Baby Shower!

Reaching the end of February was really exciting for two reasons: it meant that now we're into March and my baby is almost due, but it also meant that I got to have my baby shower! I had been looking forward to this girl celebration for a long time, and Amber Parry & Tiffany Peterson did a GREAT job hosting it.

We played baby games ("sculptionary," for example, got pretty animated--we had to sculpt baby items from play dough) and enjoyed chatting. For refreshments, Tiffany had an amazing spread of ice cream sundae fixings and lovely chocolate-covered strawberries.

In addition to darling outfits, blankets, and other baby girl gear, many guests contributed diapers to go in the four beautiful "diaper cakes" that Amber Parry made. I had never seen a diaper cake before, and let me tell you--they're pretty amazing! They look like wedding cakes, but they're a LOT more useful. :) Allison should be supplied for a few months at least!

Hooray for baby girls!

Pudding Faux Pas

Last Saturday was the Elders Quorum "Men Who Cook" activity. Adam decided to make a dessert to contribute and finally settled on making his favorite Chocolate Pudding Dessert. We bought the nuts, whipped topping, cream cheese, and chocolate pudding, and Adam was ready to go. (Keep in mind that this is a four-layer dessert...)

He made the first two layers and has just finished pouring on the chocolate pudding when I entered the kitchen. He licked the spoon and was about to put it in the sink, but then he stopped. He took another lick. "Lisa," he said, "try this pudding." So I tried some. "It tastes like... coffee," I looked at him in amazement. I grabbed the empty ALDI brand pudding box that was sitting on the counter next to the dessert that was now even starting to smell like coffee. "It just says chocolate" I turned the box over to look at the ingredient list. "There shouldn't be any coffee flavoring in it." But coffee flavored it was.

We puzzled over what to do. We decided that we couldn't take a coffee flavored dessert to a Church function, but Adam still wanted to contribute his dessert. So we compromised. I carefully scraped off the pudding and cream cheese layers while he ran to the nearest grocery store to purchase more ingredients. (Needless to say, this time he bought Jell-O brand chocolate pudding)

One hour (11:00 pm) and a lot of dishes later, Adam had re-created his dessert masterpiece. But this story has a happy ending: awards were given at the dinner for the most artistic dish, the best entre, and the best dessert. Adam won the dessert award, hands down (it helped a little that no one else had brought a dessert!) So he now sports a manly striped apron as his prize.

The morals of this story? Always sample the pudding before serving it to your guests (especially if it came from ALDI), and "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!"