Easter & Payton's Dedication

We had a great day today celebrating Easter with our church family at McKendree Church. Not only that, we had Payton Joy's dedication during our church service today! Uncle Jess, Aunt Elaine, Michael's mom, Linda, and two of our best friends, Eric & Leah, and their six year old, Bella, came to support us and celebrate with us. It was so wonderful having all of them there with us!

After the service, Jess & Elaine came to our house for brunch. I had the whole menu planned but things didn't go quite as well as I had hoped. Let me preface: Michael and I went to see the Cirque Du Soliel show, Saltimbanco, yesterday for our third anniversary. When we got home, it was close to 8:00pm (Granny Linda babysat!). Around 9:30pm, I started preparing the recipes for the sour cream coffee cake and crockpot breakfast casserole for brunch. Here's the breakdown:

1) About an hour after I put the coffee cake in the oven, I discovered that the oven was NOT HOT!?!? It had preheated just fine but then just stopped heating. I was SO frustrated! I tried to bake it in our toaster oven, but it just didn't work out. I ended up with a brownie-like or a pecan pie consistency. It was still good but not CAKE!

2) The casserole recipe said to cook it on low for 8-12 hours. That's quite a differential!! I opted for about 11 hours...so when we got home, it was stuck to the sides of the crockpot. It was still edible but it sure looked funny.

3) I stayed up so late (12:30am) dealing with the coffee cake that I forgot to defrost the frozen fruit that I wanted to serve. So I ran water over it for a few minutes before serving it, which made it kinda soggy...and still half frozen.

It's a good thing Uncle Jess, Aunt Elaine, and Michael love me for who I am and not for my culinary skills!!! The entire brunch was a disaster! We had underbaked coffee cake, overdone casserole that looked strange, and soggy fruit. At least the coffee was good!!

My favorite part of the experience, however, was Uncle Jess' comment as we sat down to eat, "This reminds me of a Marty recipe/experiment!" We laughed SO HARD, and I grinned from ear to ear because I consider that a compliment. At least most of mom's food experiments were decent. And, I'm glad to have a husband (and aunt and uncle) who will eat my food in spite of its imperfections!

All in all, it was a fabulous day and a wonderful way to celebrate Easter and PJ's dedication: WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS!!

Here's PJ's Easter/Dedication Dress!