Cake Fantasticness

Hey Everyone! My sister had a birthday recently, which gave me the wonderful excuse to break out all my cake toys. She loves sushi, so behold her chocolate cake, with Baileys cream filling and raspberries confection - although it really looked much cooler in person:

Courtney: If you are reading this, Stop Now, because I loved making this for you, and don't want to make you feel like I'm complaining or something. Love you girl! Come back!

(She recently moved home to AK.)

This cake was a pain in the butt. You probably can't see it, but all that sushi is coated with actual grains of sugar rice that took me maybe an eon to make. Plus, I carried the materials around town with me all day for a week, so whenever I had a moment I could work on it - which made lots of people look at me weird and conclude I was crazy. After said rice was made, I had to INDIVIDUALLY PLACE EACH GRAIN. Holy crap.

All in all though, I had a great time, and it turned out just like it looked in my head. Sculpting and painting fondant to look like fish was great fun. I enjoy being good at something.

The only blips were at the sushi restaurant where we were taking Court to dinner - first, the head guy thought we had the audacity to bring our own sushi to his restaurant, and he was pissed. I didn't' even realize, bc it may be good, but still obviously not sushi. Luckily, Court set him straight, so he didn't give us week-old fish.

However, the real horror came at the end, when we offered everyone in the restaurant a piece, because there was no way we could eat all that cake. As I finished cutting the last slices, I hear, "Tastes like candy."

My heart kind of bottomed out as I turned around to see that the other Japanese patrons WERE EATING THE DECORATIVE FONDANT SUSHI.

YA'LL.

Fondant is not meant to be eaten in such large... lumps. I mean, it is edible sugar and everything, but that doesn't mean you would actually want to eat it. Kind of like Spam. It just doesn't taste good. Not to mention these were covered in little hard 'rice' pieces that had dried to cement consistency. It must have been terrible. I was horrified, but now it made no point to tell them they weren't supposed to eat it. So, they politely pretended it wasn't that bad and they didn't think I was crazy, and I tried not to notice the whole thing. Btu my inner baker was kind of screaming.

At least the cake was good.


Also, the sushi guy is really nice and awesome and everything, but whenever we wanted to take a picture he would always hand Courtney some giant knife. I'm sure that was a huge deal, and they are probably his grandfather's knives from Japan, and we were very honored. However, it makes all of Courtney's birthday pictures look like she is 5 seconds away from murdering someone. It's kind of hilarious.

Stay Tuned - there were some birthday shenanigans I'll write about later - this is just all about the cake.

Home Sweet Home

Hey Guys,

I figure I should give you all a peek at what we call home out here on Oahu. If all goes as planned, there should be a little video of Ko Olina (our neighborhood) and some pics of the house. If any of you SDA designers are looking at this, yes, I know my house is one giant brown blob. David and I are having problems agreeing on accent colors. Not to mention finding money to buy some. So no laughing! :)


See http://www.koolina.com/ for more information or pictures of the Ko Olina resort.


So, without further ado, here is our home:

Front of our house

View from the balcony

Living Room

Dining Room

Kitchen

Our Bedroom

Guest Bath

We have a guest room, but it is currently housing a guest, so no pics. Besides, we probably will have to get rid of all that stuff when we move.

So that's where we live. We love it - it is beautiful. Those of you who are thinking about coming to visit: COME BEFORE OCTOBER. We will be moving (and packing) all of Oct., and after that we will be living somewhere decidedly less cool, and probably without a guest room. So if you can, head on over before then. You won't regret it. And we need the company. It's a win-win.

Midlife Crisis

Say hello to my dad's Midlife Crisis.

Honestly, I expected this kind of crap from my mom, so it was a real surprise when Dad pulled into the driveway with a giant Harley. He actually got it a while ago, before David and I moved over to Hawaii. I guess that faced with the fact that both of his children will live too far away to harass him, he needed to find something else to replace us that required lots of time, could possibly upset him greatly by getting in a wreck, and sucked the life out of his wallet. Perfect!

Actually, dad has had a lot of fun road-tripping on his 'hog'. Just look at him. He's so cute. Kinda dorky, which makes sense, as Court and I are such nerds ourselves. At least we come by it honestly. I'm just glad he's huge so no one will mess with him at biker bars.

Dad's possible biker-clan names:

Jolly Green Giant
Twiggy
Killer (from that time he dropped it on Diane and fractured her leg)

Ok, so I'm not really good at picking out macho names. But I amused myself for at least 15 minutes trying (in vain) to think up something funny, and imagining him in a biker gang. When my inner thug would’t come out to play, I got desperate and even looked up one of those Internet biker nickname-generator things, which is where I got this one:

LIGHT LESTER NO PANTS

The Internet is a weird place.

To be fair, it really isn't that much of a midlife crisis - Dad has been having a great time, and getting lots of use out of the bike. It's great to see him enjoying himself so much.

Sorry dad, it's just funnier expressed this way.

An Assumed Vacation

Well, after entreaties to both David and Stephen to write regarding Stephen's visit failed, you all are stuck with me, who was not around for most of it, and I'm kind of fuzzy on the details, since he came around 3months ago. Whoops. I'm a little behind. So here goes - their vacation as I remember hearing about it.

Stephen is the first of David's siblings to come visit, and we were very excited to have him. I don't get much vacation, so I worked during the week, turning the boys loose on the island. Sitting in the office, I had way too much time on my hands to obsess about the weather. At the start of his trip, it was both raining and very voggy, so I was a bit upset with nature. In a (well-meaning) attempt to find the boys some sunlight, I actually made a chart showing when it would be sunny where on the island. A dormant OCD trait had reared its ugly head. I have vague recollections of badgering David about it, and at the same time, my normal, rational side was viewing the whole thing from afar, wondering what the heck I was doing.

Luckily, the Dyer boys are immune to any kind of badgering, so they shrugged it off and had fun their own way. They did things - now a year later, I'm having issues remembering what. They went water skiing on the North Shore, hiked out to Kaena Point, went spearfishing, kayaked out to the islands, and did other stuff I'm sure I can't remember. We were so excited to have him.

Corene

These are just a collection of pictures from our last weekend of moving in San Antonio - I had lost them with the camera. Corene had kept our dog for us for 3 months in the interm of us moving. Lily misses Corene and Gigi (Corene's dog).

Look at this picture of trailer-backing perfection. I rock.

David's favorite Mexican place in SA - I'm sure we'll make a beeline for it when we visit. Mexican food really is terrible out here.

Sand Castle

David and I decided to broaden our beach horizons, and try out a new place this weekend. It was supposed to have good snorkeling, so we were excited -



Until we got there and realized the surf would probably bash out heads in, or at the very least, drag us out to sea to drown. Either way = dead, which was not in the game plan.



So, we decided to engage in some juvenile behavior and build a sand castle. I still find that it is great fun, and David is a sweetie for playing with me.

David Builds Turrets

Naturally, David decideded to build a big, manly wall. For protection, of course.

I swear, this looked much more impressive in person.

I know this is a messed-up picture, but David is so cute, I can't resist.

David's wall actually came in handy. Look at that thing withstanding the ocean's might!