Happy Easter!

Today was extremely tiring for me! I spent most of the day yesterday cooking and getting ready for the Easter dinner today. I wanted to have a huge spread of food and invite Leo's family over for dinner because they had just gotten home from Washington yesterday and I was sure they wouldn't want to cook. And it's also traditional in my family to have a big Easter dinner, every excuse we have to eat, we use!

SO! Yesterday I made:

• Carrot cake (and it turned out!!!! I had to kind of guestimate the adaptions to the recipe for high altitute, we're over 7500 feet here...) The first time I tried to make carrot cake here, I didn't know the tricks to make my oven work, or how to adjust recipes for high altitudes or adjust cooking times/temps and the result was a burned mass on the outside, and barely cooked enough on the inside...blech! But it still tasted good...hahaha
• My aunt's Refrigerator rolls (didn't turn out, it was too cold and the rolls didn't rise enough so they came out kind of dense), my aunt is still the undisputed queen of these rolls!
• Since I can't find the canned French's Fried Onions, I had to make my own fried onions so I started by marinating the onion rings in ranch dressing.
• Pineapple sauce for the ham - since I couldn't find crushed pineapple, I had to have Leo crush it for me.

Today I made the:

• Potatoes and Onions with the Lipton's Onion soup mix. These are SO easy and SO yummy!
• Mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallow fluff mixed in - this reminded me of the candied yams my grandma used to make and she'd put in miniature marshmallows. I had a jar of marshmallow fluff that somebody had given me that was set to expire so I thought "What the heck?!" Sooooo yummy!
• The ham - Costco makes it easy! One minute to make the glaze, heat up the ham, put the glaze on and voila!
• The green bean casserole. Since I could not find canned green beans, I had to buy the green beans, steam them and then make the casserole. Even yummier than my mom's (sorry Mom!)
• The fried onion rings for the green bean casserole topping - since they had to marinate overnight, I fried them today in a bran/flour breading.

When writing down the dinner menu, it doesn't seem like that much work, and I knew it would be a lot of work because I do this every Thanksgiving and Easter, it was fun and I'm glad almost everything turned out!

SO! Dinner was a hit, my in-laws gave me permission to marry Leo (a family joke every time I cook something that turns out really yummy)

So that was happy...I was tired and took a much-needed nap after dinner.

Tiago ate green beans for the first time today! He's getting much more coordinated than before, he's reaching for toys now and he can pass toys from one hand to the other and back again. It's exciting to see him grow and progress, I just can't get enough of him!

Leo left tonight for Spain. He's got 13 hour flight (or something like that) straight to Paris, then he has a two hour layover in Paris, and then a two hour flight to Barcelona, Spain. He'll be back next Sunday... :(

He really did not want to go, I think I was more excited for him to go to Barcelona than he was! I did some research and gave him a list of some places that he had to go try and visit this week! It's our goal to move to Barcelona sometime in the next 5 years as General Manager of the office there, once Leo gets his MBA. Becoming a GM or a VP is the next step up for Leo from where he is now.

Well, this has been a long post, so long for now!