Eagles Concert

Last weekend Jon and I went to Las Vegas to see The Eagles in concert. I've only been to one other concert but I love going, rock stars are so talented. From our view we could see the percussion really well and it was amazing to watch how good they are. The concert lasted 3 1/2 hours but it went by really fast. By the time we got back to our hotel it was 2:00am our time which I can never stay up past 11:00 so that is amazing for me. We left on Friday morning and got back Sunday afternoon. It was nice having a get away with Jon. I did miss the kids but they were in good hands with my mom and Jon's mom. Thanks, Moms!

We stayed at the Excalibur. It's looks way more beautiful on the outside than the inside (dark, smokey casinos).
Here's the Eiffel Tower, so I don't have to go to Paris anymore. :)
The first night we went to the Tournament of Champions for dinner. They jousted and fought with swords on their horses, it was pretty good. The kids would've really liked it.
This is in Caesar's Palace. The sky changes colors and they had a Cheesecake Factory. Yum.
The Statue of Liberty made out of jellybeans, guess I don't have to go to NY now either. One of my favorite things is the fountain at the Ballagio, it's so beautiful.

Homemade bread

So, I'm 36 years old and have never made bread before. It's just so cheap at the store and so much work to make, it didn't appeal to me at all. Then, Jon's sister put a very simple recipe on her blog that I don't even have to knead by hand so I decided to try it. Hardly anything smells better than bread baking in the oven! I took it out a tiny bit too early so we toasted it and made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. It was so yummy. My kids kept saying, "Thank you mom for making this!" which doesn't happen enough around my house so that encouraged me to make it again. I made four loaves and we ate it in one weekend which is kind of a lot of bread to go through. The funny thing was I think I threw out my bread hook that came with my Bosch because I wasn't sure what it was and didn't think I'd ever use it. My mom bought me one which was so nice but then I realized I didn't have yeast or bread pans so I raided my mom's house and found some. Also, something I learned, bread has A LOT of flour in it, like 8 cups, WOW! I don't know if I'd call myself a homemade bread baker yet but we all did really enjoy it! Here's Becca's recipe.

2/3 cup honey or sugar

1/4 cup oil (rounded)

3 T. yeast

5 cups hot water

4 cups Flour

2 T. salt

Additional Flour (4-6 more Cups)

Put sugar, oil, and yeast in mixer (Bosch mixer you can do whole recipe, kitchen aide you can only fit 1/2 recipe). Add water and mix. Let sit 3 minutes to activate yeast. Add 4 cups flour and the salt (add salt last-it will kill yeast if you put it n first). Mix well to form a paste. Let raise 7 minutes. Add additional flour until dough pulls from sides of mixer pan (about 4-6 more cups). Mix it for about 4 minutes on high. Place bread in 4 greased loaf pans and set in warm oven (about 175-200 degrees) Let raise until dough is 1 inch over top of pan. This takes about 15-20 minutes. Without taking bread out, change temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 20 minutes.

A fun tip that I love is to spray your counter with Pam when you take dough out of mixer to divide. It makes the dough less sticky and easier to make it into really pretty bread shapes.

The Focacia bread is one of your dough loaves spread into a bottom of 9X13 pan. Dimple the dough, spread liberally with olive oil, sprinkle with dry Italian dressing (about 2/3 package), garlic salt, dill, Parmesan cheese, or whatever else you want or have on hand. Raise for about 10 minutes in warm oven and then bake for the 20 minutes.

Spring break is hoppin'

Last week we had Spring Break, YAY! We were ready for it, I guess everyone is ready to take a break from the norm and have fun! It started a little rocky. They all wanted the computer at the same time so some fights broke out so I thought of some chores to do and then they got along a little better. It reminded me of how summer goes. They need some structure...work hard and play hard.

By Wednesday I decided to take them to an Activity Center. It was bounce houses, skating, laser tag and rocket wars all for a good price. They hit the bounce houses first. Tanner brought two of his friends. I asked them to pose for a picture and they took it literally. As you can kind of see by the picture Tanner isn't feeling too well. Soon after this picture he threw up in the bathroom. He went out to the car and went to sleep, poor guy. He had gone swimming with these same boys earlier and maybe he drank too much water or something because none of us ever got sick, shew.

Seth spilled red Icee all down his neck and shirt. I washed it and it actually came out, yay! He had a great time on his scooter, he was doing all sorts of jumps and stunts.

The next day we went to "Jump On It" (Tanner stayed home) with our friends the Walton's who we haven't seen forever. My 3 youngest kids are the same ages as her 3 youngest kids so everyone gets along great. This is just a huge room with trampolines lined up together and even on the walls. It was a lot of fun. My camera is not on the right setting yet again but it still looks cool. After that we went to Sub Zero Ice Cream where they put Nitrous Oxide (or something) into the ice cream liquid to make is solid, it looks like dry ice. It was fun and I felt like we did something for Spring Break. The next day I was off to Denver to Scrapbook with my sister for the weekend. The kids got to eat out a lot with their dad and went to a movie. Fun times had by all.

Easter party

We did a fast weekend in Idaho for Easter. We had to get back because even though the kids have Spring Break this week, Jon doesn't. He only has a couple more weeks of BYU though so he's lucky. Before we left, Seth had an Easter (Spring) party at school I helped with.
We told the kids they couldn't lick the icing off their knife or fingers, this was torture for them.

This is Isaac on Easter morning. He kept disappearing then he'd look like this, sometimes with a pink face or a yellow face. He kept finding all the other kids Easter baskets, it was a really good morning for him.
Maddie, Calli, and Mac decorating sugar cookies. Beautiful!
Jon's mom always makes an Easter bunny cake. Isaac turned two so it was also his birthday cake.