The Next Survivor Series

I got this e-mail from my friend, Emily Christensen, and thought it was very cute -- this is a reality show I might actually watch:

The Next Survivor Series

Six married men will be dropped on an island with one car and 3 kids each for six weeks. Each kid will play two sports and either take music or dance classes.

There is no fast food. Each man must take care of his 3 kids; keep his assigned house clean, correct all homework, and complete science projects, cook, do laundry, and pay a list of 'pretend' bills with not enough money.

In addition, each man will have to budget in money for groceries each week. Each man must remember the birthdays of all their friends and relatives, and send cards out on time. Each man must also take each child to a doctor's appointment, a dentist appointment, and a haircut appointment.

He must make one unscheduled and inconvenient visit per child to the Urgent Care. He must also make cookies or cupcakes for a social function. Each man will be responsible for decorating his own assigned house, planting flower s outside and keeping it presentable at all times.

The men will only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all chores are done. The men must shave their legs, wear makeup daily, adorn himself with jewelry, wear uncomfortable yet stylish shoes, keep fingernails polished and eyebrows groomed. During one of the six weeks, the men will have to endure severe abdominal cramps, back aches, and have extreme, unexplained mood swings but never once complain or slow down from other duties.

They must attend weekly school meetings, church, and find time at least once to spend the afternoon at the park or a similar setting. They will need to read a book and then pray with the children each night and in the morning, feed them, dress them, brush their teeth and comb their hair by 7:00 am.

A test will be given at the end of the six weeks, and each father will be required to know all of the following information: each child's birthday, height, weight, shoe size, clothes size and doctor's name. They will also need to know each child's weight and length at birth, time of birth, and length of labor, along with each child's favorite color, middle name, favorite snack, favorite song, favorite drink, favorite toy, biggest fear and what they want to be when they grow up.

The kids vote them off the island based on performance. The last man wins only if . . . he still has enough energy to be intimate with his spouse at a moment's notice.

If the last man does win, he can play the game over and over and over again for the next 18 to 25 years, eventually earning the right to be called ‘Mother.’

Adventures in Cake Decorating

The young women in our ward at church are having a fundraiser at the ward party tomorrow where people will bring desserts and they will be auctioned off to raise money for the girls to go to their summer camp this year. Since we probably couldn’t bid much on the desserts in the auction, I thought we could contribute my making some of the desserts. So, this morning the boys helped me make some cakes. I got some fun icing tubes at the grocery store and googled photos of decorated cakes on the internet to get some ideas. I found several I liked, and I thought that I could probably pull off some of the more simple flower and curly-q designs. So, first we baked the cakes. I had a lot of helpers in the kitchen, but we were doing all right so far. I practiced some of the little flower designs and then got started.

After frosting the cakes I started in on decorating the first one. Here is how it turned out:

It was supposed to look something like this:

I thought it was ok. I knew that my flowers would be a lot more simple than the roses on the picture I found. But I wasn’t too impressed with my results. I am a perfectionist, and I am not satisfied with less-than-professional results on things like decorated cakes, Halloween costumes, and family portraits, but what could I do? I was thinking it might be a little embarrassing to take this cake for the fundraiser auction, since I suppose that everyone else who brings desserts for it will either bring something fancy looking or something really normal, like chocolate chip cookies. But I figured maybe my cake would get sympathy bids in the auction or something. (If all else fails, I guess they’ll give the cake back to us at the end if no one buys it, and we can eat it – it should still taste good, no matter how funny it looks.

So, I tried the second cake. I was going for something with this kind of design:

And this is what I got. Although I didn’t think mine turned out fantastic, I thought it was better than the first one.

By the time I got to the last one, I didn’t have more ideas of how to decorate it, so it didn’t get decorated. Plus, the cake broke a little when I took it out of the pan, so you can see the cracks in the cake through the frosting. Oh well. At least it probably tastes good.

Oh, and remember the first cake I made? Well, by the time I was done with cake #3, this is what it looked like:

I guess the frosting was too heavy or something, and it all slid off the side of the cake. Maybe I will donate my cakes to the auction anonymously.