Trauma at Tomato Days

*Warning: This post has some pretty graphic photos of Steve's arm injury. They will be after the story, just in case you want to read but don't want to see.

Well this morning started out well...Steve and I went down to Elias' new house and picked up my nephews Ross, Ren and my mom. We all headed over to the Hooper Park to celebrate Tomato Days. After lots of carnival games, blow-up playhouses, and hot dogs, mom took Ren home for a nap. Ross, Steve and I stayed to watch the highly anticipated "Sponge Drop". Supposedly a small plane was supposed to fly over, drop wet sponges with prizes attached, and everyone would go home happy. That is NOT what happened. What we thought was called a gyroplane, now called a powered parachute, paraplane, powered paraglider, etc. flew from the West, circled around and came back over the field filled with people to drop sponges. They started dropping the sponges and Ross, Steve and I moved forward to get closer...which I actually think was a good move. The paraplane started getting lower and lower and I thought that was strange, but everything was happening so fast, there wasn't much time to think about it. Ross and I barely missed the plane hitting us, but Steve was not as lucky. I turned around and saw Steve diving to the ground, and the paraplane running over a whole bunch of people. It was horrible; I felt like bodies were flying everywhere. Steve stood up and was bleeding from his arm. I said, "Steve you're bleeding." He didn't even realize it till I said something. It turns out Steve was knocked over by the paraplane; he didn't have time to get out of the way.

There was so much commotion. People started coming over asking if we were ok. Steve was pinching his arm and a ton of blood was still coming out. Some off duty nurses and EMTs came to the rescue, laid him down, and put some napkins over his wound. When they put some ice on his head, is when I realized he had been hit in the head too. We learned some little girls had been hit and one or more of them had broken legs. A Life Flight helicopter came and was getting ready to take away one of them when they put Steve on a back board and started taking him to the ambulance. During all this I was freaking out and trying to call mom and make sure Ross was ok. Ross was taking it so well. He was so concerned about Steve and the little girls. He wasn't crying or anything though. Mom and Elias got there right when they were taking Steve away so they took Ross and I went with Steve in the ambulance.

While in the ambulance, Deon, the EMT and a family friend, put in an I.V. and had him in a next brace. We went to McKay Dee and they did a CT on his head and did some kind of X-ray on his arm. They just put ice on his head. They cleaned out his cut which is about two inches wide and cut all the way to the bone. The doctor stitched up the inside and then the outside. Steve also has a big bruise on his knee from where he fell and a pretty big bruise on his shoulder too.

Steve was doing so well. He was laughing with the people that were taking care of him in the park and continued making jokes and laughing at the hospital. He is such a good husband, he said he was acting like that to keep me from freaking out even more. And that helped him to stay calm and keep a level head.

The doctor gave him an antibiotic to keep an infection from developing in his arm and a couple pain pills for his head. They aren't concerned about his head, because he didn't lose consciousness and wasn't complaining of pain.

So we are home now and doing ok. We had a fun time watching it on the news and it will be a good story to tell for a while.

Now for the pictures:

Here is a video of the accident happening. Steve is the one you see being knocked down right before the camera drops.

A touch of Cutler-ness

The other day I was introduced to the age old Cutler family tradition that we will one day whip our children into doing...canning! I've heard many a story of the young Cutler children being whipped by Carolyn (the favorite child) into stirring jam on the stove top. Well, Steve had an itching to can some pie filling the other day, so I got to learn the process. Carolyn had recently made some blueberry pie filling with the help of my lovely husband and he loved how it turned out. Since we are trying to be health conscious we decided to make it using Splenda. Here are a few pics from that night.

It didn't turn out as well as the filling made with real sugar so we are going to be experimenting with half Splenda, half real sugar. We'll have to update ya when we try it out again.

Nathan's Thomas Cake

*UPDATE: Click here to see my cake on the Coolest Birthday Cakes Website!

Yesterday we celebrated my nephew Nathan's 4th Birthday. Carolyn asked if I would like to make the cake...of course I said I would love to. We decided that I would make a Thomas the Tank Engine cake. I researched the best way to make it because I wanted it to look really cool. This was going to be my first 3-D cake. There were lots of different ways to do it, but I chose to make two loaf pan cakes and one cake in a corn can. Then I put all the pieces together and used scraps for the side pieces next to the can cake.

After I put all the pieces together I put a "crumb coat" on. It helps when you've been sculpting to not get any crumbs in the top coat of frosting. Then I put the cake on top of a grass covered cake and frosted it to look like Thomas. The smokestack is a marshmallow. Before everything I made Thomas' face out of fondant. I learned most of this from a great tutorial here. The face came out a little big, but otherwise everything went pretty well. I spent about 6-7 hours on the cake, not counting the baking. But it was worth it, Nathan loved it. I'm just happy it made it all the way to North Salt Lake without totally toppling over. The last step was to cut it up. Nathan loved the disgusting tasting fondant face. Yumm!

Later when we got home Steve decided to decorate the leftover cake. He did such a good job!

Isn't he so cute!

The Exciting New Member of the Family that We're Expecting!

That's right, we're expecting...hahahhaha just kidding. Ok we're expecting our new shrimp to eat the Aiptasia in our tank! hehehehehe ok sorry. If you'll recall in a previous post, we were trying to get rid of a reef aquarium pest known as Aiptasia. Well it hasn't seemed to work. So we decided to buy some Peppermint Shrimp. They are known to eat Aiptasia. The only thing was when Steve researched them online, it said that some vendors sell shrimp they think are Peppermint Shrimp that are actually not. There are about 3 species that all look like Peppermint Shrimp but don't actually eat the Aiptasia. So we got three of them. And we're just hoping it's the right kind. He is hiding behind the rock. You can just barely see a red body and legs. Click on the picture and it should go bigger so you can see. Here is what one looks like off the internet:

We also decided to get a new fish it is a Smithvanizi Anthias. The vendor dude couldn't even say the name. All I know is she is pink and cute and cheaper than the other pink and cute ones. We decided to call her Pixie. She wasn't shy at all coming out of her bag. She got along well with Bob, Barry, Frisky, Whiskey, and Bozo. The only thing we noticed was her lack of appetite. Sometimes new fish won't eat if you try to feed them right after they have entered the tank, but she wasn't eating very much for days. So Steve decided to make her some gourmet fish food. Which in the end will actually be cheaper than buying the flakes we have to buy for saltwater fish. He blended up some frozen raw shrimp and squirted it into the tank with a syringe. She ate like there was no tomorrow. Yea for Pixie.

In the last little bit we have also picked up some new snails. They are bumblebee snails...I bet you can't guess why???? Their names are Ping, Pong, Wing, and Wong. We got a new piece of coral too. I believe it is called an Acro Coral. I'm not sure of the specific species. Here is a picture. It is the white-ish branchy thing in the front.Now I know all of you are saying, "Wow that is a cool picture, but look behind it, it's a red Angkor Wat!!!!" I know, I couldn't believe we had a rock shaped like Angkor Wat either. But I guess we are just that lucky. Here is a picture so you can tell the difference.

The similarities are astounding, I know.

Rocky Mountain Raceway

My grandparents gave Steve and me some free tickets to the Rocky Mountain Raceway. We decided to go on May 31. So yes, this is a late blog post. I can't ever remember going to anything like this so it was pretty cool. We weren't really sure whether seats were reserved or not so we kind of just hung around watching. I finally overheard someone else ask a worker and they said most of the seats were not reserved only a certain color of seat was reserved. It's been so long now, I can't even remember the color to tell ya. So we found some seats, but to tell ya the truth I kind of liked standing better. You could see more of the track and such. We saw a couple crashes but nothing too exciting.

We also had coupons for free drinks too but the line for that was horrendously long. We started to wait in it once, but then a lady said she had been up near the front for over an hour. I'm sure she was exaggerating a little, but we decided to forget about it. We stayed a little bit longer, then a Raccoon came out and a screechy lady was screaming over the intercom about the Raccoon giving away t-shirts for about 10 minutes so we decided to leave.

All in all we had a great time. I would definitely go again...for free.

Here is a video that is really blurry, but it shows some of the action.