Recipe FAIL

Even though he was satisfied with his Baskin Robbins ice cream cake, I was determined to make Brandon a birthday cake. Having a week off work I decided to go all out and make from scratch his request: white cake with raspberry filling and chocolate frosting.

Not including time spent at the grocery store gathering needed ingredients for this special cake, I spent a good 3 hours preparing this homemade cake. Then another good hour doing all the clean up. Guess where the cake is now? The garbage. Yep. It was disgusting. I don't know what happened, I followed the recipe exactly. I got "Chopped."

The next day I consulted my other recipe: add 1 1/2 cups water and 2 egg whites to box mix. Use previously prepared raspberry filling from scratch, frost with Pillsbury chocolate frosting. The moral of this story? Betty Crocker knows her stuff; I don't.

Birthday Boy

Hint: This boy doesn't like to celebrate birthdays... but his wife does. He's been getting spoiled all weekend long!

After an incredible snowstorm and one of the best powder days of the ski season together, a low-key weekend at his mom's was just what he wanted.

On the menu: Khoreshe Geimeh (delicious homemade Persian food; courtesy of Brandon's mom). Dessert: mint chocolate chip ice cream cake roll; courtesy of Baskin Robbins. I tried to make him a cake but this is what he wanted!

Anthony and Annie say Happy birthday too!

Age of Aquarius

As if we need an excuse to all get together... most of us have February birthdays.

Qhloi brought her party hat to the family birthday celebration.

Grandparenting looks good on them.

Who else but Pat Bench makes 3 different desserts for all 3 b-day girls?

All together we are 96 years old

One of the best b-day/ Valentines gifts ever- Sarah Mc Lachlan at Kingsbury Hall. Thanks babe!

Trick or Treat

What says Halloween more than a Jack O' Lantern? Well, a 7 layer dip of course!

This costume lasted right around 90 seconds. Clearly Cole feels left out.

Jan showing off the graveyard brownies I made. Time-consuming little buggers.

All for the birthday boy Chris. He turned 30+11 on Halloween!

Nonagenarian

Grandpa Bench is 90! He's the healthiest, handsomest 90 year old I know.

Both grandmas... love these ladies!

I feel so very fortunate to live so close to my grandparents in Alpine. I drive the "Alpine Shuttle," taking them to dinner at my parents with us and other family get-togethers. Often I'll just go down there and take them to lunch and maybe an ice cream or a walk. Never-ending jokes and wisdom from those visits.

Stay tuned for the 100th b-day party in 2020!

Birthday Get-away

February is the month for celebrating birthdays! Me, Emily, Courtney (and Dave), Wendi and Natalie (and Aubree) are all Aquarius babies. We rented a cabin in Tollgate Canyon, near Park City and all cozied up that weekend for fun in the snow, playing games and eating yummy food!

Good friends Ben and Katy

Would you guess this gift came from Wendi? She could wrap a roll of toilet paper and make it cute!

Love all these lovely ladies! Jayleen, Natalie, Wendi, me and Hillary. Courtney and Jen didn't get there til the next day.

Making mom's famous bran muffins in the morning. I don't know how Hillary stayed on her diet all weekend long! We had home-made Cafe Rio and pizza and of course b-day cupcakes and treats.

It was Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick! Playing "Clue." Upstairs we had our choice of pool and foos-ball as well.

Birthday girls

A beautiful afternoon snow-shoeing in the mountains.

Getting ready for the Patagonia photo shoot.

Natalie, Jayleen, Jen, Courtney, Hillary

Steve, Ashley, Clint, me, Brandon and John.

I couldn't have asked for a better way to say goodbye to my twenties and hello to 30 with all my favorite friends! Thanks for the good times everyone.

Birthday Time

We are coming up on the big one. That's right folks, we're turning 30! Just saying it sounds old.
With Em and I both going out of town for our actual birthday we got together with the family last weekend for the best dinner and of course were spoiled with fun presents. Emily is going to Mexico with some girlfriends and I am off to India for 2 weeks with the Operation Smile team!
In the Indian spirit, grandma got me this cute shirt. And as only a grandma can tell me, she said my hair was too straight and wondered if I was pregnant because my bum was bigger. And no, I'm not pregnant.
I have loved sharing my birthday with my twin. We often have this yummy raspberry cream cake. I never believed my parents when we were younger though and they told us that someday we'd be best friends. Ya right! We fought all the time over clothes and other silly things. But today I can honestly say she is my best friend!

Birthday and Easter celebration

A few weeks ago we celebrated Brandon's b-day at his mom's in Mt. Pleasant with his family and some yummy food. It was a cold, rainy Saturday, but luckily that led to a beautiful sunny Easter Sunday! We had a wonderful dinner at my parent's house, and Easter games. We love getting together with our families!

Celebrate for as long as possible

Wendi's mom said it best, "You aren't through celebrating until the last party." And February is full of several birthday parties. Of course I share my b-day with my twin sister, but also several close friends and family members have birthdays in February as well. So we have several occasions to go out to dinner, have family dinners, friend dinners, and even go out of town to celebrate in Brianhead ski resort. This is the longest standing tradition among friends. We have been going to Aubree's cabin in Brianhead ski resort for 9 years in a row now, and we plan to continue this forever hopefully!

This year, the President's Day weekend also shared Valentines Day, so I felt extra guilty leaving Brandon home to take care of our new puppies while I went to play with my friends. But he was so sweet about it, and it was nice to get some sleep and a break from my little ones. We had many yummy meals, late night talks, sledding championships on the huge sledding hill, and wonderful memories made! Oh, and we aren't through celebrating yet, we have our combined family dinner planned for next week since mom was sick for our actual birthday!