26 weeks Pregnant

 

Here's the newest bare naked belly photo. In case you were wondering, the wet spot on my shoulder is from reading stories to Nora right after her bath.

The Little Man is moving around like crazy. I don't remember being able to feel Nora this strongly. When I asked my doctor about this, she told me it is the phenomenon of not having stomach muscles that are as strong as they were the first time around. HA! I'm getting those muscles back someday, dammit! It is really nice for Brian because he can feel him moving constantly. He really moves between 9:00 and 10:30 or so.

My dad is the proud new owner of a boat!

 

Brian's Birthday Present

I bought Brian a beer making kit yesterday for his birthday that is coming up on September 13th. I had it all planned out how he wouldn't find out before by writing a check and having them package them in nondescript cardboard boxes. I was simply going to tell him it was stuff for school and ask him to store it on the shelves in the garage.

Well, that of course didn't happen. As soon as I opened the trunk of the Pilot, Brian got a huge grin on his face. I hadn't noticed that on one of the boxes it said, "Glass Bottle". Brian asked, "Why does that box say glass bottle?" I tried to respond saying that I was just a box they used to pack up my stuff at the store. He was on to me right away and told me I was a bad liar, which I am.

As of last night at 2:00 AM, Brian was still awake trying to figure everything out.

This morning, Brian and Nora are off the the beer and wine making shop to talk to the owner and gaze at the 50 different kinds of hops that they have.

I guess for his birthday, his present will be a bottle of homemade beer. He gets back from Lithuania on the 13th at 5:00 pm, so I'm sure he'll be in the mood for a good stout!

Dreams

I've been having some pretty horrible dreams about the beginning of the school year. The most vivid dream is that I pick up my students and walk around the school unable to find my classroom!

I've been going to school quite a bit this week to combat the feelings of unreadiness. The teachers start back for real on Monday and the kids come on September 4th.

In Alaska

Some friends of mine are having the adventure of their lives for the next school year: they took teaching jobs in Alaska! Take a look at their website to see the cool salmon fishing they did this weekend.

http://stebbinout.blogspot.com/

Doughnuts

We made dough nuts tonight! They didn't taste anything like the ones at Pike Place Market that I was craving, but they did the trick!

Yummy Breakfast Cookies

2 cups brown sugar
2 1/2 cups rolled oats (not quick oats)
3 cups whole-wheat flour
1 cups buckwheat flour
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1/4 cup canola oil (you could use applesauce here)
1/2 cup prune puree (I just used baby food)
2 tablespoons water
4 egg whites
1 whole egg
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup chopped dried apricots

I think I'm going to add some shredded carrots next time

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.
In a large bowl, stir together the oats, flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Make a well in the center and pour in the canola oil, prune puree, water, egg whites and vanilla. Mix until well blended. Stir in the raisins, walnuts and apricots. Scoop cookies using an ice cream scoop, or roll into golf ball sized balls. Place cookies 2 inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets and flatten to 1/2 tall with wet hands. These cookies do not flatten very much while baking.
In the preheated oven, bake 8 minutes for chewy cookies 10 to 12 minutes for dry cookies. Cookies will not get crisp. Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.

Crazy House Buying (or not) Story

Brian just came home telling be about a guy he works with that has been trying to buy a house for the last six months. His family of 5 moved up here from Atlanta 6 months ago, finally figured out where they wanted to live, and got someone to accept their offer.

The scary part starts when he showed up at the escrow office this morning ready to sign all the paperwork and get the keys to the house. The mortgage officer met him there and informed him that as of this morning, the bank had decided to decline his loan! You would think they would just push back the closing date and figure something out, but they flatly refused to finance his mortgage, thanks, see ya later, good bye!

They have their whole apartment boxed up and movers coming tomorrow. I would be ready to kill someone!

So much food...so little attention

I just realized the other day how much freaking food we have in our house. And yet, I still find myself at the grocery store every other day! I decided to combat this problem by creating an inventory of all the food we have on hand. Ok, so this must be some crazy nesting period I'm going through, but it really helped.

A couple of weeks ago, Brian and I found the butcher that we've been searching for. They have the same MEGA BOX O MEAT deal like the place we like in Milwaukee. It ends up costing a little over $2.00 a pound and you get things like, hot dogs, bacon, rib eyes, pot roast, polish sausage, breakfast sausage, ground beef, and the list goes on. The point of me telling you this is that all of this meat is in our freezer just waiting to be consumed!

I'm trying to create menus from everything that we have to use it wisely and then just order our groceries on line to fill in the gaps. Microsoft employees get delivery for free, so it ends up saving me a lot of money because I don't pick up crap that we don't need. For the next two weeks, my grocery bill was $44! I'm also doing better at planning on how to use left overs rather than ending up with a fridge full of left overs that don't go together by the end of the week.

We'll see how long this lasts, but I think it will help ease some of my stress when school starts. Especially because Brian is going to be on a business trip to Latvia (Lithuania, I can never remember which one it is) and Paris for the first week and a half I am back to school, UGH!

Ugh

I know millions of people have worked while having one child and being pregnant, but it is scaring the crap out of me. How is this possible? The logistics are making my head spin. Dropping off, picking up, getting papers graded, talking to parents,

My doctor told me to take it easy on myself when I start back to school...HOW? I know it will all work, but the anticipation is the most difficult part.

Things that make me laugh

Yesterday, as I was driving to my tutoring session, I saw something that I normally see every day, but never thought was funny until now. I saw a man waiting at a cross walk pounding against the cross walk signal as if the number of times he hit the button directly correlated to the number of seconds it would take the red man to turn white. Silly man.

9 Year Anniversary

Yeah, you read that right...it's been 9 years. I really can't believe it until I think back on everything we've done in that amount of time. We lived in 13 different residences in two countries and two states, made two babies, and I've had 6 jobs during that period of time, 7 if you include my time at the kitchen store!

This year we decided to forgo the expensive dinner (which we actually ended up having anyway thanks to our parents' gifts!) and buy ourselves a new grill. We were in desperate need! The grill that we bought when we moved to the Northwest burned so hot that everything got charbroiled on the outside and remained raw on the inside. Yuck. I just made our first 'real' meal on the grill tonight for dinner: barbecued chicken. It was luscious with the fresh gazpacho and baked potatoes.

Those of you that have had to deal with crappy food from our grill, I cordially invite you back for a do-over.