My First wedding Cake!!!

My Aunt Jill asked if I could do a wedding cake for her friend. She wanted 2 tiers lime green, with green and white flowers, and black ribbon. So this is what I came up with. (with many calls to Melinda)

This is a white cake with an orange butter cream filling.

I bought fondant thinking it would be easier but it was a deserter.

The fondant must had been old because it kept cracking and falling of the cake so I 

gave up and made my own fondant so I flavored it Orange and I have to say it was so much better tasting. texture still is off but flavor was nice.

Thanks Aunt Jill for this opportunity!

Thanks to Cristina for letting me borrow her

Kitchen Aid and Cake Pan.   

Portfolio Show

So just before we graduate they have all of the graduating students be in a portfolio show. This was a stressful week having finals prepare for a portfolio show and work being busy....I may have had a meltdown. :)

A big thanks to Cindy for the use of her kitchen, Adele for her props, Ashton for helping decorate cookies, and mom helping me through my meltdown.

Back to School I go....hi ho, hi ho, hi ho.

I decided I wanted to go back to school and further my education in the Culinary world but focus on Baking and Pastry.  After praying and wanting to keep my same doctor I decided to move to Salt Lake City and attend the.....
 
My Favorite Instructor is Chef Nicole even if she is the only one who ruined my straight A's all year but she is the one who invested the most time into helping me.

Some of my favorite things I made....

 I Could have added so many more but I did not want to go for the longest post in the world.

Life after the Mission.....

So of course it was back to the Doctor for me where he prescribed me a very very expensive shot but he knew I had no insurance and no job so he said that there is a program he will fill out paper work for to get it for me for free because he said to be blunt you will die without it. I am so happy I have the best doctor in the world because this shot has let me live with a lot less pain to no pain.

Humbling moment

I got back out on the mission and it was a struggle to get back into mission mode but I eventually did. I really had a great time serving the people in Texas. I met so many wonderful people and I now have a place in my hart for Texas.

So I wanted to share with you the experience I had on the decision to come home cause to me it was a very spiritual moment, very hard, but spiritual. I was starting to have headaches again, they started out not so bad but continued to get worse. I tried to do different things to relive the pain, I talked to president about them and I told him I am not giving up yet and he gave me a funny look and said fine sister Jones but you have to promise me that if they get worse you will call me? OK I will pres. A few days latter BAM! they hit hard. Made me dizzy and nauseous. I thought O crap! now I have to call president and I feared he would send me home. I discussed this with my dear companion Sister Sorensen and she told me I needed to pray about it, yes people I needed some coxing, I also had to make a decision before taking it to the Lord and that is hard. So I went and knelt by my bad and prayed. I told him what was going on and I paused, took a deep breath, and told him I had made the decision to go home and get the help I needed. I begin to to sob and continued to pour out my feelings on how I felt like a failure because I would not be completing the full 18 months etc. Just then I had a warm feeling come over me and a voice in my head telling me that "everything will be OK". I also fasted and prayed about this the next day to and I just continued to feel more at peace with my decision. So I knew what I needed to do next was call president and tell him. When I finely got the nerve to do so he said sister Jones this is your decision then? I said yes. He said"If it helps at all I prayed about it to and I got the same answer I just needed you to know it for yourself". Very smart man!

After some thought I asked president if he wouldn't mind me staying one more week and go home with the sisters I came out with and he thought that would be great if I thought I could keep going that long and I said I could. It was so comforting to get the chance to come home with those sisters and have a proper booting out of the mission.

I will never regret serving my mission and I know the lord knows I did all I could. Thank you all for your prayers, love, and support.

Back to TEXAS!!!

I went to Dr. Grua this morning at 7:30 and was given the OK to go back on the mission witch was good cause my plane was leaving at 9:00. So off to the Airport we went.....When we go there I was Excited and nervous at the same time......Said my Goodbyes and off I went!

Tumor..........................

So since my last post this is what has been going on in my life. I went to the doctor's to address a female concern and she decided to do some blood test. The blood test came back showing High levels of Prolactin witch indicated I had something wrong with my Pituitary gland. So they sent me to get an MRI done on my head. The results of the MRI showed that I had a tumor on pituitary gland. (for those of you who don't know where that's at it is at the base of your brain just behind your eyes.) I was on cloud 9 when I found this out cause now I finely had an answer to all my pain.So my doctor sent me to a eye doctor, Endocrinologist (Hormone doctor), and a Neurologist.
So the first one we where able to get in to was actually the Neurologist. When we meet with him we where able to see the tumor for the first time and to me and mom it looked big but he was kinda like its not small but its not big either. He said he would send a referral to the U of U cause I would need to be seen by a Neurosurgeon. He also gave me Pills for Migraines cause he thought maybe I had those too.(FYI no help at all) I came out of that appointment feeling like all he was able to do was tell me I had a tumor. Geee thanks man.
The next one was the Eye Doctor. they did all these different test to see if the tumor was affecting my eye sight. In the end they determined it was not affecting my eyes but she said I had chronic dry eye. so she gave me drops to put in my eyes and told me to start taking my Omega 3's. More pills?? suck.
Next the Endocrinologist, this appointment went great, Dr. Grua was so informative he actually cared enough to sit and draw me a picture of what the tumor was doing to my body. He also told me that he thinks my tumor needs to be taken out. (Happy Dance) He also told me my tumor was excreting a growth hormone that causes features on people to be Larger then normal usually in the face . Aw Ha! Doc would this by chance have anything to do with my under-bite? Yes he says it can cause that, He also said after people have surgery their facial features start to soften up after a while and he said he would not be surprised if my jaw wouldn't shift back some. And he also told be that doing Dental work can also irritate it. O my Heck!! So thats why the Orthodontist is not helping....Good to know!

Now on to the Neurologist, Dr. Caldwell at the U of U. To be honest I was kinda happy he was in Salt lake cause then I had a reason to go up there and see all my peeps I never get to see. So my appointment happen to be on the same weekend they were having a benefit for my cousin Jeff who had cancer. They were taking donations for a silent auction and then all the proceeds would go to his family. I wanted to help in some way so after much pondering and experimenting I decided I would donate some flower bouquets. With much Help from my sister Melinda we ended up donating these! (Don't hate we tried)

I can't get the pictures off my phone so you are stuck with this one I stole from Cindy.'s

We went to Cindy's house to put these together and she was making us her famous spinach smoothies. Needless to say they didn't go over so well with me and mom. (blah) But we got to spend some time with Jeff and Cindy before we went to my appointment so that was nice.
Then Off to my appointment we went.

We met with Dr. Caldwell and he told me I needed the tumor out, How they would take it out, and some complications that they may run into depending on what they find up there. Still sounds great to me Doc. Can we do the surgery now? He said no he was to busy but he could do it the following week. So we got it all scheduled before we left. Later that night we went to the benefit for Jeff. They had a good turnout and quit a few things in the auction. We ended up wining 2 baby blankets and mom won her some beads that my cousin Kim later helped her make necklaces and Courtney made her a watch band out of them.

So on march 2nd we headed up to Salt lake to preregister for surgery where they took blood, made me pee in a cup, and put my ID bracelet on. (witch I got to show off as we went shopping and stuff later that day)

Day of surgery!!! I was first on the schedule that day at 7:30 so we had to be there by 6 am. I got signed in and hooked up and I was ready to go. I was not nervous until I got wheeled into the surgical room and they wanted me to move beds. ( I thought to myself How do I do this without them seeing by butt!) Yes I am very shy about showing off my body. Next thing I new I was out.

When I was Kinda conscious again all I new is that my nose hurt and I was thirsty so they shot me with pain killers and mom helped me drink and back to sleep I went. I was in and out for A while but later that day I woke up and I wanted to eat something so they gave me chocolate pudding witch I ate about half of then I needed a break. Thats when mom and aunt Carylee showed up and I was chatting with them. my stomach was hurting a little but not bad and then all of a sudden I turned to mom and said I need to throw up! she grabbed something fast and handed it to aunt Carylee and it was just in time. I spewed My pudding !!!! mom ran and Carylee held my dish. After that my stomach felt better. Mom and Carylee took that as there Que to leave. that was ok cause I was ready to sleep some more. I spent the rest of the night in and out of sleep asking for more drugs and water, they would give them to me so that was nice.

when I woke up in the morning I was finely coherent enough to realize my headaches were GONE! this is what I and many other people have been praying for for 2 years. Then the cute little tag team nurses that were assigned to me asked me what I wanted to eat for breakfast, after they named a few things I decided on a PB&J. It was so good!! Mom came and they had me walk around and then then mom took Pictures to send to dad why we waited to be moved out of the Niccu.



They shot me one more time with pain killers to move me and that was the lats time I had them. Cause I was doing and feeling so good. My room was nice but the TV could have been bigger. We spent the next three days walking around some and watching movies. Aunt Carylee and Kim came to visit me in the hospital and that was really nice! Kim brought me a present from her and Cindy, It was a stuffed Elephant that smells. I LOVE IT!! And I got flowers from Aunt Carm and the Mortensons and phone calls, text, pictures, and a shake form Melinda. I had really nice nurses but man they would not let me sleep they would wake me up every 2 hours to take my vitals and there was beeping in the hallway all night so come Sunday I was freaking ready to get out of there. We went to stay at Aunt Carylee's for the rest of Sunday and then we planed to go home Monday morning. The ride from the hospital was eye opening I didn't hurt every time we hit a bump in the road. It was amazing the change in my health so fast after surgery.
Monday morning we got up and we talked to my dad and he said the storm has already hit Enterprise and the roads were nasty so he thought we should wait one more day to come home. I thought yes! now we can go see Cindy before we go home. So I text her and asked if we could come see her and she said we could but she warned us she might be coming down with something ....Crap! I wanted to see her but I did not want to get sick after just having surgery but then she told me Jeff was not doing well so If I wanted to see him I should come. Well then I was coming! She even had a mask for me to wear to help keep germs away. So we went and visited for a few hours, I like to overstay my welcome :) And Cindy informed us it would be a matter of weeks before Jeff would be gone. What? What? this can't be happening! I didn't want to except this so I still had hope for him to pull out of this. I told mom I felt bad that I was getting better now and Jeff was getting worse......But I couldn't change it, it was in gods hands.

When we got home Tuesday we had Taryne to watch for a few days why Melinda and Curtis were on a cruise and she was sick so I had to wear that AWESOME mask Cindy gave me still. She was easy to watch when she is sick cause she just wants to chill and watch TV so that made it easy for me to watch her so mom could go to work. We only had Issues with me not being able to lift her cause the doctor told me I could not lift over ten pounds for a month. But in the mean time I have kinda broke that rule by lifting Grayson.

That Saturday We received a phone call that Jeff had past away :(...... I was so sad to hear this, How could we loose such an amazing man? and why so early? This is going to leave A huge hole in our family. but I was happy he was out of pain. His Funeral was the following Wednesday. It was A really nice funeral. One of my favorite parts was when I got to wright on a balloon and then on the count of 3 we all released our balloons in the air. ( I know I am such a kid)

Since then I have been home recovering and feeling great! ready to take life by the horns again. I just recently I had a follow up with Dr. Grua and he says I am looking good and he thinks I will be ready to go back on the mission in about another month. We see Dr. Caldwell on April 4th for his follow up appointment and I have a feeling I will pass with flying colors.