Vegas

We finished all of our finals last Wednesday and headed down to Vegas to visit family. This visit to Vegas was a little bit different from the rest since Blaine's parents were visiting, too. It was so good to see everybody. Here are some pictures (courtesy of Eileen) of what we did this visit.

Thursday, we rode our bikes to the park.

We flew kites with the kids, but I think we enjoyed it must as much.

After the park, I went to the to Las Vegas Temple with my mother-in-law to do a session. I had a wonderful time. It really is a beautiful temple. 

We made it back home just in time for Baby Trey's blessing. 

Pop Pop made yummy chocolate milk for the kids before bed. 

Friday, we visited M & M World on the strip. 

Afterwards, we ate at a Chinese restaurant in China Town. 

One happy grandma & Trey

Blaine and Trey

After dinner, we went to a jumping gym. I didn't jump but Blaine, Chris, Tyson and Miles did. I don't know why I don't have any pictures of that, but they had so much fun.

Baby Trey is such a cute baby. I loved holding his little self, and so did Blaine. We love him so much already. Saturday morning, we took Blaine's parents to the airport. It was sad to see them go, but we're excited to see them again this summer. We spent the rest of the morning hanging out with the Culvers. This was our last trip to Vegas with Stace and Chris living there. I can't imagine them living anywhere other than Vegas! It has been a blessing having them close by. We will miss how close they were these last 2 semesters at BYU. 

Unfortunately, we had to return to Provo to begin packing and moving. This trip was a nice break in between the craziness of finals and moving. Thanks to the Culvers for having us over one last time!

Easter 2012

Easter this year was nice. Church was especially nice, since it was a fast and testimony Sunday. It was reaffirming to hear people testify that Christ lives.

For breakfast, we made resurrection rolls. It will probably become my favorite Easter tradition. It's a great way to review the story of the resurrection. They were yummy, too! Here's the recipe and symbolism behind it.

Later on, we had Matt and Michele over for dinner (we missed Nina while she was visiting family in Miami).

We didn't have an egg hunt, which I missed dearly. It makes me feel the absence of our cousins, nieces and nephews even more. Having kids around makes life so much fun! Overall, it was a great day and we're so grateful for this holiday where we celebrate the most important aspect of our lives - the life, atonement, and resurrection of our Savior.

Looking Forward to...

(in no particular order)

 - Meeting this little guy. Trey Easton Culver. Our newest nephew!  

- Disney with my fam!

- Visiting with the Hoffmann's

- Being done with finals

- Wearing summer clothes and sandals all the time

- Beach beach beach

- Tan tan tanning

- Hearing Spanish more often

- Learning how to cook Cuban from my amazing mom

- Having Cuban bakeries around me

- Complaining about being too hot

- Being with family (both sides!) We're going to try to visit every single family member this summer!

- Easter Sunday and contemplating the resurrection of our Savior

- Easter dinner (last big dinner in our first apartment!)

- Driving across the country with the man of my dreams, having meaningful and silly conversations, getting to know each other even more

- Getting endless hugs and kisses from my family

- Not worrying about school for 4 whole months

 -Visiting the Keys for the first time with Blaine

- Eating at Whale Harbor Inn

- Being in Miami for the FINALS

- Giving Blaine the experience of 49 street when the Heat win

- Eating at El Palacio de los jugos

- Being at Yuyo and Uli's award ceremonies

- Meeting my brother's girlfriend, Emily

- Spending time with Papo, my favorite not-so-little little brother

- Eating yummy East Coast food (philly cheesesteaks, wawa, Woodside Creamery, etc.)

- Spending time at the beach house in Rehoboeth

- Eating Grotto's pizza, Dollie's caramel popcorn, Thrasher's fries, Starkey's ice cream and all the other goodies on the boardwalk

 - Waterskiing

- Going to different temples in the cities we visit

- Dancing sessions with the fam

- Dancing salsa

- Double dates with some of our favorite people

- Playing with all my cute nephews and nieces

- Picking up Uli and Yuyo from school

- Celebrating Mother's Day

- Having much-needed girl time with my sister, aunt, mom and mother-in-law

- Shopping with the best sister in the world and being updated on what's cool :)

- Having time to focus on other things in life besides school

- Reading like crazy!

- Hearing the sound of the ocean ::sigh::

- Working on my golf with Blaine

- Living out of a suitcase

- Cooking for family

 - Having beach hair

- Celebrating Independence Day

- Smelling like sun tan lotion and ocean water...all the time

- Embracing all the adventures that come along the way &

- Treasuring every single second with our precious family

Even though it snowed a lot today out of nowhere (I shouldn't be complaining, it's been a great winter and Utah isn't Utah without random snow in April), I have just been extremely happy for some reason. I'm filled with so much gratitude for the life that I have, for my family and friends, for the love I feel from them, for the future that is before us, for this exciting summer vacation (the last as college students), for being healthy and having 1st world problems. Sometimes I worry so much about insignificant things and forget to just sit back, relax, and point out all the wonderful blessings in my life. We're so excited for this summer!

General Conference

General Conference was this past weekend. It happens twice a year - once in April and then in October. It is a time where our modern-day prophet and apostles speak to us. It begins Saturday morning and ends Sunday afternoon. There are 4, 2-hour general sessions and one priesthood session for the men. This General Conference was great, just like all the rest. I felt really uplifted and felt that several messages were specifically for me. My favorite part of General Conference has to be hearing our beloved prophet, President Thomas S. Monson, and his apostles declare that Christ lives. Ever since I started at BYU, I love the timing of April's General Conference. It always happens right before finals. It helps me relax and remember the things that matter most. 


If you'd like to see what General Conference is all about, you can watch all the sessions here. 


For the Sunday sessions, I made "Conference Cake." My institute teacher in Miami, Brother Hilton, would always make Conference Cake to entice the youth to watch the Saturday sessions of General Conference. I thought it was a great idea. It's a tradition in his family. I think it's a great way to add some extra excitement to General Conference, so I decided to adopt this tradition to my family. 


So here's the recipe for Conference Cake (from the Hilton Family):

For 1 9x13 pan

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a 9x13 pan. Mix together:

1 egg
1 cup milk
¼ cup oil
2 cups flour
¼ cup sugar
1 TBS Baking Powder
1 TSP salt
Topping

1.5 cups brown sugar (packed)
1 cup flour
1 cup oats
1.5 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup butter or margine, soften.
Beat eggs, stir in milk and oil. Mix in remaining ingredients just until flour is moistened. Batter should be lumpy.

Put flour on your hands and smush down the batter as you put it in the pan.

Put onto pan. For the topping, mix the first four ingredients, then cut in butter until well mixed. Put on the topping and bake for about 20-25 minutes until the topping is crisp.

I am grateful for the opportunity to belong to a church where we have the restored priesthood and are guided by a  living prophet. I'm looking forward to rereading the talks given. I am excited for October's General Conference. But in the meanwhile, I'll try working on the things that I learned this past weekend!

Fort Lauderdale Florida Mission Reunion

It is tradition here in Utah for mission reunions to be held the Friday before General Conference begins. We were able to attend Blaine's mission reunion in North SLC. It was so nice to see him interact with his past companions and the friends he made on the mission. We were warmly greeted by President and Sister Hale. They are always so nice and sweet to us. A yummy dinner was provided. They held a mini-fireside where we were reminded that we can always be missionaries, wherever we are. President Hale also spoke about the great work that these returned missionaries did in South Florida and how their efforts are still producing results. He spoke about the up and coming temple in South Florida and I couldn't help but get teary eyed thinking about it!

It's always fun hearing about Blaine's mission and the experiences he had while serving there. It makes me feel so much appreciation for the gospel, for the missionary program of the Church, and for Blaine's sacrifice in serving. I know that his mission has been a turning-point in his life.

Here are some pictures of the event!

The picture of Christ was made with pictures of all the missionaries!

Florida sugar cookies! 

I felt like a proud mom taking pictures of Blaine lol. 

A Weekend with Friends

Two weekends ago, we were visited by Kristin and Kathy Andrade. The Andrade sisters have been my friends ever since I can remember. They are now both attending BYU-Idaho and are only 4 hours away! I was so excited to spend a weekend with them.

We picked them up in Salt Lake City and immediately headed to the new mall, City Creek Center. Oh. My. Gorgeousness. I felt like I wasn't in Utah. It's Utah's first high-end shopping center. It's so beautiful and HUGE (700,000 sq ft)! There is a creek running along the entire center. There were also numerous fountains that made me feel like I was in a theme park. There were musicians and live bands playing in every little corner. It reminded me of Miami's Bayside - just nicer! It's an outdoor mall with a retractable roof! How cool is that! Now when it rains or snows, it doesn't matter! They had every store I could possibly think of. I was most excited for Nordstrom, the Pandora store, Tiffany & Co. , Michael Kors, and Steven Madden. All but Nordstrom are the first stores in Utah. It's about time! We tried going to as many stores as possible with the time we had. We had to stop our window-shopping to eat. The food court has so many choices! Blaine was super excited when he saw Suki Hana. It's one of those typical Asian food court restaurants but it's the only one in Utah and Blaine loves it! We're going back this weekend :)

After the mall, we went to watch The Hunger Games. Unfortunately, we arrived pretty late and had to sit in the second row. I liked the movie a lot, but I felt that it left out a lot of things from the book that were pretty important! The scenes and characters were well done. Everything looked exactly as I pictured it. But books are always so much better.

The next day we attended the Holi Festival of Colors. It was crazy. I had been twice before, but it had never been this packed. It took us an hour to drive from Provo to Spanish Fork and we had to park far away and walk quite a bit to the entrance. The line to get in was huge (and we missed the 3 pm throwing). But we still went inside and threw some colors on each other and random people walking by :) The traffic going back to Provo was even worse - it took us 2 hours! That night, we ate dinner at Zupas and watched Hugo at home. I heard that some people didn't like the movie, but I loved it! It was different and had a nice message. I highly recommend it. It was a great day.

Saturday night Blaine started feeling really sick. He had a really high fever and the rough nights began. We didn't go to church and just hung out with Kris and Kathy at home. Blaine was watching the golf channel and Kathy showed a lot of interest in learning about golf! I thought it was hilarious. I tried making baleadas (a typical Honduran meal) from scratch for dinner. The tortillas weren't coming out as great as I planned and Kris helped me in the kitchen. We got lucky and the end result wasn't too bad! Unfortunately, the time came where I had to drop off Kris and Kathy at SLC so that they could meet their ride back to BYU-I. It was sad to see them go, but I'm grateful for the time I had with them and for their friendship!