ROCK-a-bye Baby

I've had two great baby showers for our little guy. I forgot to take my camera to the ward shower, but I took lots of pictures at the Gleason shower... be prepared... LOTS of pictures.

It started off like any other shower. Cream puffs with blue icing...

cute blue-wrapped candies...

chocolate-covered caramel pretzels (mmmm)...


and rock-themed cupcakes!

So, it wasn't all that traditional, but it was so much fun. Josh's mom and sisters made everything rock-and-roll for the shower. I wish I would have taken a picture of the invitations. They totally set the mood for our rock-on baby boy shower!

Melissa made the cake and all the fondant decorations and cupcake toppers. This is a fondant version of me. I love that I have a guitar! Please note the "ROCK" in the background :)

More cupcake toppers that Melissa made... I think Angie worked on them, too. I've got to give props to Melissa. Not only did she make the cake and decorations, she also made a wedding cake that weekend. You can check out her decorating stylings here.

The sisters also made this guitar from diapers, washcloths, a hooded towel, and a onesie. It's so cute, I don't want to take it apart!

Here's the entire table. You can see the cupcake stand made from old records (how awesome is that?). I loved the pom-pom balls and the banner. I didn't take a great picture of the banner, but it was so cute. I had a great time. The Gleason girls sure can throw a party!

So a few days later, Josh and I introduced the baby to some classic rock in utero by attending seeing, live and in concert...

KISS!
Now some people are surprised when they hear I'm a fan, but please! Senior citizens wearing face-paint, shoulder pads, and platform shoes... what's not to love? Josh usually picks out concerts he wants to go to, but I insisted on this one. It was so worth the money and the exhaustion at school the next day.

Here we are waiting for the rock legends. Opening bands: The Envy (pretty good) and The Academy Is (I think our junior high boys choir can sing better than these guys)

Still waiting...

Paul Stanley! He is hilarious and can wail like nobody else. Also, he zip-lined out to a spinning platform in the audience and sang "I was made for loving you." Oh, Paul...

Dr. Love! Yes, it's Mr. Gene Simmons. For being 61, this man still has some moves.

The Catman--Eric Singer hamming it up on his rising platform.

Sorry, Tommy Thayer, I didn't get any good pictures of you...

THIS was impressive though. They hooked Gene up to some wires and raised him up to a platform ABOVE the overhead stage lights. I realize that he had wires and everything, but accidents happen and he's wearing huge shoes AND he's 61. I can't help but wonder... how is he not dead?
And for the 45-minute encore: fireworks, confetti bombs, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance (go, patriotism!), and pyrotechnics. It was awesome. Baby liked it, too :)

A Week in Food

Well, my summer is officially over. It's always sad to see it go, but we celebrated in style with a trip to Park City (and a food binge). On Saturday (14th), we went up to Salt Lake for Tom and Megan's wedding. Breakfast at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building... amazing!
The wedding was pretty good, too :)

Here we are waiting for pictures. We like to rock sunglasses at the temple.And then we took Scott to Blue Lemon to get a smoothie while we waited for the ceremony. There were 88 weddings at the temple that day!And here are Tom and Megan with her parents.


After church on Sunday, we headed up to Park City for a few days... and here is where our food adventure continued...
While in Park City we enjoyed:
Prime Rib with Potatoes Au Gratin
Spice Rubbed Pork Loin with Sweet Potato Fritters
Chicken Cordon Bleu
(sorry, no pictures, but they were all delicious)

At Cafe Terigo, Josh orderedA Mahi Mahi sandwich with jalapeno aioli (those fries were so good by the way)
And I had Risotto with smoked chicken, asparagus, and dried cherries (it tasted much better than it looked).

Oh, yeah. We also shopped and hung out with Tom and Megan (who were also in Park City on their honeymoon). It was great.

We came home Tuesday night and had a picnic on the dining room floor since we were waiting for our new furniture to be delivered.We were still feeling like foodies, so Josh made salmon with fried eggplant and lime.So, obviously, I love food. But I love this boy even more.

Summer Refreshment

I have to go back to school in 16 days. In an act of defiance (much like Gob throwing the insurance payment and dead dove into the ocean), I made these:Raspberry-Lemonade cupcakes. Mmmmm. Pretty easy: add enough lemonade mix to make 2 quarts of lemonade into your favorite white cake batter. Swirl in a teaspoon of raspberry puree for each cupcake. Frost with cream cheese icing + enough mix to make 1 quart of lemonade and enough raspberry puree to make it pink. These are so good when they're chilled!

Summer is not over!

Grow, baby, grow!

You may remember that all my poor baby seedlings died in April. Fortunately, the plants we bought from Linden Nursery all survived! Our garden is booming:
This box has our four tomato plants, two peppers, red onions, garlic, and carrots. The two little plants in the front are pumpkins.
This box has our yellow onions, green onions, and beets. We had peas growing up the lattice, but they're done now.
And take a look at our stellar tomatoes! Josh thinks we'll have too many, but I could eat tomato sandwiches for lunch and dinner every day and be happy.

Aside from taking care of our garden, Josh and I have developed another hobby: stalking Big Papa's BBQ. These people have the most amazing tri-tip beef sandwich... it's heaven. But they don't have a storefront. They just set up a booth at summer events around Utah Valley. So last weekend, we joined Melissa & Justin on a road trip to Spanish Fork's Fiesta Days in the hope of finding Big Papa's. And we did. And it was totally worth it. I didn't bring my camera, but here's a visual from Strawberry Days:

In other news, baby boy is doing awesome! Thanks for all of the comments and support. I have been feeling pretty great through the whole pregnancy. I really didn't get sick in the first trimester. I'm not to the uncomfortable stage yet, so everything is perfect. After our little guy is born, I'll go back to teaching for the school year. I'm excited for our baby to get here, but at the same time I'm paranoid about leaving my students for six weeks. Meh, we'll see how it goes...

Recipes and a Baby

First of all, thanks for all of the comments on my cupcake posts! I love making cupcakes and I'm glad you think they look good. As for recipes, I just find stuff online :) There is a great blog called Cookies and Cups where I find a lot of delicious recipes like the cookies and cream cupcakes and the cinnamon cupcakes from my last post. She has a great recipe index, so check it out.

In other news (and I feel really weird not announcing it in a clever way), I'm pregnant. We're expecting our baby boy at the end of October. So that puts me at 24 weeks. Don't feel bad if you didn't know already. Josh and I just kept it quiet... I only told my sister four weeks ago. We wanted to wait until the first ultrasound at 8 weeks, and then wanted to wait until I was out of the 1st trimester because of my first pregnancy, and then we wanted to wait until school got out, and then we were just lazy. I am so excited and so happy that this baby is healthy.

I'd write more about the pregnancy, but I've got 2 quarts of whipping cream, 6 packages of cream cheese, 18 eggs, 2 pounds of butter, and 20 cups of powdered sugar that I've got to turn into 120 cupcakes... I'm so excited! It's like Christmas for me!

Oh, Boy (cupcakes)!

It's been a busy summer with girls camp, Strawberry Days, Skipper's baby being born (my niece is adorable), and crafting/gardening. But here's what you really want to read about:


Cupcakes!

I made six dozen cupcakes for my cousin's baby shower. She lives in California and brought her sweet little 3-month old baby boy to Utah for a shower for Utah friends and family. I made lemon-cream cupcakes (a family favorite) and two new flavors:


Chocolate with cookies-and-cream filling and cream cheese icing


and cinnamon cupcake with white chocolate ganache and cinnamon buttercream icing.

I hope you enjoy!

First Week of Summer

I love being a school teacher... especially during June, July, and August. However, I thought this was supposed to be summer "vacation." I've been a little too busy to be on vacation. Here's how our first week of summer went down:

Monday, May 31: After a trip to Linden Nursery, Olson's Nursery, and the Home Depot, we finally started planting/landscaping our once thriving front-yard weed patch. Really. If the plants last more than a month, I'll post pictures...

Then we had a Memorial Day BBQ with the Gleasons. Justin and Josh planned the dinner (and apparently they couldn't choose one protein dish) so we had chicken wings, steak kabobs, hamburgers, hotdogs, and brauts for the main dishes on top of all the salads and sides.

Tuesday, June 1: District Training. All day. Not my favorite way to spend the day, but at least I got paid... and learned some stuff.

Wednesday, June 2: Josh drove me to Heber Valley Camp for our stake's girls camp. At the gate, one of the sweet missionaries mistook me for a girl and called the stake leaders to authorize me. Awesome. I love looking like I'm 14. And now the stake Young Women Presidency will never let me live this down.

Thursday, June 3: Five hours of sleep. Hikes in the morning. Certification in the afternoon. Our ward won the volleyball championship. Testimony meeting.

Friday, June 4: Packed up and headed home in the morning. I wasn't sure what to expect from girls camp as a leader, but it was a wonderful experience. I loved the opportunity to get away from day-to-day stuff and focus on building my testimony.

Saturday, June 5: Josh and I attended a temple session in Manti with my good friend Arti! I was so excited for Arti to go through the temple and so happy she invited us to be with her.



Sunday, June 6: Our church meetings were lovely. Then, because I had too much time on my hands and a bag of apples in the fridge, we made apple pie. Correction. The BEST apple pie ever. It is amazing. I had totally planned on making it to share with the Calls or the the Gleasons. Instead it's staying with us.


And today is a special day as well. Four years ago today I married the most amazing man I've ever met.