rewards and got to put my  name out there for potential cake buyers.  I also had some Choffy there and got some customers off of that.  Not too shabby!  I highly recommend doing this.

Here is the shot with the cupcakes.  The cake was vanilla with vanilla buttercream and the cupcakes where chocolate with my cookies and cream buttercream in the middle, topped with vanilla buttercream and crushed Oreos for garnish.

 Tobie achieved his Arrow of Light!  I'll have to do another post about the ceremony another time, but Theo asked me to make a cake with the Arrow of Light symbol on it.  I was actually pretty proud of myself for this one, because even though the concept seemed simple I had to get the measurements just right so it looked like the Arrow of Light pin.  I'm so proud of my Tobie, but more on that later since this post is about me.... ;)

For some reason Blogger isn't letting me separate these two pictures so I have to put the caption up here..any who....If you remember from my last post Miriam turned 8 this year, which in my house means BIRTHDAY PARTY!!!  We had it at a bowling alley, which was super cool, but only 3 friends from school were able to make it, not cool.  Still the cake was a big hit, and that's what matters, right? I'm just kidding!  She had a blast and with the fact that she has so many siblings she didn't even seemed phased that not that many kids from her class came.  But more on that later in a posted dedicated to her party...She wanted a My Little Pony cake.  I searched Pinterest and found several, but the one below this picture won the coin toss.  I really loved the clouds and flowers, but I had to "dumb it down" for me in regard to the sculptured ponies and huge sign on the top.  I figured the little figurines were the perfect size and I wasn't going to get anywhere near this so I took the short cut. Also it was special because Miriam got to help me with it.  I put her to work cutting out flowers and leaves and even drawing the vein down the middle of each leaf for more detail.  She did good,  I was proud of it, and was secretly happy that we brought home half of the bottom cake...MORE FOR ME!!  Hopefully I will start to get more orders and begin building on some clientele here.

So that's it for me and bragging about my cakes...now to pin them on Pinterest! Ha!