Conference Cakes

As long as I can remember we have always had Coffee (Conference) Cakes on General Conference weekend. It is a tradition that my mother had when she was younger, and she shared this tradition with us. I have always gone to her house, or my grandmothers house for these cakes, never have I had to make them. My mothers' mother is Danish, and this is something that they have always done. We make these Saturday night and then eat them Sunday morning.

I have never made this recipe before, and for a while my mom didn't even know where hers was, until I ran across the original recipe on my cousins blog! SCORE!!! I still had to call my mom a few times for tips and pointers. Here is the recipe:

2 C. Scalded milk

1/2 C. Butter

3/4 C. Sugar

2 tsp. Yeast

2 eggs, beaten

1 tsp. salt

5-6 C. Flour

1/4 C. melted butter

1/2 C. Sugar for sprinkling

1/4 C. brown Sugar for belly buttons

You scald the milk and then add the cube of butter and the sugar. Mix. Allow the milk mixture to cool enough before adding the yeast. Once cooled to WARM, add the yeast and let sit for 15 minutes. (This way you can tell if the yeast activated because it will foam up). Then add the beaten eggs, and salt and mix well. Slowly add flour, one cup at a time, until the mixture becomes glossy. It should still be sticky, but it shouldn't stick to your fingers a whole lot. Cover with greased plastic wrap and let raise overnight on counter.

This is what it should look like the next morning before rolling them out. Roll out the dough mixture on a floured surface until it is about 1/2 inch thick. Then brush on melted butter with pasty brush or fingers, sprinkle with Sugar. Then cut them with a pastry or pizza cutter into pieces.(About the size of your hand) Then transfer the cut pieces onto a greased cookie sheet. You can put a little ball of brown sugar in the middle, and then drizzle with melted butter to create the belly buttons.

This is what they look like before they go into the oven. The cakes with brown sugar are the ones with the belly buttons. Bake at 350 for 10-15 minutes. I cook mine about 11 minutes, which leaves them barely golden brown.

The after product. They are served with a side of Real Whipping Cream for dipping. This batch made about 20 cakes, and they were fairly large in size. Most of my family will eat 3-5 cakes a person!!!!

My mom always served our coffee cakes with scrambled eggs topped with Cheese and hot chocolate and juice. They are so delicious!! If you try them let me know what you thought of them!!

Hey Baby Lets Go to Vegas...

...kiss the single life goodbye!!...

Viva Las Vegas Baby!!!

For our honeymoon, we decided to take a trip to Vegas. We used money we got from our wedding to help with this special getaway and we had a blast!

We stayed at the Excalibur, and we got a screaming deal!! We paid $42/night!!! Seriously!?! Who can beat that for strip prices? And honestly, I love the south end of the strip, it seems to have the funnest Casinos. In my opinion.

When we first got to our hotel, we were greeted by some recruiters for a Time Share. They offered us a couple different deals if we went and sat through a Time Share spill. We agreed to do so, and we got 2 tickets to The Lion King, and 2 $25 Gaming Vouchers for the Mandalay Bay. If you are going to Vegas anytime soon and want to see a show that isn't raunchy, I highly recommend this!! It was fantastic!

Neither of us had ever been to a Hard Rock, so we decided to eat lunch here on Tuesday. They take your picture when you first get there, and if you choose to buy it they just add it to your check. Of course, we had to get it!

We visited M&M world mostly for my little Kaden. We bought him a cute pair of blue PJ's that he absolutely loves, so I feel like we scored big time!

Garrett took me to Circus Circus, and we watched a Juggler perform. Then he decided to play a little Fair Game, where you have to get the ball in the middle of like a teeter totter thing. You get 3 balls for $2. He lost the first round, and decided to play again, and on the 2nd ball he did it!! So we won a R/C Helicopter! (another one of Kaden's souvenirs)

My dad and my sister both told us we needed to go over to the Rio for their Carnival Buffet. It was worth the short drive. We got there at 3:00, so we paid lunch price, but they switched over to the dinner menu at 3:30 so Garrett was able to get all you can eat Crab legs for the small price of $17.99. I think he ate enough for both of us. As you can tell, he enjoyed himself!

The first night we were there, we walked over to NY NY and rode the Roller Coaster!! So. Much. Fun. It was awesome to be going inbetween buildings and stuff, and it seems like this coaster went FOREVER!! We got pics of this also.

Vegas was definetly a good vacation, even though we came home absolutely broke with $0 money left in our bank account. Garrett has been working doubles since we got back so we can get caught back up. We didn't gamble a lot, and we didn't win anything, but we were able to make a lot of memories as husband and wife.

~Wedding Day~

Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Garrett Huserik

Saturday, March 12th, was the big day!! It started out stressful, but ended up delighful.

Garretts mother drove up from Utah with his uncle Dan, and his dad and his wife drove up from Oregon. It was so nice to have everyone here for the big day.

Garretts mom was such a help putting all the sash's on the chairs at the last minute, since we couldn't get into the church first thing in the morning, and didn't start decorating until 2 hours before the wedding.

We had a nice luncheon after the ceremony where we had Cafe Rio Pork Salads, and cheesecake for dessert. My mom really went all out on the desserts for our wedding. She made them all! Yep, she's amazing.

Overall, it was a wonderful day! Since I had been married before, we wanted to make this special for Garrett, and I really think we pulled it off! (Thanks to my mom!) There are a lot more pictures to come, but these are the ones that I have now, for some reason the ones my mom took aren't saving to my computer right. When I get the chance I'll upload more. :)

What's Important

I usually need a daily reminder of what is important in life. The things that give life meaning, and make each breath worth it. Today has been a good day. Not for any specific reason. I just got out of bed with gratitude for what I have been given.

{He} gives my life meaning. {He} is the greatest blessing I have received.

{He} was a beautiful baby.

Every day I will remind myself how grateful I am to be his mother, and I will strive harder and harder each day to teach him the things that he needs to know to be an honest man, husband, and father some day.

I LOVE YOU little MAN

Save the date!!!

It is official. Well, its been official for about a month now. But we have decided on March 12th, 2011 to get married! I am pretty excited, and a little stressed!

I am pretty much planning my own wedding...from design, to flowers, to colors, to everything! (with a little help from my mom). We were planning on used tax returns to pay for this simple wedding of ours, but some unfortunate things has caused my returns to not be here in time. I was really stressing that we would have to change the date, even though our announcements are all printed and almost ready to be mailed out.

Thanks goodness, my mom came to the rescue and is offering to help us keep the wedding date!! So...if you haven't sent me your address, and would like an invite, please do so because announcements will be out in a couple weeks!!

I almost Forgot!!

Garrett and I had been planning on getting married, in fact, we had thought that we wanted to try and elope for 1/1/11... We don't have a lot of money, and don't have plans for having a lot of money for rings or a wedding, so while we were out finishing the last few things Christmas Eve, I pulled him into Penney's with him to show him a CZ ring that was for like $20. If we were going to elope, we HAD to have a ring of some sort to symbolize our love and marriage. He did not like the idea of cheap rings, he thought it was tacky. I was actually getting irritated with him because he wanted to get married, but didn't wanna spend $20 on a stupid ring. He had gone to pick up a gift earlier in the day, which made me think it was a ring, but I didn't know for sure. I kept begging for him to tell me, but he wouldn't. When I started pouting about the $20 ring, he kept telling me "your really gonna regret pouting later tonight" When I asked if he had gotten a ring, he said No. So I was bummed. Then I got over it and we headed to my moms for Christmas Eve dinner.

As I earlier posted, we ate, and then did the Nativity story. I wanted to play the piano for the music, but my mom insisted that Garrett and I be Mary and Joseph... We finished the unorganized play, and at the end I went to walk over to Kaden to help him find his gifts and Garrett grabbed me by the arm and wouldn't let go. I tried leaving a couple times and he finally got the ring "unstuck" from his pocket and went down on a knee-in front of the entire family. He then then popped the question, and even though I had suspected it, I really had no clue that he had gotten me a beautiful ring, 1 of 3 that we had looked at a couple weeks ago. I was so shocked! I was even more shocked that he had already called my mom and my dad, and my older sister, and all his friends knew about it. I was the only one not in the 'loop'. I am just glad that it was a surprise, because all I found all my Christmas gifts a few weeks ago!! So now its official, we are ENGAGED!! And no, its not gonna happen on 1/1/11 but hopefully sometime in late January or February!

Tis the Season

As with every year, Christmas Eve is always at my mom's house. We have a big dinner, usually prime rib, followed by acting out the Nativity story and then we open gifts that we have exchanged with eachother, and the kids always open up their PJ's. Christmas Eve I was on call, so we hurried along and got my home by 11pm to be sure that I was going to be available if needed. Kaden fell asleep on the way home, which made bedtime so much easier. Garrett and I spent until 3 am putting this bad boy together

We had to assemble the table, as well as the actual train city. I actually fell asleep around midnight due to a massive head cold and medicine, but woke up at 230 to help finish wrapping a few gifts and put the stockings together. At about 7:45am I was woke up to "Mommy! Mommy!!! Santa came!! He brought me a train table!! HURRY come look!" He was sooo excited I looked over at Garrett, who was also smiling, and we got out of bed to enjoy the rest of his excitement.

He played with this for a good 30 minutes before he realized there were a few more gifts of his that he could unwrap.

We were in walmart a few days ago, when he reminded me how much he wanted a "pillow pet" for Christmas. I was really glad I stuck with that plan instead of doing something different. He has slept with it every night since!

We had a wonderful Christmas this year, and we hope you all had one as well!! Time to get ready for the New Year! See you all in 2011!