Weeks 33 - 35 of my Pregnancy with "Hoover"

Week 33 started on Jan 15th, 2010 and was our second week of class which included signs of labor, coping with pain, breathing, transition. Micah's arsenal of "great stories" has been added to greatly from just this one night of class!

The pictures are from Week 34 which started on Jan 22nd. Nothing too exciting, just our 3rd week of birth class including the second stage of labor, and pushing.


Week 35 was a bit more exciting. It started on Jan 29th, and included Ground Hog Day. I had a women's meeting at the church the night of Ground Hog Day, and Micah had an elders meeting. I was feeling particularly motivated so I decided to make everyone treats to celebrate the holiday -- Cupcakes decorated as ground hogs!

I wish I had remembered to get "after" pictures!


You might be thinking you don't really want to see an "after" picture of snacks I brought. But, don't worry, I'm not talking partially digested ground hogs.

I was taking the cupcakes inside, and I tripped on the sidewalk and slammed my huge belly on the ground, and the cupcakes went flying!

The cupcakes looked like road kill! :) They were kind of fun to eat, though.

This was my second fall with baby "Hoover" and I did a lot of resting up and monitoring of symptoms the next few days.

Pizza Anyone?

I got this link from Money Saving Mom originally, but the source is Ten Things Farm.

It is a pizza, made of felt, used to teach counting.

I don't know if I'll ever actually make it and use it. Who knows if my idea of fun (is this just the accountant coming out in me?!) will be Myrick's idea of fun, but I love this idea!!

http://tenthingsfarm.blogspot.com/2011/02/you-can-make-and-play-pizza-game.html

But, one thing I do know for sure: I'm going to save this link in my "Ideas for homeschooling, if the Lord calls me to home school some day" folder.

Hope you all are having a great weekend!

Continuing On...

Here is (finally!) the rest of my numbered list of (not quite) 50 cooking firsts I attempted to do last year:

16.) I don't have the dates for most of the rest of these, but I also made tuna salad for the first time this year.

17.) Pumpkin Butter (12/30)

18.) Pumpkin Soup. Micah liked this, but I would not suggest it.

19.) Roasted Pumpkin Seeds (Noticing a theme? We had a LOT of pie pumpkins to use up!)

20.) I cooked with cabbage on a couple different occasions.

21.) I tried to make my mom's potato salad recipe, but it turned out pretty mushy. It was yummy, though!

22.) I made my own cream soup.

23 - 25.) Aussie Chicken was a first for lots of reasons, so I'm counting it as three, because I can! I've never made a recipe where you were required to brown the chicken in a skillet before baking it. For some reason, that always seemed so intimidating to me, so I'd find a new recipe.

It was also a first because I'd never used a meat mallet (is that even what they're called?) to flatten out the chicken breasts.

And, believe it or not, I'd never cooked bacon before. Though, cooking it in the oven was a lot easier than I thought it would be. This recipe is definitely a keeper!

26.) Homemade Chex mix with my mommy. (12/14)

Wow! I thought for sure once I listed this all out I would have more things. I'm pretty sure it was last year that I learned how to cook a turkey also, so that will be #27.


Some things I still hope to get to eventually:
Ricotta Tomatoes
baked oatmeal
quick bread
cheese cake
pie
sweet and sour chicken
gravy
Sherried Tomato Soup
crazy cake
cook an entire artichoke (as an appetizer, the way they do at The Cheesecake Factory).
Apple Strudel
Velveeta Fudge (or just plain fudge)
Artisan Bread

And lastly,

Peanut Butter Pie:

1 cup Peanut Butter
1 cup sugar
1 pkg (8 oz) cream cheese
1 large tub of cool whip
1 graham cracker crust

Mix together PB & softened cream cheese. Add sugar. Add 3/4 tub of the cool whip. Mix until smooth. Put into pie crust. Top with remaining cool whip. Chill.



So, with all of those things, I'm still only up to 41 things, and I haven't even made 14 of them. Oh well. I think it's been a pretty productive year regardless.

Have a great week!

Week 23 of the never ending pregnancy!

Hehe...ok, ok. My baby is almost a year old and here I am STILL posting about the pregnancy. Maybe some day you'll get to see pictures of him, but I'm willing to bet all of my readers have met him in person long ago! :)

I have already posted through Week 32, but just recently I came across this post about Week 23 that I hadn't posted for some reason. Now that I think of it, I probably didn't post it because I was having a baby!!

Anyway, I don't wanna miss any of the details, so I thought I'd just post it now!

Hope everyone's having a good week!

-Magen

Week 23 started on November 6th.

Micah finally got to feel our baby move on Saturday morning, November 7th. He was really excited, and I was so happy that he finally got to experience what I'd been feeling for a while.

That weekend we attended a parenting conference. It was very encouraging to get some great godly advice and to see that other parents don't have everything figured out! Parenting will definitely be a learning experience. And, as much as I don't like it, will probably have to be a lot of trial and error as we figure out what works for our family.

The conference was a great time of fellowship, and we both left even more excited for our little one to arrive!

I spent most of the following week sick with a cough and unable to sleep most nights. It's not fun at all to be sick during pregnancy - I spent a lot of time researching what I could and couldn't take for all my aches and pains. I'm such a baby when it comes to pain! How on earth am I going to get through this delivery?!

Bring on Spring

I am so eager to be in flip flops! I have been wanting to be outside taking walks for weeks now, but it seems like every time we hit a nice day I have a 100 other things going on. Then, on the days where I'm relatively free, it's icky!

And, running across this video the other day didn't help one bit:




Myrick loved it, and it got me itching for those flip flops again!

Come Spring, come!

Bead Board, Board and Batten, Wood Paneling -- oh my!

I read a lot of blogs about decorating. (Well, in theory -- my Google Reader account is almost always above 200 at the minimum.)

And, one thing I've noticed about them is that people are CRAZY right now about beadboard:

(Decor Chick)

board and batten:

(Centsational Girl)

And, for lack of a better term, wood paneling:

(Emily A. Clark)

I have to admit, while I think all of these pictures are great, and the finish product turned out looking fabulous: I'm not a big fan.

I don't know if it's my laziness...

Actually, I do know it's my laziness. I like to convince myself that I'm not a fan of this that way I have a good excuse for never trying it in my home!

But, I was going to say, I don't know if it's my laziness, or if it's my fear that beadboard will someday go the way of dark wood paneling and become a home decor joke/annoyance for decades to come. (Though, I do imagine these decorating techniques will be easier to remove when they've worn out their desirability.)


So, all off this to ask: What do you think? Have you done one of these projects in you home? Would you like to? Or, are you lazy and/or fearful like me?

Cooking Adventures

Back in December, I started telling you about how my 50 cooking firsts for last year went, but the post was getting too long, and I didn't finish.


So, here's the story behind #15, as promised:

15.) I made a peach cobbler (9/22) with real peaches for my dad. It took me 2.5 hours, and my kitchen was a disaster, but I did it. I even learned how to peel a peach, which I didn't even know was an issue before making this. Who would have thought you needed boiling water?!


Then, get this: the cobbler had not even been in the oven for 5 minutes yet when my mom calls. She had a few things to tell me, then asked me what I was doing, so I told her about how I was cleaning up my wreck of a kitchen. And, guess what she tells me? Dad was out of town for the rest of the week! He would not be here to enjoy the fruit of my labor!



So, I also learned that you can freeze peach cobbler. ;-)

I'm looking forward to the farmer's market starting up again in the not-so-distant future so I can try my hand at this again.