Weekend of Cars, Cooking, and Cuddling...

Hello everyone! I hope you had a wonderful weekend! I had a great one.
On Friday I went out on a date with my Dad. We went to Margarita’s Mexican restaurant and to the car show. I swear we have never had as much fun at the car show as we did this year. We have gone every year since we moved to Omaha. This year, we went by ourselves as Seth had to work and Mom had officially given up on the car show experience (she tries so hard every year to get into it but just can’t-at least she tried!). I think I had more fun this year just because I got a chance to hang out with my Dad. We had a lot of good laughs.
On Saturday I woke up around 11 and started cooking. I got EVERYTHING made and was done cooking by about 6. Pam came over and helped around 3. Seth randomly stopped by and helped reach bowls or cut onions, mostly though he cleaned and worked on computers. Dan and Kathy came by around 7 and ate some enchi’s and my parents stopped by around 8 and finished up the “guest pans” (pans that I had made because I knew people were coming over). Everything turned out REALLY good with only one tray of cookies as causality. Here are the lessons I learned this weekend:
Move up the bottom oven rack off the bottom of the oven-then your cookies won’t have black bottoms and soft tops.
Vanilla pudding in your chocolate chip cookie dough really does make them soft!
Cleaning up (like all the way up, washing pans and running the dishwasher, wiping down counters) BEFORE you start the next dish really helps you refocus on what you are doing.
Kittens are decidedly NOT good kitchen helpers.
Pam and Seth are decidedly VERY good kitchen helpers.

I’m still waiting on reviews of the food that was tasted, but all and all I think it was a success, everyone cleaned their plates. I think the Black Bean/Corn/Cheese enchi’s need a little something more, but I haven’t figured out what. Maybe more cheese? I also learned that Seth loves the cheese mix and wants it on his chicken enchi’s next time-but I think he just loves cheese.
On Sunday we just relaxed, Seth worked a little and fixed some more stuff on the computers. I gave my DVR the much needing cleaning off that it desired! I took an early bath and read a huge chunk of my book and finally finished “Even After All this time” which I think ended kind of meh. It was such a good book up until this part. Since it was an autobiography, it felt like she hadn’t’ gotten far enough in her life to write a good ending, you know? The last couple of chapters seemed like a blog where you tell the world about your weekend.-when the first part of the book was very indepth about her struggle trying to live in America and fleeing Iran, it just didn’t seem like it fit. Still a very good and informative book. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.
Tonite we are having dinner with Pam and Jason at Ruby Tuesday’s. I’m pretty excited about it. We are FINALLY going to hear all about their great trip to Hawaii and eat some awesome food.
This weekend is the WEEKEND OF ROMANCE at the Hellbusch household so that’s pretty exciting. So far we plan on eating the food from the WEEKEND OF COOKING (this weekend) and watching our Band of Brother’s DVD that we just ordered. I know it’s not romantic in the true sense of the word. But its romance to us to just spend time together uninterrupted. We are even shutting off one of the cell phones, or at least leaving it upstairs. Which is going to be SO HARD FOR ME! But it’s going to be a really good time.
Hope that you all are having a GREAT Monday and you are being safe in the snow (if you are reading this from Nebraska where it is currently snowing like crazy)!!
Love to you all!!
Carrie