Sam's Ordination

Sam turned twelve Tuesday which means Chris was able to ordain him to the Aaronic Priesthood, the office of Deacon, today at church. 

Chris and I were in Florida on his birthday so his party will be later this week.  Grammie Keysar stayed with the kids and was able to stay for the ordination, too!  She was baptized on Sam's birthday in 2004.

We love you and are so proud of you, Samma-lamma-ding-dong!!

Seek The Higher Ground

I can upload pictures again!  Yay!

Our Stake's Boy Scouts did a week-long priesthood encampment this summer with the theme, "Seek the Higher Ground".  The deacons tented at base camp, the teachers did rock climbing, and the priests did a high adventure canoe trip. This is the cake I made for our ward's Court of Honor following camp.

The BSA emblem is molded and colored white chocolate against a painted cookie (from the back view it is a sun.)  The grass is colored shaved coconut and the canoe is made of rice cereal treat covered in painted fondant.  The boys' hair and white water are made from buttercream icing and EVERYTHING else is fondant.  All the fondant is "marshmallow fondant".

The back side of the cake.

The boys up close.

I'll be posting the others cakes I've done since June shortly!

Brandon Turns Turned 12

To illustrate just how long it's been since I've been able to blog AND access my photos at the same time:

Brandon turned 12 in October!

{um, yeah....2010}

 Playing video games at his party.

 The guitar was one of his gifts.  Chris came down the stairs playing "Happy Birthday" with it.

Twelve is a big milestone for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  It means leaving Primary during Sunday School and meeting with the youth (no more "baby songs"!)  For boys, it also means being ordained with the Aaronic priesthood.

 Grandpa and Grandma Coles flew down to participate in and witness his ordination.  I wish I had thought to take a picture BEFORE Brandon changed out of his shirt and tie. *sigh*

Typically church dances have a minimum age of fourteen.  But the Halloween dance is for twelve and up and he just made the cut off!  He was excited to go but his friend, Jacob, later told me he refused to dance with anyone...

Halloween Dance; "Link" costume he made himself, and "Facebook" gag stolen from NBC's The Office.

...even though there were a lot of girls that wanted to!  This boy is too handsome for his own good.  

Yep, that's eyeliner!  He was very specific that Link has 'eyeliner'.  It was even more amusing the next day when he couldn't figure out how to get it off and went on his first Scout camp out with make-up on.

I'm glad he's not in too much of a hurry to grow up!

"Father & Sons" 2010

Last month Chris and the boys headed out with the other men and boys from our stake for the annual Father and Sons Campout.  This happens each May in LDS stakes all over the US (maybe the world, but I really don't know) to commemorate the Restoration of the Priesthood.

I asked Chris to take the camera this year since this would be Brandon's last year without the priesthood (he turns 12 in October.)  But I should've known better.  Father and Sons campouts are a time where boys big and small can just be . . . gross, dirty, curious, competitive, stinky, loud . . . in a word - BOY-sterous.  So of course I only got a few obligatory "smile for your mother" shots from when they set up camp and none of them actually doing anything.

Nevermind that they leave me every Mother's Day weekend to do this camp.  Or that I'm the one that packed everything and Chris gets the "cool parent" credit for the weekend.  Or that I made them two dinners each to take for a one night trip with three different kinds of homemade cookies!  Or that I'm the one that had to wash all the nasty clothes when they got home. 

Seriously.

Nevermind

that stuff because I

 ♥ love ♥

all of it.