Updates, because I'm a slacker

I've been really slacking in the blog post area. I know I've said it before but being a part time working mom is hard work. When I'm home I love to play with Zack which also makes me a bad housekeeper.

So here is a quick overview of our past month...

The first weekend of November Bob, Zack and I went to the Wyoming/BYU game in Laramie, WY. It's great going to this game because we have family in Rawlins which is about 1 1/2 from Laramie. We left Friday after Bob got home from work. The drive to Rawlins is just over 4 hours. It was nice driving later because Zack slept for most of the ride. The only problem was when we actually got to Rawlins he was wide awake! Which made sleeping that night really hard. Normally we put Zack to bed in his own room and he does great. That night we tried to all go to bed in the same room at the same time. Zack wanted nothing to do with that. He knew we were there and he wanted out of his play pen. We tried to sleep in the same bed with him but he just wanted to sleep. Finally he fell asleep with us, which made horrible sleeping for me. Zack moves and kicks like no other. And there wasn't enough room on that bed for the three of us. I was very happy when morning came!

The BYU/Wyoming game was a lot of fun (for us, not the wyoming fans). BYU killed Wyoming. Which made it so I was able to focus more on Zack then the game. I also wasn't too worried about Zack being a distraction to those around us because let's be honest the Wyoming fans pretty much left after the 3rd quarter. Zack and I played on the bleachers. We ate hot dogs and popcorn and had a blast entertaining those around us. Nathan, Eric, Brandon (my cousins) and Evan (Brandon's son -- my second cousin) also were at the game. It was fun to hang out with the family for an afternoon. It was funny trying to get Evan and Zack to interact with each other. They pretty much just ignored one another the entire weekend. After the game we drove to Colorado to visit the rest of the family (my mom's sister -- my aunt Connie and fam).

We had a great weekend with my family. Sunday was a nice relaxing day for us. On Monday Bob, Connie, Evan, Zack and I went to Red Rock Canyon. It was really neat to see the amphitheater and to let the kids play on the stage. We also had a nice picnic. That night we went to Nathan's apartment clubhouse to watch the Bronco's game. It was fun. The guys pretty much got to watch the game in a room with comfy arechairs and a projector screen. The women all stayed out in the main area to let the kids run. It was fun because other families were there and Zack and Evan had a blast playing with the other kids.

This is a picture of Red Rock Canyon -- it was very cool and the amphetheater was built in between two of these type of rocks!

Tuesday morning we headed back to Utah. The drive was actually very nice. We went home through Veil so most of the drive was very mountain'ist (unlike the Wyoming drive which is pretty flat). We stopped in Grand Junction to let Zack play and to eat at a park. Zack did great on the drive home. He barely fussed, we are very lucky to have such a mild tempered child.

The next few days I'll try to post more...

What to expect -

Pregnancy update

Snow pictures... I actually might like this snow season!

Funny things

Zack is a funny kid. I feel that most people don't get to know the real him because they don't spend time with him on a one on one basis. At church I'm so busy trying to wrangle him and keep him under control that he doesn't really do much other then run around. At family parties there are a ton of people so he kind of gets lost in the masses. And with friends he's so enthralled with the older kids that he's more of a tag along.

The other day Zack ran around me in a circle, I of course laughed because it was pretty funny. So he started giggling and kept running around me in a circle. I was laughing so hard by the time he was done.

Another funny thing that he's done was with a sombreo. Zack hates hat, but he loves to make other people put hats on. The other day Zack found the sombreo in our computer room. True to form he handed me the hat to put on. So everytime I put it on my head I'd dance around and make up a song. He laughed so hard! I love that my little boy thinks that I'm funny! So everytime I tried on the hat I'd try to put it on him. For about 1/2 hour we played this game, until finally Zack put the sombreo on himself. Then he started dancing around and finally ran out of the room with the hat on! It was so funny to see this little person who could barely see from the hat running around the room. I wish I could have caught it on camera but of course that would have taken time to find the camera and he'd be done.

He's such a silly kid and I love him so much!

Mmm... food

I love finding new recipes to try out on my family. It has become very rare for me to actually look through my cookbooks to find recipes. I often frequent kraftfoods.com and allrecipes.com to find new recipes. I love these sites for many reasons.


Kraft Foods site:

• I love the simplicty of the site. They always say name brand for certain foods (I mean it is kraft foods website -- but I ALWAYS substatute for the cheap brand).
• I love how easy the recipes usually are.. and they have sections for fast recipes and holiday recipes!
• I like to read the reviews to see if the recipe is even worth trying (and sometimes getting tips before I make it)

All Recipes:

• I love how many recipes there are to choose from. I can always find a recipe that will fit what I want to make. Sometimes I take a few things from each recipe and make it my own.
• I love that you can change the serving size and it will adjust the ingredients, that way if I'm fixing dinner for just Bob and I; I don't waste a ton of food or have to split the recipe myself.
• I also love all the reviewes

For the past few months I have been part of a dinner co-op with some people in my neighborhood. Let me tell you; I love being a part of this group! Wednesdays are usually pretty stressful for me because that's the day I have to cook, but it's so worth it! There are 4 families (about the same size) in the group and each of us cook Monday - Thursday. It's been fun planning the meals for the days I have to cook and fun getting meals that I have never tried. I'll admit there have been a few days we have gotten food that we weren't too sure about or had something in it that we wouldn't eat (manily Bob -- he hates tomatoes). But we still try everything that we've recieved. And it's been great! Hopefully the families that I cook for don't mind that they are now becoming my guinea pigs (and hopefully they have been satisfied with the meals I've cooked).

The point of this post...

When I find a recipe that I especially like I'm going to try to post it on this website. It will be a recipe that we've tried and we liked. Like I said I find a lot of recipes online so I'll print the page and either it will get ruined while cooking or lost/thrown away in cleanup. So by posting it on this blog we document the foods that we've tried and liked as well as keeping it in a place that I hopefully won't loose.


So to begin the recipe portion of this blog I present you with yesterday's dinner


Sweet and Sour Meatball Skewers
Rice-a-roni
and corn


The recipe for the sweet and sour meatball skewers was found on http://www.kraftfoods.com/ as well as the picture.

Sweet and Sour Meatball Skewers

Ingredients
32 frozen fully cooked 1-inch meatballs (1 lb.), thawed
1 red pepper, cut into 1-inch squares
1 green pepper, cut into 1-inch squares
1/4 cup apricot jam
1/4 cup KRAFT Original Barbecue Sauce

I added canned pineapple for a splash of color and taste... yummy!


Directions

HEAT grill to medium-high heat. Thread meatballs and peppers alternately onto 8 skewers.

MICROWAVE jam in small microwaveable bowl on HIGH 15 sec. Stir in barbecue sauce; brush half onto kabobs.

GRILL 8 to 10 min. or until meatballs are heated through, turning occasionally and brushing with remaining jam mixture the last 2 min.


This recipe makes 4 servings (2 skewers a serving)

Halloween 2009

Halloween started off with Zack and I carving a pumpkin. For Zack's first pumpkin carving experience he also wanted to taste what pumpkin was. He didn't seem to mind it too much. Mommy of course put a quick stop to eating raw pumpkin.

Zack instead "helped" clean the pumpkin out with a spoon.

I'm pretty proud of our Halloween costumes this year. I decided that our family would dress as the Rubbles from the Flintstone cartoon series. Bob was Barney, I was Betty and Zack was BamBam. Zack took his role as BamBam very serious and practiced for days before halloween. His toys and poor Abbie suffered a lot of practice. I've very proud of our costumes this year because normally I would bombard my poor mother to have her help me make my costume(s) but this year I pulled out a old sewing machine that was in our basement (that I thought didn't work) and sewed all our costumes. The part that I was most proud of was all of our costumes only took $15 to make! I was very resourceful. My costume I used a previous costume that either Bob or I had worn to a Murder Mystery Toga Party. I just cut it to make the betty costume. Zack's costume was easy because it was so small. And for the brown I was able to use the remnants from Bob's costume. Bob's costume I was going to buy fabric but it all would have costed me $5 per yard and I may have needed 2-3 yards. But while I was deciding I looked across the aisle at Walmart and saw a brown fleece blanket on sale for only $4.00. And it totally worked! I am proud of myself for making all of our costumes myself. I even figured out (mostly) how to sew fabric onto the bat for Zack club. This is definitly a milestone for me! But my mom isn't out of the woods yet, if there is every anything that needs a pattern to make I will definitly be knocking on her door. I am horrible at reading/understanding sewing patterns!

Every year our ward has a trunk or treat on Halloween. I'm not sure Zack really understood what was going on, but he's having fun eating his spoils from going car to car. Of course Mommy and Daddy are partaking as well.

After Trunk or Treating we went to Deanna's house to have our family party. It was a ton of fun. We brought our pumpkins to display on her doorstep. The neighbors/trick or treaters helped decide which pumpkin won the contest. I'm sure it was my mom's because let's be honest she's amazing. But in the end Deanna and Kelly gave me the prize for my canibal pumpkin. I didn't get any pictures because my camera battery died... boo. But I know that my sister and Arielle were able to get pictures so if I get any from them I'll post them here. We had fun at the party. We played games -- pumpkin bowling was the funnest! And of course we ate all the spooky treats.

My family always comes up great costumes!

And of course Baby #2 was part of all the fun. He even got his own costume...

Fall is in the air

I'm not a fan of the changing seasons. Especially this year. It didn't seem that we had much of a summer. It rained the entire month of June started getting hot by the end of July into August, then September came and went and now it's October. It's already started snowing in the mountains and next thing you'll know we'll have snow here in the valley.... not a fan!


We've had a great month so far. I love experiencing all the new things with Zack. He's now getting the the age where it is fun to take him out to do things. He doesn't need to be carried quite as much and he's starting to enjoy the things that we see. I know that he doesn't quite understand what we are doing or seeing but it's still fun!


Every year Gardner Village decorates the grounds outside the stores with witches. It's really fun to go see them. My friends and I went to the shops with the kids and we had a great time. We shopped, ate fudge, and took pictures with a few of the witches on the grounds. Zacks favorite was the witch that would lift up her dress to show the cat chasing the mouse underneath.



This past month we took Zack to a corn maze. It was so much fun! We tried to go early so it was still a little daylight but by 7pm it was completely dark. But we still had a lot of fun. Too bad I didn't really think about the fact that Zack had to get 5 shots that same afternoon and we didn't exercise his legs very much afterwards. So while walking in the cornmaze he was getting pretty cranky and whiny. I thought it was just because he was cold and tired. Only to realize later that he was probably in a lot of pain. His poor legs were bruised by the time we got home! That quickly went away with a nice warm bath that night.




And yes we did have Zack on a leash, I wasn't going to loose my baby in a corn maze!


Instead of buying a pumpkin at the grocery store, this year we went to a pumpkin patch. The prices were good and we get to go out into the field with our wheelbarrow and pick the perfect pumpkin. And oh my the choices! How can you decide? It was also a great place to try to take some fall/pumpkin pictures. And wouldn't you know out of the entire pumpkin field Zack was able to find the one golf ball! We had a good time and was able to get some pretty good pictures. Too bad I can't figure out how to get Zack to smile. The only time he really smiled was when a lady walked behind us and made a face for Zack. What a stinker!





Zack has been learning a lot of new words and actions lately! He's such a smart little boy. If you ask him where his ears are he'll point to his ears, he also can point to his eyes, belly (even lifts up his shirt to show you his belly), and his toes/feet. If you ask him where his tounge is he'll stick his tounge out... it's so cute! Some new words that he's been saying are off, hello, grandpa (papa) and done.

Submit your guesses

Will Zack have a little brother or a little sister?

Monday we will hopefully be finding out what we are having (cross your fingers the baby isn't shy). So if anyone is interested please submit your guesss to the poll in the sidebar. I'm guessing that it's annonymous poll but please pick one. But if you want to leave a comment with your guess you can do that too!

It will be interesting to see what we are having.

Bob thinks Boy and I'm leaning more towards Girl.

But honestly we have no idea!

Updated: I've deleted the poll that was in the post because I was having a hard time viewing the results. The poll is now on the sidebar at the very top. Please vote!

Ramblings of a pregnant women who should be in bed....

Already this pregnancy has been a lot different then with Zack.

With Zack:
I didn't start feeling sick until the 2nd trimester and then I was sick every night and sometimes in the afternoon.
I felt like by this time with Zack I had already had three or four dr. appointments.
The doctor actually measured my belly.
We had heard the heartbeat a few times.
I took tons of weekly pictures.

With this pregnancy:
I felt sick pretty early, but was able to contain it. I've only been physically sick a few times.
This week will be my third dr. appointment.
We still haven't heard the heartbeat (cross your fingers they actually find it this time!).
I'm afraid to take pictures of myself because I know I'm WAY bigger then I was before.

I'm not sure if I'm having some sort of depression about this pregnancy. I'm very excited for the new addition to our family. But I think with Zack we were much more prepared. It was planned. I was working full time so we were able to buy everything and then some for Zack. With this pregnancy I'm only working part time and I feel like we are barely making ends meet with mortgage, car payment and day care. It's been very hard for me to think about what we may need to buy for this new little one. Let alone how I'm going to take any time off work. I'm not sure Zack is ready for a toddler bed so we'll probably end up buying a new crib. I also don't think we'll be able to fit two cribs in Zack's room so we are trying to finish the basement with any money that we can, so the new baby can have the computer/scrapbook room upstairs. Which means we'll need to decorate the new baby's room. I know that things will work out... they always do. But I'm a worrier and I think about things way to much.

This is a dumb post, but it's just something that I'm feeling... I guess. It's also midnight so I'll probably delete the post in the morning.

But just to clarify... I am very excited for this baby. I know it's going to completely change the dynamics of our already small family. It's something that we wanted and I'm glad that it happened on it's own. I know that this baby is going to be a blessing for our family and we will do what we need to do to make things work.