I've made a couple cakes recently. A girl at church got married a couple weekends ago so I made this wedding cake. The roses are made out of moldable chocolate- kind of cool! I think they might take longer than frosting flowers, but they're more user friendly. The other cake was a real solvable sudoku cake. I left extra frosting so the girl could finish the puzzle.
We wanted another break from our routine life, so we went to yellowstone. We drove to Craters of the Moon first and hiked a 0.7 mile hike in the wind, which was mostly fun. The rock is amazingly lava like. I'm glad we missed the eruption thousands of years ago. Madeline said her favorite part of the trip was pushing the button at the museum to start the movie.
Then we stayed at Uncle Calvin's in Rigby. His house is very peaceful. He has a huge aquarium in his house and cool bird feeders by his living room window. The girls loved playing with their toys.
Then off to Yellowstone on Friday morning. It was suppose to snow, but it wasn't too bad. There were hundreds of buffalo and lots of elk. We saw 2 bald eagles and some osprey. At Old Faithful, it started to snow and it was cold. Most of the girls were crying at this point, so we didn't stay long. We stopped a lot to observe the buffalo herds close to the roads. They were so close, it was like three dimensional television. There were about 2-1 adults-to-baby ratio of buffalo.
On Saturday, we visited some cousins I haven't seen in years. That was fun. Then off to Iona, where Jen visited some childhood houses and schools.
We also stopped at Rexburg to walk around the new temple. At Idaho Falls, we attempted to, but it was snowing so hard, we went back to the car.
Lastly, we visited Uncle George. They are doing great and it's good to catch up on family. We also visited by grandparents tombs in Pocatello and saw the home were my mom grew up.
Hypothesis: The Twilight Series would have a great effect on the naming trends within the United States. The social security online publishes the popularity of baby names. The higher the rank the higher the popularity, with number one meaning the most popular name. The book came out in 2005, so I copied the last ten years getting the trend both before and after the book.
Results: As you can see below, Bella was already on the rise before the book, going from 749th rank up to 208th in 2005. But in the last five years, it has continued to increase each year and has broken the top 100 for the first time in 2009 with the 58th most popular female name.
Isabella as well was already on the rise before the book, but since the book has been published, the name went from sixth to first. 2009 was the first time that Isabella was ranked number one in the United States, taking over Emma.
The Male characters in the book are not as influenced. Edward is decreasing in popularity since the book was published. Jacob was number one before and after the book, so it is hard to measure the effect.
Disclaimer: I have not read the book, but my wife has. Thank you.
