Cakes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was the class instructor at Enrichment tonight.
I taught everyone how to make gum paste roses and calla lilies.
I also just figured out how to make them myself, yesterday :)
It went great.
I S-T-R-E-S-S-E-D all day
I made 40 red velvet cupcake
White chocolate ganache
Milk chocolate ganache
Almond buttercream
And a two tiered white cake with gum paste flowers
I was baking from 8 am til 630 pm today
I love this
LOOOOOOOOVE this!!!
anyways.
i remembered to take pictures this time.
so Bri, eat your heart out.

My Passion

I have discovered that I have a passion again. In high school I had such enthusiasm for life and such conviction and passion. After getting married I felt like i lost a lot of that. And it scared me. I had lost so much of what ME was and i didn't necessarily know how to get it back. I didn't have time or the motivation to paint,and every time I did it was frustrating instead of therapeutic. I didn't sing anymore,didn't wear crazy make up,or unique clothes didn't play in the rain as much...I disappeared into the everyday tedious-ness of a wife. And I lived with that. I just assumed my passion was over and my life was wonderful despite not having a passion.

And then I got pregnant and i didn't feel like me at all.who was this person with insane emotions and baby weight? Getting out of bed was a challenge every morning. Working 30 hours a week until a week before kaleb was born was exhausting. I had no energy to do anything extra. When kaleb was born my life changed completely in the best way possible. But I still had no energy to do anything. Come to find out...I have ppd. And I needed a reason to live some days. I know that sounds terrible. But some mornings I had no motivation to get out of bed except the baby crying. I felt useless,boring,and talentless. The medicine for ppd helped with the energy. But I felt like Rachel was gone and replaced with this cleaning,laundry and milk machine. Here to serve one purpose and nothing else. It drove me crazy. I needed SOMETHING.

I started looking at recipes and cakes looked fun,and not as hard as I thought homemade cakes would be. I made red velvet and then angel food from scratch and it was fun. I loved it. I have tried lots of recipes for cake and frosting and fillings. All good so far. Come to find,I'm actually really good at this. Who knew? I took a decorating class, and I love that too.

Some of the cakes I have tried:
red velvet with cream cheese frosting and raspberry filling
Lemon cake with white chocolate ganache and raspberry filling and lemon buttercream frosting
Strawberry cake with almond butter cream
Red velvet with white chocolate ganache and raspberry filling and almond buttercream with fondant calla lilies

I design cakes,draw them all the time. One for kalebs birthday,one for a friend who is on bedrest with a difficult pregnancy,one for my sisters wedding. No guarantees I'll make all of them. But the idea is there. And I'm obsessed. It's therapeutic,calming,and amazingly fun. I love love love making cakes. I have a new passion for life in all aspects because of this. And i know this is gonna sound so dramatic but...baking cakes has saved my life. I realized that on my way to work yesterday. And I know it's weird,but thats me. W-E-I-R-D. And I'm a baker obsessed.

Breakfast With Kaleb

Kaleb has decided baby food is disgusting.
He refuses to eat it.
So we are now feeding him real food

Only one glitch with his idea...

He doesn't have any teeth yet.
Needless to say, this has made mealtime quite the adventure.
This was his breakfast this morning.

He starts with the cheerios in a bowl.
And then shakes the bowl cause he likes the sound it makes

Dumps the cheerios allllll over the floor

Crushes them with the bowl

then puts some of them back into the bowl.

then he eats them

cute eh?
I think so.
pay no mind to the messy room...
a double ear infection and the flu..plus a stubborn tooth that wont come in for kaleb
have sorta ruined any progress this week.

Holidays In Pictures

Since i never remember to when the holiday actually happens..here are few.


On December 13th
Ever since i can remember
we have celebrated St. Lucia
Its a Swedish Holiday

Basically we all dress up in white
And the boys wear these pointy white hats
we didnt realize we looked vaguely like the KKK
Until one year a neighbor knocked on our door...
and we answered the door..all in white robe thingys..
and pointy hats.
This is Kalebs first St. Lucia.

Whats this grandad?

I'm not so sure about this...

I hate it! get it off!!!
Then there was Christmas Eve.

he loves Auntie Jenny

The many faces of Kaleb

Sleepy baby...
Didnt even make it to look at lights.

ummmm.............

So life has this funny way of turning around and biting you in the butt.Depression kinda runs in my genes, I've seen it first hand in my family. During High School I suggested to a few people that pills may be needed to help their depression, and they took my advice, and said it really helped. I told them that taking pills didnt make them any less of a person. that it was good etc etc. It's a lot easier to tell people that than it is to accept it myself.

I'm now very medicated, and I have a realllllly hard time dealing with that. Each morning I take Sertraline,Vitamin D3, Vitamin B complex, Super Kelp, and a Prenatal. And when I forget, I really feel it. I have no energy, a really bad temper, no patience, and everything PJ does drives me crazy, I'm an evil version of me. And I hate that I NEED to take pills to be normal me. I didnt used to be this way, I was totally and completely fine without medicine. And suddenly I'm not me. I keep complaining to PJ that he likes me better when I take my pills, one day he said "no YOU like you better when you take them" . Which is true, without them I feel, I know that I'm (theres really no other word for it...) a bitch. And it really bothers me that I'm medicated. It doesnt go away when I take the pills either, its always somewhere rolling around my thoughts. I'm broken. And I realize that so many other people have Post Partum Depression , and many other mental "illnesses" that they deal with everyday. And it makes me feel so stupid because I really am so lucky that there are pills to help me with this. But ......I dont feel lucky.

I need them to take care of Kaleb, to function. No sleep, breastfeeding, and the stress of being a mommy are the perfect combination to cause Post Partum. Its so stupid. I dont want this. I just want to be the crazy,colorful, abnormal, happy person I am. Without pills.

Time to take the happy pills.gag.

The World...

Should simply stop when someone like her passes from this earth. It should stand still in sorrow, and confusion. But it didnt stop despite the feeling that everything was in slow motion. I'm still not 100% sure I believe she's gone. She was my Aunt, and I was one of her daughters in heart. I cant imagine what her children are going through, what her husband is going through. Everyone keeps saying "Heavenly Father needed her more elsewhere" and I cant help but scream in my head "No youre wrong! We need her here more. She has children.She is incredibly kind, loving,and very special. There is no where but here that she could be needed more." And nothing makes sense. I keep hearing her voice, seeing her face and just expecting her to walk through the door. It shouldn't be real. She shouldn't be gone. She was only 46. And she simply died without warning. I bet she was confused as much as we were, I doubt she knew.And there are so many things that she would find funny about this situation, but she isnt here to laugh about, so they lose the humor among the tears.I keep thinking, I never got her to teach me the lullaby she sang to Kaleb. He will not remember her. She will not be here for so many of her childrens life events. Its heartbreaking. I cant help but be a little bitter. Cant help but play the "what if..." game. Its like the gears in my brain are not catching, wont accept that she's gone. Click Click Click.Gone Gone Gone. Why Why Why. This world will never be the same missing Roberta Lyn Oliver Perkins. Never.

FISHES!!! LOTS AND LOTS OF FISHES!!!

SO! we wanted to go to the zoo, and it was Rachel's birthday last Sunday. Of course, we couldn't go ON her birthday, so we were planning the zoo for monday! Sunday night came and I was looking at the weather report for monday, and it was to be 92 degrees and "scattered clouds." I didn't figure that would be very enjoyable for us. And i knew Kaleb would hate it terribly. so, i decided to look up and see where the Aquarium is in SLC. It turns out that the zoo is another hour or so farther from us than the aquarium, and it was the same admission price. woo! We went to the Aquarium, and had lots of fun! it's devided up into three separate sections, Utah fish, Ocean fish, and South American fish/animals. we started in the Utah fish section becuase it seemed like it would be boring to end with, so we saw trout and salmon and little frogs and endangered minnow-looking silver fish. Kaleb liked watching the trout swim in circles and bump into stuff.

Then we went over to the Ocean area. We started at the jellys. Kaleb LOVED the jellys. he was smacking his hands on the glass and making happy faces at them. We moved on through the Ocean area and they had a shark (rachel's scared of them) and a cool looking octopus that moved from the top of the glass to the bottom of the glass, which was really fun to see. the Octopus also had one of those plastic hamster balls in his tank. i guess he likes to play with it? we also saw a lot of REALLY brightly colored fish in the gaint reef display tank they have. Kaleb watched the bright blue and bright yellow fish the most. they had a lot of "Dori fish" (there was a group of young kids there, and they kept saying "look a DORI FISH!") and clown fish and little shrips and stuff. It was fun.

We finished by going through the South American section. they had penguins. they were REALLY cute. they walk with their wings/fins - whatever you call them - held back all funny-like. and they'd float across the top of the water over to the edge of the land and randomly just JUMP out of the water and land on their feet on the rocks. it was quite amazing to see. then they'd waddle around a little before practically belly-flopping back into a graceful dive once they hit the water. the South American exibit had a lot of poison frogs and stuff like that too. I remember, as a kid, they were my favorite. I liked the black and yellow one the best. Rachel liked the BRIGHT blue one. she loves blue. Kaleb liked looking around, but i dont know if he had a favorite.

We wandered around the gift shop, but there wasn't much. We just went to the little 50 cent smash-a-penny thing and stamped the penny into the cool white-tipped reef shark stamp. that'll be our souvenir from the aquarium. It was a nice day-out, and we had fun. We still really want to go to the zoo, but we'll just have to save that for a cooler day.

:) -PJ