Happy New Year!!

Today was the day that Avary got her bandage off of her hand from the surgery. We were all really happy to see that thing go. This morning CJ came into the bedroom informing me that today Avary was getting her "cactus" off. All day Avary has been saying that she is alright but her "cactus is off" and now there is a mark. You can see where the doctor drew a line on her thumb for the incision. It looks bad, but it isn't. The ink from the pen makes it look bad. She uses her hand here and there, but still babies it quite a bit.

We have had a busy and eventful couple of days these last few days of the year. After having a cold sore from H-E-double hockey sticks, I tweaked my neck a bit that caused some problems, and got a sore wrist from playing Guitar Hero III, but it is all going away. CJ painted the dog green right before she smacked her head on the bath tub and cracked her eye open and Spencer keeps falling down the stairs. It has been quite the vacation for the Schumann household. We are all sad to see it end, it has really been fun despite injuries and surgeries.

Spencer did want me to mention that on Christmas Eve we went to a house in our neighborhood that was AWESOME on its lights. The video on the site doesn't do it justice, but they have rigged up their lights to music and when you go and see the lights, you can tune into the radio station that they are rigged too. It was really awesome and we are seriously thinking about making it a Christmas Eve tradition. The web site, in case anybody wants to check it out is:

lightsinmotion.com

You will have to see in past years, but it is still neat. You all will just have to visit us some Christmas and see it for yourselves because, like I said, the video and pictures don't do it justice.

Have a great New Year every body!! We love you all!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Merry Christmas everybody! What a day it has been. The dog got up around 6:30 this morning and we have been up ever since. We had a great Christmas here in Colorado. The girls had so much fun opening presents and then playing with them.

Santa really left a lot of stuff for us this year:


Spencer got an Internet Tablet (pocket computer), new jammies, and new work shirts along with a gift certificate to get some new pants. Sierra got an airbrush for cake decorating, Guitar Hero III, and a quilt kit that she is in-love with. CJ asked Santa for a toy dragon and he delivered:

Along with a ton of other gifts such as new jammies from Geewah, building blocks, movies, and much much more. Avary asked Santa for a princess Pony, and he too delivered:

Along with matching jammies, hair stuff, jewelery, Elefun the game, and much much more. Geewah was surprised with a plane ticket to Alaska this summer from Sierra's sister, Analee. She also got a pair of new slippers, a gift certificate for a massage, and other fun stuff for her to enjoy.

All in all it was a great and successful Christmas for the Schumann household. Merry Christmas to everybody, we love you all and hope yours was as good as ours.

Final Grades

Well, the results are in and I am VERY pleased. It was a rough quarter with my back going out again and my mom being hospitalized. I thought for sure that I would get really bad grades that would lower my GPA, but as it stands, I am very happy and pleased.

Nutrition..................................B
Chocolate, Confections,
and Showpieces.......................B
European Tortes.....................A-
English Composition...............A-

I am really relieved that I got a B in my chocolates class, because my final sugar showpiece didn't score really well on our grading sheet. I thought for sure I was going to get a C or, at most, a C+. My grade went up in English Comp from a B+ to an A-, so I am happy about that, and I remained a B in Nutrition, which I am not surprised about because I missed a quiz. As for Chocolates and European Tortes, I never really knew my mid term so I am pleased about those grades.

Have a great Christmas, everybody. I know I will now!

Operation

As some of you might know, Avary had an operation on her left thumb today. We discovered that she had "Trigger Thumb" when she broke her arm earlier this year. All went really well. She did really good and all the nurses and doctors just had a fit over her, as well they should. They allowed me to take her back to the operation room so that I could be there for her while they put her under. It was really hard to see her like that, but I'm glad that I was able to be there for her. She has been throwing up a bit since she woke up, but the anesthesiologist said that that was pretty normal. She took a little nap this afternoon and is acting a TON better. She is very talkative and alert. Hopefully we can feed her some dinner tonight and have her keep it down. We love our little Belle and so happy to have her in our lives. CJ is being a gentle big sister and sits by Avary watching movies. What a perfect big sister CJ makes.

Finals

Well, it is finally here, the last week of school. Good news was that I didn't have any written final tests!!! YES! Bad news was that I had a large sugar showpiece to do, a torte that I made up, and a short story to write for finals. It wasn't bad, once I got the showpiece done. It was so nerve racking doing that piece, but I got it done. Here are a couple of pictures of my final sugar showpiece. I took pictures from every angle I could. The small piece in the background with the purple flowers was a classmate's. I couldn't get any good pictures of my piece without having hers in it.



It is a "Four Seasons Tree". The red things on the top are blown sugar apples (that was the smallest I could get them). The green are the leaves, the pink are blossoms, the yellowish stuff in the back represents fall, and if you look close and hard you can see the ice cycles for winter.
He said it was a nice tree, but I don't think I am going to get a good grade on it. You should have seen some of the other pieces. My piece was the tallest, approx 2 feet, and the widest, but my "execution" of the project was what apparently knocked my grade down.

The torte turned out nice. Here is a picture. It is the same torte I made for Thanksgiving, if you remember.

I added the chocolate band around the sides, which was probably one of the toughest things I have ever done, although I would rather do chocolate bands than sugar showpieces. Anyway, I had to temper both kinds of chocolate at the same time and keep them tempered all on the day that it was -8 degrees the night before. The marble slabs we use for tempered chocolate literally froze the chocolate as soon as we poured it on the slab. The point of this story is that the dark chocolate didn't scrape all the way off because it had set too much so you can see it in this picture. He tasted it today and at that point he had said that it was the best torte in the class. Granted he hadn't tasted them all, but he didn't have anything bad to say about the taste of the torte. I got a really good grade on it, which sort of makes up for the bad grade on my showpiece.

Decorations

We got our inside decorations up today, it is such a relief. I was starting to feel like we were the only people on our block that didn't have their decorations up yet, but we did the inside today. Spencer said he will do the outside tomorrow, I'm really excited.

So, Spencer and I were on our walk tonight with Jersey, and he decided to take me by a house that he said was just...well, I had to see it for myself. Anyway, we walked past it and, I SWEAR, it looks like Tim the Tool Man Taylor lives there, Home Improvement for sure!! I could not believe it. It was absolutely...overdone.

Just before I saw it, I was telling him about when I was little and my Aunt and Uncle would do up the outside of their house, just full of lights. Cars would be lined up around the block to see how spectacular their house was. I miss those days, but this house, if only you all could see it. Words can NOT describe this house. I reassured him that my Aunt and Uncle's house was not that bad, that it actually looked good the way they did it, tons of lights but not "novelty" items. I am going to have to see if I can get a good picture of this house, but of course I know for certain that the picture would hardly do it justice.

It played music, had lights woven all through their grass, Christmas Mickey and Minnie, about 100 Santa's, nativities, anything you could possibly imagine, they had it. They had their front blinds open too, and the inside looks just as overdone as the outside. Amazing.

Nighttime Story

Last night, when Spencer was shoveling the walk way (YES!! IT SNOWED!!), a neighbor just across the street from us came over to him and told him that he had been robbed the day before, Wednesday, and asked if we had seen anything between 4 o'clock PM and 9 o'clock PM. He said that his laptop and some money were taken. Naturally we didn't, so we just went about our night.

Well, we haven't been setting our alarm at night since we got Jersey because we have to take her out in the middle of the night and tend to forget the alarm is set. Last night, right when we were going to bed, I thought I heard a crash, like blinds being messed with. Spencer didn't think he heard anything, but went looking anyway just for me, nothing.

Well, I was sort-of awake last night, meaning I was trying to go back to sleep, at about 2:45 AM when I heard the chime from one of our three doors to outside. My eyes flew open, my heart skipped a beat and then went right into double beat. I finally got the lump out of my throat and woke up Spencer:

"Spencer," I said, "I think I just heard the chime on the door!"
"Are you sure?!"
"No, I'm not sure, but I think I did."
"What should we do?!!"
"I don't know!"

We laid there in bed with both of our hearts beating like drums. We finally said a little prayer, but we were way too wound up to calm down. Finally, I came up with the idea that he should turn the light on just outside our door and see if he can hear anything, so he did. He didn't.

Then he checked on the girls, they were OK and he looked down and saw the lap top. He then went downstairs and looked in the kitchen and the front room. When he looked in the front room, he noticed that the door from the house into the garage wasn't locked, so he locked it.

When he came back upstairs, he mentioned that that door wasn't locked. I had nervously told him that I had locked it before we went to bed, I was 99.9 % sure I did. When I told Spencer that, we both started to shake and decided to call 911.

Two police officers came at about 3:10 AM and walked through the rest of the house with their big shiny guns out, even talking about it now, I'm getting nervous. Anyway, they looked out in our garage, in our basement, and in the crawl space. Nothing. Thank HEAVEN!!

After they had left, Spencer remembered that he had gone out into the garage AFTER I had locked it because he had shoveled a walkway from our patio window to Jersey's "potty spot" and hadn't relocked the door. The cops had come to the conclusion earlier that some wind or air shift had pushed the door ever so slightly enough to set the chime off, which I didn't think was plausible, but Spencer demonstrated it and sure enough, it can happen.

After having a rock the size of Texas lifted off my chest, I scalded Spencer for not locking the door, not really scalded but reminded him he needs to do that, and we set the alarm and went to bed.

Nothing like a good burglary scare to put you to sleep at night.

Small Sugar Showpiece

Well, my very first sugar showpiece. My hands HURT!! Three pairs of latex gloves didn't help much, but it would have hurt a ton more if I hadn't used them. If you can't tell, it is a bird sitting on a piece of drift wood and then the base and a couple of different things he made us put on there. He had made one and then told us to replicate it. The base is just that, a sugar base. The shiny green thing is marbled sugar with a sugar rose and sugar leaves set on it and a ribbon in front. Then there is lace sugar behind that to kind of mimic water or something. Then the piece of "drift wood" which is straw sugar (sugar that is pulled and has lots and lots of tubes). The bird is blown, I blew it, and the feathers are sugar feathers that I created under my very hot heat lamp that kept my sugar molten. Like I said, my hands hurt, but the up side of working with sugar is that I am no longer afraid of making my Grandma's "White Stuff". I can't wait for my final sugar showpiece, especially now that my hands already hurt.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everybody out there! We hope it was a good one for you all. Ours was pretty alright. It was only the five of us, six including the dog, but she just slept through dinner. Anyway, my mom and I were cooking all day, typical Thanksgiving. Our feet and backs hurt and we are both ready for bed, but it tasted excellent.

In my Torte class this quarter, our final is our own made up Torte. We can do any shape, flavor, color, etc. etc. we want as long as it is our own and not a remake of one we have done in class. I decided to try out my idea for dessert tonight. Here it is:

From bottom to top: ginger cake, cinnamon infused Bavarian cream, ginger cake, pumpkin mousse, chocolate gelee, and spiced pumpkin seeds. My final for the class won't look exactly like this, but it will have all the components. I hope it tastes good all together, each component tastes AWESOME individually, we'll see if it works together.

Jellyfish to Goldfish, Goldfish to Blowfish

Avary has been in swimming lessons now for 2 1/2 months and she has graduated from a Jellyfish to a Goldfish. We are so proud of her! You should see her in the water, she is a natural. I think we have a natural born swimmer in our family. She was doing the backstroke all by herself after three or four lessons, EVER!! Anyway, congratulations to Avary!

CJ has finally graduated from a Goldfish to a Blowfish. She had difficulty, I believe, switching to her back from front and from front to back, but she made it. Our girls are growing up, it is so amazing. I had to take them both to get new shoes today because they have both grown out of the ones they are in now. CJ is almost to a size 10 and Avary is a size 8 1/2. YIKES!!

Anyway, we are really proud of our little fishies!! I'm so impressed with the swim school they go to. CJ has gone further in her swimming here in Colorado in the months she has been enrolled than the year she spent enrolled in Salt Lake.

Pastillage

For the last week, we have been working on pastillage showpices (poss-tea-ah-ge). Pastillage is a non edible sugar dough, much like the salt dough that we used as kids. The stuff smells horrible, but it was fun to work with. It is EXTREMELY fragile and dries very quickly, so you need to work with it rather fast. We had complete freedom over our designs, as opposed to our final sugar showpiece, chocolate showpiece, and our little sugar showpiece. Here are some pictures of my final pastillage showpiece:

It was all structurally dependent on each piece. I think it turned out alright, especially for my very first try.

Curious George Cake

A friend of Spencer's cousin, Rachel, asked me to make her son's 2nd birthday cake. She wanted Curious George. I think it turned out alright. (Yes, there is only one "T" in their son's name.)

It is a chocolate cake with strawberry filling and almond icing. I hope it tasted good, the strawberry filling was a new thing for me, but I think it will be alright. I thought George would be easier than he was, but I think it was because of his size. If he had been bigger, I think it would have been easier.

Lap of Luxury

My mom was hospitalized this week for Diverticulitis. Tuesday when I called home on my way home from school, my mom had mentioned that she was having a really bad stomach ache. My thoughts immediately turned to Diverticulitis. She didn't think it was, but I talked her into going to the doctor on Wednesday if she didn't feel better. I took her into the ER Wednesday morning and they admitted her after a few hours. When they took her to her room, the only one they had available was a suite. These suites are what the famous people get when they are in the hospital and then they pay an extra $300 a night and hire a personal Chef. Mom and I thought they had taken her to a Hotel, it is HUGE!! Here are a couple pictures of her room:

As you are about to walk in.

Standing in the door way.

Standing in front of the bathroom.

Standing by the table, the TV looks kinda' out of place doesn't it?? For a room this size, it should have a flat screen and at least 30 inches.

The bathroom, bigger than mine!! She has a shower in the jacuzzi tub and an over sized stand up stone shower.

Anyway, she thought that maybe she might stay a couple weeks, think again mom, I want a turn!

Video of Jersey

Well, this is the first post from me, Spencer. It's about time, says Sierra!

We shot some video yesterday of Jersey and the girls playing outside:



Here's CJ and Jersey last night:


Friday night, we tried putting Jersey in a cardboard box. She ate it and escaped. So, we got a "crate" (a wire cage) instead. Last night, she slept most of the night in it without whining, so that was a good change. Today, CJ, Avary and Jersey went out and ran around in the yard for a couple of hours. Afterward, Jersey slept for about 3 hours. The girls really wore her out! This is how Sierra found her:


Sierra took this picture, too. Nice photography! Watch out, Sy!

Car Sickness and Funnies

Just when I thought I was done with diapers.....

Jersey still gets a little car sick when we go out, diarrhea, so we got her some puppy diapers for when we go out so she doesn't get all "poopie". As you can see, they don't work so well. It covers the wet end OK, but not the solid end, if you get my drift.

We took her for her first bath today and then she had her first doctor's visit with us. It was a big day. On our way home, we got a phone call from CJ and Avary, "Please bring Jersey back to us, mommy." It was really cute. They really missed her. When I left to take her to get groomed, both CJ and Avary were really upset. They love their new baby sister.

Last night wasn't the best night for sleep. This morning when my mom came down, I asked her how she slept and she just started laughing. She said that she was up all night laughing at us because of Jersey. I told her she wasn't alone and that Spencer and I were laughing too. Finally, at 5:30 this morning, I took her downstairs and fell asleep with her on the couch. We both fell asleep instantly. Now she wants to snuggle on the couch all the time. I think she is happy in her new home. I have been promised that it will get better....it better!! I need sleep to function at school.

New Member

Well, Spencer and my mom showed a moment of weakness and I charged in and took advantage of it. Meet, Jersey, the newest member of the Schumann household.

She is a ten week old Mini Beagle. She will grow to eleven inches at the backbone and is so sweet. We have had her home for two hours, at this moment, and the girls love her and my mom even said she was cute. Just the tiniest thing right now, about seven inches at the backbone. I would guess about five pounds. I have always wanted a dog, and now we have one. I'm so excited to see her grow and get used to us. Avary seems to be a little frightened of her, but she will get used to her and CJ is taking to her real well and learning quickly how to act around her.

Welcome to the family, Jersey!!

Happy Halloween!!!

What a busy day!! Holy Cow!! First of all, according to my mom, the girls were still up at 11 o'clock last night. We put them down at 8, the little stinkers. Amazingly enough they were pretty good today. We started off the afternoon by taking pictures before heading out on our excursions.

Avary was a witch:

And CJ was a cat:

We started our trick-or-treating at Spencer's work. It was really fun. The girls hit the jack pot there.

While we were there, we met up with Rachel and Anthony, Spencer's cousin and her family and Rachel's sister Wendy and her daughter Arnika.

We had two witches and two cats, it was pretty funny. From left to right: Sabrina (Rachel's daughter), CJ, Avary, and Arnika (Wendy's daughter). Sabrina has a new little brother and he was there dressed up as a pirate, it was SO adorable!!

After Spencer's work, we headed on over to the Southland's Mall that I just love. That was where we went last year and had a lot of fun, so we thought we would go again. It was like being at a theme park, it was SO crowded.

It was like this up and down BOTH sides of the street, incredible. We didn't even go to all the places and it took us an hour. Here are some other cuties that we saw there: I love this picture because this little boy was dressed like a devil and he was crying and so sad, it totally fit. His little sister was an angel, very cute, but I didn't get a picture of her.


This little girl caught our attention. She was so cute and content, it was amazing.

After trick-or-treating at Southland's, we ate dinner at Rumbi Island Grill, AWESOME fish tacos, and then we came home and went trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. Our next door neighbor set his garage up for the kids to go in and get candy from a bowl. It was so dark and eerie, but awesome. As the kids went to take candy from the bowl, they didn't see him sitting behind it and he would jump up and scare the kids, it was HILARIOUS!! I loved it. He did such a good job. Most of the adults and older kids wouldn't go in either. That made it even more funny. There is a house in our neighborhood that goes ALL out for Halloween. This is a picture of it during the day:


And this is it at night (pictures don't bring it justice, it is seriously cool):

The girls cleaned up on candy this year. They kept saying that we had to do more trick-or-treating because their buckets weren't full. We had to keep emptying their buckets so they could carry them. They are just like their daddy, they love candy.

All in all it was a fun Halloween. We hope everyone had a great Halloween, we sure did.

Halloween Favorites

I thought for something fun and, well, just something, I would put a list of favorite Halloween movies on our blog. Enjoy........if you dare! HA HA HA HA HA!!

For Kids and Family:

1. Hocus Pocus
2. The Worst Witch (My absolute favorite when I was little. I had a crush on Tim Curry.)
3. Nightmare Before Christmas
4. Casper
5. The Witches


For Grown-ups:

1. The Messengers
2. The Eye
3. The Others
4. The Village (I had nightmares for about a month after watching this one, watch out.)
5. Skeleton Key

Pumpkin Painting

We decided, this year, that we were going to paint our pumpkins this year instead of carving them. Last year we did all the carving and the girls couldn't help, plus, this way we are going to bake the pumpkins after Halloween and freeze it instead of having them rot and throwing them away.


The girls had a BLAST! They painted for about 2 hours, it was great. My mom also had fun. She was the last one to finish and I think hers is the most eleborate. I am glad that everybody had fun and was able to put their own spin on it.

From the left we have: CJ, Geewah, Mommy, Daddy, and Avary.

Avary was so funny with hers. We turned it around to look at it and she saw some orange that didn't get painted and started to get really upset and said that she didn't do a good job. It was really sad, but cute. We convinced her that she did an excellent job and that it was our favorite. Both the girls are great artists, we are so proud.

While my mom was painting hers, Avary asked her what she was painting and my mom told her it was a self portrait. Avary replied and said, "OOOO! Scary!" We all laughed, it was fun.

So now, we have our house completely decorated. We are finally done with the decorations, 2 days before Halloween.

At least we got them all up. Maybe next year we will have them up longer than 2 days.

Spooky Family Fun

We FINALLY got our Gingerbread House decorated tonight. The girls really had a lot of fun doing it. They told me what to do. About half way through, I realized they were describing our house. If you look close enough, you can even see a door bell and CJ insisted on a peep hole. We had fun though.

Our Life the Past Four Weeks

Sorry it has been so long since our last post. School started for me and Spencer has been working 50 hour weeks. We hardly have time to see each other. None the less, here is a little update on our little family.

The colors have come and gone here in Colorado. This is a picture taken from our deck. The colors were so beautiful that I couldn't resist the opportunity to capture it.

It doesn't look like that anymore. The wind has come and taken it all away. We get pretty strong winds out here. Sometimes I still catch myself being a little scared.

School is going well for CJ and I. I actually strained my back and have missed some classes, of which I am extremely upset about, well, the lab classes anyway. I am actually home today instead of at school because of my back. We were making truffles in school today and I am not a happy camper having to miss it. Anyway, one day these last couple weeks, I walked into the playroom to get the girls for dinner and I came across this:

CJ had written this all by herself. I was so amazed and proud of her. Spencer and I had our first "Parent Teacher Conference", how weird that was, but her teacher mentioned that CJ doesn't write her words. I corrected her by telling this story and she was amazed and said that she would have to get CJ to break out of her shell and show her. Little stinker likes to show off at home, but not at school.

My week off school, my mom and I decided that enough was enough and stopped buying diapers.

Yep! Potty trained. She was so easy!! We had a couple accidents, but it went really fast. It is so nice not having to buy diapers anymore. She loves her panties and it is EXTREMELY rare when there is an accident.

The girls and I had some fun Sunday morning with breakfast. We had waffles and afterward, had a little fun.

CJ got hers to stick all by herself. When I finally got Avary's to stick, the stupid thing wouldn't come off. I mentioned that she has the Schumann nose remembering when Spencer and I did this right after we were married with his Grandpa, his stuck on for about 10 minutes no joke, and my mom about came unglued. The girls really thought it was fun though. This morning I caught CJ trying to stick her fork on her nose, didn't work.

We have F.H.E. on Sunday evenings because Mondays are so hectic with school and late night working, so for a treat we had what the girls call, "Worm Cake". They helped me make it. They love to help in the kitchen.


They loved it!! They had so much fun "digging" for the worms. My mom gagged and couldn't eat the worms, but enjoyed the "mud". It was really fun and YUMMY!!