Charlotte and Seth, DC Temple

I'll let Melissa fill you in about the wedding, when she gets a minute...

Seth and his family are from Ireland and the newlyweds will be living there as well. At the wedding we were given this "Real Shamrock" which is a wild shamrock from the highways and byeways of Ireland. St. Patrick introduced this little plant to Ireland in 433AD. This shamrock encasing has on it the inscription "Remember that happiness is a means of travel, not a destination." We're going to miss Charlotte and Seth, and hope to be able to visit them in that beautiful country someday.

Ashlee (Cutler) Morris' Wedding Shower

More of Mel's Masterpieces

Melissa finished her cake class but not without a couple more creations to capture. She made a cake in her class where the teacher forced them to design a big freaky clown thing sitting on the edge of the cake, before the class ended Melissa had removed freaky clown dude in preparation to make a cake for me to take to my work. After she got home from the class she threw the design of this cake together in minutes. My co-workers were amazed, and it was a great-tasting cake.

The final cake assignment was to design a bunny rabbit, and Melissa did an excellent job. She's well on her way to wedding cake design world. Or at least she'll be making great cakes for our children's birthdays someday.

Road Trip to Philadelphia (Mar. 1, 2008)

Melissa and I took a weekend road trip to Philadelphia because I've never been there and because my cousin Tom Wakefield's son Adam had a birthday party the Sunday that we were there (happy birthday Adam!). We stayed at the Wakefield's place the night we were there.

The Wakefield's were great tour guides for us ALL day Saturday, they knew their way around and all the tricks of Philly (like picking up tickets to Constitution Hall early), and they have such a cute family, it was great to hang out with them for the weekend, so thanks for everything Tom and Heather. Check out their Blog.

We had way too many photos to post on our blog from this trip, so we threw 39 into the slide show at the bottom of this post, so you don't miss out on all the great pictures.

Milanesas

Melissa whipped up some Argentine food one night. It's this weird stuff called broccoli, cauliflower, and potatoes. Oh yeah and these things called milanesas, and they are choice. Even though broccoli and cauliflower aren't necessarily Argentine foods, nor are they meant to accompany the milanesas, health conscious we are, and our vegetables we eat—Argentine or not.

Happy Leap Year

Melissa is taking a cake decorating class, so we were very blessed this particular year that it's a leap year so that Melissa had something specific to design her cake for, which we took to a Leap Year Day party with friends in the ward, where Melissa's cake earned rave reviews. And it only took 10 days to make :) j/k Mel, only about 3.

Kamikaze Lincoln

Apparently our turtle doesn't like "Lincoln's Park" anymore. He successfully jumped over the edge, twice, but only made it all the way to the ground once. For any of you who haven't seen him for a while, he's grown a TON, (maybe you can tell from the photos) so a drop to the ground isn't going to happen lightly. Both incidences happened while we were at work.

The first jump happened while I was on the phone with Melissa on my way home from work; she said, "Hey, where's Lincoln?" Being that there's nowhere for him to hide his huge hero-in-a-half-shell self in a 20-gallon tank, I told her he must have jumped out. Melissa found him lodged between the wall and the shelf that his tank is on (see photo to know how high up his tank is), suspended above the ground, scared spitless, and breathing like he was hating life...poor thing. He had white paint markings on his shell from the wall for a while, thanks to suicide attempt #1. The second incident happened when I walked in the door from work, and was on the phone with Melissa, I said, "Hey, where's Lincoln?".....enter attempt #2. So I looked to his favorite spot under the couch and there he was, like nothing happened. Silly turtle...kamikaze-ing is for psychos.

How he got out: when his water's high, he can apparently grab onto the filter and pull him self up and—as we now know—over. Once so innocent, now so rebellious. Needless to say, he's lost all high water level privileges. Who knew a Chinatown reptile could end up being so clever. Any advice on how to deal with a turtle with suicidal tendencies?