I'm baaaack!

On July 9 my dad got married to his now wife, Linda. They asked me to make their wedding cake and 130 cupcakes. They like being outdoors so I decided to make a tree stump cake.

Before I added detail.

Dried pineapple flowers, vanilla cake, pineapple filling and pineapple buttercream.

Meringe mushrooms to be used as a topper.

Chai latte cake with cream cheese frosting.

Lemon cake, lemon curd filling and lemon buttercream.

Peanut butter cake, grape jelly filling and peanut butter cream cheese frosting. Cute little chocolate ants sit on top.

This cake seemed to be everyone's favorite. Chocolate cake, candy bar milk chocolate frosting and chocolate butterfly toppers. It was fun joking with kids that I grew them from chocolate caterpillars.

Here's the table all set up. I didn't get a chance to take a close up picture of the cake all decorated. I used the pineapple flowers, ants, butterflies and mushrooms to the stump.

Here's the new husband and wife enjoying their first married kiss. My dad was really going for it as you can see.  The wedding also served as a family reunion. I met family I didn't even know exsisted until very recently. It was really crazy how much I looked like them and how much I had in common with these people that I'd never met or really heard much about. Here's all of us together, including my new family:

It was so exciting to meet everyone, and I'm kinda bummed that it will probally be a long while before I get to see everyone again. I grew up not knowing much of anything about my family and always had "stand in" family members that served as my grandparents or aunts. I am beyond thankful to those people who helped me growing up and made me feel like I had a shred of normalacy in my childhood - but I couldn't help but wonder about my blood family. Finally meeting them made me feel like a more complete person. I learned amazing stories about my family history and heard all kinds of tales about what my family does and about who they are as people. I think knowing where your family came from makes it easier to move ahead and create your own history to pass on to future generations. Don't take your family for granted no matter how much they may annoy you or how happy they can make you. They are little puzzle pieces in your life that help make up the whole picture of you, no matter good or bad. Every experience you have in life adds to who you are.