Father's Day

Father's Day is a time when we get to get together with friends and family and celebrate the gift our dads are to us. My dad just happens to be in Mexico being a father to the fatherless. Who could ask for a better dad? Not only does my dad have Kenzi and I and has always been an amazing father and friend to us, he then decides to pack up everything he owns and move to Mexico to help raise 6 boys. I really feel lucky to be blessed with my dad.

Some people shows that they love others in special ways. I like to bake for people to show them I love and appreciate them. I put a lot of thought into my baking and a lot of love into everything I bake and when I give someone something I have spent so much time and energy on it is to tell them how much I love them. This year my in-laws bought a cake decorating kit for me for my birthday. So I decided to use it for the second time to make a father's day cake for my dad, my father-in-law, and my granddad. I wanted to show them just how much I love them all!

I began the cake by baking a 9X13 chocolate cake. I let it cool overnight before I cut it into the shapes I needed. I found this template online and used it as a reference for how to cut my cake. I could not find a pan big enough to fit the entire cake on so I ended up having to leave off the very top pieces but other than that this template worked really well. I also encountered a small problem when I cut the cake and flipped it onto the pan a big chunk fell out of the cake, so I had to quickly doctor it and piece the cake back together. In the end I got all the pieces put together and the cake pieced back together.

After I covered it in blue icing the cake looked a little like this. It started looking like a tie though! I was kind of proud. Before I was able to finish icing the cake I ran out of blue icing and had to mix up more. Well, when I went to tint more icing the icing tinted darker than my first batch...so I tried to blend it into the entire cake and ended up with kind of a marble appearance which actually didn't look so bad.

After icing the entire cake and letting a dry for a little while I began adding on the stripes. I really wanted to do yellow flowers with green stems and make it look like an ugly father's day tie, but in the end I decided to settle on stripes. I began the stripes by piping on a larger green stripe and then adding two yellow thin stripes on either side of the green stripe. I discovered that piping the side of the cake is harder than it look! So if anyone has suggestion on an easier way to do that I would appreciate it.

I think in the end the piping turned out ok, but you could see the messy spots at the end of the stripes so I decided to pipe circles around the bottom of the cake. I thought about doing rosettes but I did not want the cake to be too girly so I thought circles would be more manly.

I also decided to pipe "Happy Father's Day" on the foil. I have never piped writing before so it was fun to try for my first time.

Overall I think the cake turned out really great! I think it looked just like a tie and all the dad really loved it. I wanted them to have a special cake just for them to show them how special they are to me. I love each one of them so much and could never have asked for better men in my life. Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there!

McDonalds

Many of you know Jeremy and I recently got back from a trip to San Antonio. While on this trip we had two very interesting happenings that occurred at McDonald's.

The first happened the first night we arrived in San Antonio. We had been walking on the river walk and realized we had arrived on the day of the San Antonio arts festival, which was jammed packed with people. After making it down the river walk and not falling into the river we decided we would head back to our hotel. So we began walking back through the mall. On our way in the mall this man bumped Jeremy on the shoulder. Jeremy thought he did it on accident so he ignored it. This man then began to follow us up the elevator and introduced himself to us by saying "hey dog...hey dog...hey dog..man I didn't mean to offend you but.." Jeremy both though OK well lets see where this is going.

We found out this man's name was David and he had not eaten all day and was hungry. So we offered to buy him dinner (we had just finished dinner, seriously how could we refuse to by the man dinner) he said all he wanted was McDonald's. So we began the walk to McDonald's. Along the way we learned a little about David and discussed how even though my name was Whitney I could not sing like Whitney Houston. We bought David dinner and sent him on his way. Although David reeked of alcohol, and was dirty, he was hungry. It reminded me of our calling to be the hands and feet of Christ and what an honor it was to buy David McDonald's in the name of Christ. It was amazing that God gave us this opportunity the first night of our trip, what a way to start the trip! I thought of David often throughout our trip and since we have been home and I pray for him every time I think about him, and I wonder where he is now.

Our second experience with McDonald's was not quit so pleasant. We were on the last night of our trip and had been at a water park all day. We were tired and decided we just wanted to grab something quick and spend the evening at our hotel. When we got to McDonald's I decided I wanted a 6 piece chicken nugget, fries, and a large drink because I was really thirsty. So that is exactly what I ordered. The cashier then informed me that they only had a 6 piece chicken nugget meal in a kids meal and I could not have the large drink. So I asked him to ring it up separately, a 6 piece chicken nugget, a fry, and a large drink, he said he could not do that because the meal only came in a kids meal, I told him that I did not want a kids meal because I wanted a BIG drink and asked again if he could just ring it up separately. So he said OK and we thought we got it all worked out.

Then we got our order which contained Jeremy's meal and a kids meal.....so I asked another guy and I told him we had ordered a 6 piece chicken nugget, a fry, and a LARGE drink, and he goes "well that was not what you were ringed up for", and I told him I did not order what I was rang up for, and he goes "well but that was how it was rang up". So Jeremy kindly asked to talk to the manager (I mean geez all this for a large diet coke) and the employee got frustrated (I don't know why because we were nice) and said "OK yah only a manager can fix this for you" and got the manager. We then explained to her what we ordered and she replied "I don't know why they did that because we have a 6 piece chicken nugget meal where you can get a large drink, and then handed me my long awaited large diet coke! YAY! Success! My thirst was quenched and we made our way back happily to our hotel.

These are just a few stories of our trip. We had a great time this week and were able to spend lots of quality time together. But I must say I have never had so many experiences with McDonald's. let alone in one week!