Nut bread weekend!

I went home to The Woodlands the weekend of December 13-15 to make nut bread with my sister and mom. It is a tradition in our family to make this bread every year at Christmas time. But, believe it or not, in the almost 30 years I have been alive I have never participated! This was mine and Erin's first year. We were nut bread virgins!

Making this stuff is incredibly labor intensive as you'll see in the pictures. The dough has to be kneaded for at least 30 minutes, allowed to rise for an hour and a half, then rolled out really thin - we used a round table and rolled it almost out to the edges. After it is rolled the dough is brushed with butter, a combination of walnuts and pecans is put down, then a layer of sugar. The bread is then sprinkled with milk to keep it moist. Of course, being the family that we are we changed the recipe a bit. Instead of milk, we used Bailey's. It's my mom, of course we used Bailey's! Next step is to roll it up into one long log and then curled around into a cinnamon roll shape. It is allowed to rise again and then baked. And we did 10 loaves!

This year our bread turned out awesome! So sweet and delicious and you can really taste the Bailey's! Check out our work below (I apologize for how terrible I look - we knew it was going to be a long and dirty process so we didn't get dressed up):
Of course we finished off our day with some Guamanian slushies. Mmmmmmm!

We realized that it had been a long time since just the girls had gotten together to do something. We had a lot of fun. I think the guys were probably glad they weren't around.

That was also my first weekend away from Olivia. John did an awesome job although he did say that he was not at all interested in being a single parent. I was only gone for two nights! I missed them both very much and was glad to get back home.

My friend Renee, whom I have known since 7th grade, stopped by for a visit and just this week I found out that she's pregnant! Congrats Renee! You and Travis are going to be awesome parents.