Noah's First Pictures

We went to a specialist today to check on a spot that had been showing up in Noah's heart on the last two ultrasounds. Thankfully, it is nothing more than a thickened spot in the muscle and he is perfectly fine. During the ultrasound the technician asked up if we had any 3D pictures yet and, since we didn't, she took a few for us.

He has his hands crossed under his chin so in some of the pictures his right hand is over part of his face. It looks like he's going to have Isaac's nose and my mouth in more ways than one. He was constantly opening and closing his mouth and sticking his tongue out so it's quite possible he'll have a lot to say.

I didn't think I wanted to do a 3D ultrasound because I wanted his face to be a surprise but I think it'll still be a surprise because while you can get some idea of what he looks like, it's not the same as seeing him in person or in an actual picture.

Back Home

Isaac and I returned home from our trip to Indiana late last night and I must say that I'm glad to be home. It was such a quick trip as we were only there for three days. It's hard to believe in just two and a half weeks we'll be doing the trip all over again for my baby shower!We had a great time being home with family and Christmas was good. The only annoying part was listening to extended family members tell me how big I looked and say how gigantic they thought I'd be the next time they see me. They seriously must not think before they talk. All I could do was roll my eyes and bite my tongue. I don't think that I'm a particularly large pregnant person but maybe I have a distorted view of myself.

My mom and I did a lot of shopping for nothing while I was home which is the best. I love to just go out looking for nothing and see what you find. I did find some great books and Half Priced Books to teach me how to knit, crochet, and do applique. I've been wanting to learn how to do those for awhile now and I finally decided to take the plunge. Isaac doesn't seem too thrilled at the prospect of me picking up a few more hobbies but oh well. I also really want to learn how to make my own jewelry but I haven't found a book that has anything like the style I'm interested in so that's still on the back burner.

I was practicing my crocheting technique on the car ride home but I became a bit confused on the conversion between the rows and so I think I'm going to have to look for a video on youtube or something to show me. On one page of the book it says to hook through the loop just like you normally would but then on the next page it says for row two you want to hook under both loops to turn the chain so I'm not sure which to do. Then do I continue to hook under both loops every time I turn the chain or is that only for the second row? You're probably confused just from reading that!

Anyway, today has been lots of cleaning and putting things back away. I have a lot of organizing to do in my craft room since it looks like a nuclear bomb went off in the Christmas rush and I also need to sit down and start organizing my business paperwork for taxes and such.

Almost Feeling Like Christmas

I've been having the winter blues the last two weeks. The sun has not been out and it has just been raining for days. So I sort of crawled into a little hole and have not really been participating in life. Well, today the sun is shining and I've decided to come out of my hole and get things done.

Over the weekend we had dinner with our friends Sarah and Aaron and then went to a Christmas light display at a local park. The decorations were nice and it was a very large park. It was quite cold though and the wind was not very kind to my face. It was so cold in fact that we bought hot cocoa while we were there and it was cool enough to drink within 30 seconds. They had a really cool display that had the lights coordinated with the music playing so we decided to stop and take a quick picture since I don't have any pictures of us together lately.


Isaac and I have been talking about taking a Christmas photograph for like two weeks now and we finally decided to get it taken today. So before he went to work we sat down and took a few snapshots for the dogs. I don't have a lot of pictures of me pregnant but this one turned out well and I think that we should at least have one to show Noah some day.

I'm busy working on scrapbooking the rest of our ultrasound pictures today and getting things ready to head home to Indiana on Wednesday. My mom says they're going to be having a winter mix of ice and rain Wednesday. Perfect traveling weather, yuck.

Thai Cashew Chicken Recipe

So today I thought I'd share with you the Thai Cashew Chicken recipe that I made for our friends over the weekend.

1 Tbs olive oil
1 large yellow onion, sliced thinly
1 of each: yellow, orange, and red pepper
3 Tbs ketchup
1 Tbs soy sauce
1/3 cup chicken broth
1 tsp white sugar
1 tsp thai garlic chili paste (or hot pepper sauce) or more to taste
3 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
3 Tbs. creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup cashews
Jasmine rice

Heat oil in skillet
Cook onions and peppers until they start to get tender
Mix in ketchup, soy sauce, chicken broth, sugar, chili paste, and peanut butter
Add chicken to skillet and continue to cook and stir for 10 minutes
Mix in cashews before serving over Jasmine rice

A few things you want to keep in mind:
-You only want to cook the onions and peppers until they are starting to get soft. If you cook them until they are completely soft they will be a mushy mess by the time the chicken has been cooked.
-You also want to get the chicken breast in as soon after adding the sauce ingredients as possible or your sauce will dry out before your chicken is done. This happened to me and I ended up having to add more chicken broth to thin it out and I lost some of the flavor because of that.
-Make sure that you slice your chicken breast very thinly so that it will cook relatively quickly.
-Cooking this mixture is done best in a wok at a high temperature but you can do it in a regular pan if that's all you have. Might be a bit messier.
-If you're not a big pepper fan, you may want to use only half of each of the peppers as it is a lot of peppers and onions.

Give it a try and enjoy!

A Busy Little Weekend

Wow, this weekend really flew by for me! I can't believe that it's already Monday, sigh. Friday was kind of a bust for me as far as getting any work done. I had my Keepers Of The Home Bible study group on Friday morning and they wanted me to do some Christmas cards with them. So I brought all my stuff and they each made 5 cards. Normally, we meet at 9:30 and we're done by 11:00. Not so this time. We didn't even get started until nearly 11:00 and the little boys (3 of them in the 2's) were going bonkers. It was so hard to concentrate on the Bible study portion. In fact, I would say I was totally distracted. Thank goodness I won't be having triplets! So the meeting lasted until nearly 1:00. I came home and Isaac wanted to go get some Five Guys hamburgers for lunch so we went back out and did that and then it was time for him to go to work. Then my friend Sarah called and asked me to go Christmas shopping with her so I did and we were out until about 7:00 or so and I was completely pooped. I did however get a fabulous maternity coat at Target for $60. I am thrilled with it because now my coat isn't hanging open and I'm not freezing to death! This is my coat.

Then on Saturday we had Sarah and her husband over for dinner at 5:00. I made Thai Cashew Chicken with sticky rice. I had never made it before but I think it came out alright. There weren't any leftovers so I guess that's always a good sign. I got the recipe from a friend and there are a few tweeks I'll make to it but all in all it was good and very simple. After dinner, we went to their house to meet their new puppy, Maggie. She's a yellow lab puppy and super cute. I think Isaac wanted to steal her. He kept saying how he wished we had Copper when he was a puppy over and over again. But just for the record, we are at our dog capacity. Three dogs and a baby equal my hands being very full!

Then Sunday we did our normal church thing and went and had lunch at the mall afterwards. We decided to redo our Christmas tree because it was looking pretty pathetic and I hated the decorations we had for it. Not to those that move to Hawaii without Christmas decorations, there is a limited supply for the island so get them early. Don't be like us and wait until December only to find that there is little to no selection left. We bought the only things we could find and I've pretty much always hated them. Anyway, Isaac has been on this kick about wanting modern blue lights for the tree, yadda yadda, so I finally gave in. We went to several different store and got blue lights and all these silver and blue decorations for the tree. It took forever to get it together last night but we did it and I really like it. The only thing we don't have is a star because we couldn't find one we liked. I'll have to keep looking. Here's our tree.

The Best Little Camera Ever!

One of the things that my mom and I did while she was here was to go shopping on Black Friday. We didn't drop any major money or really buy all that much but we just went out to have fun together. There were a few electronics that we knew we wanted to buy and so that's mainly what we were looking for.

I have been wanting to get a small point and shoot digital camera for awhile now, since the flash is broken on our big point and shoot camera. The last time we went to DC and took pictures at the museums, nothing turned out because we didn't have a flash. It was very upsetting and disappointing. So I had been doing some research and reading what types of cameras people recommended and I found that overall people really liked the Canon Powershots. A few things that I required from the camera were that it has a fast click to capture time, a macro setting, and various settings for action shots, night shots, etc. So I started looking into the Canon Powershots and reading customer reviews on them. I was shocked to find that most of the $200-$300 Powershots have no settings on them. They are just auto. So that was discouraging.

Then I happened onto a few recommenations for the Canon Powershot A590 IS. I looked it up and found that it had all the features that I was looking for but the one complaint from people was that the body of the camera felt cheap. I picked out about 3 Powershots that I thought I'd like to try out and then started scouring through the ads. To my surprise, there were 3 stores that had the A590 IS on sale and it was very inexpensive. I have to admit that I started to think this wasn't going to be a good camera because it was only $135. I've never spent that little on a camera before. So we went out and I ended up purchasing the camera with the intent to try it out and if I didn't like it, to return it.
Well, I'm happy to report that this little camera is the best digital camera I've ever owned! I love it! It turns on SUPER fast and the click to capture time is almost INSTANT. Not only does it have all the other features I was looking for but it also has a setting for children and pets. Perfect! Now, I will say that the body of the camera is plastic, but that's something that I'm willing to compromise on. After all, the last camera I bought was about $250 and has a great heavy frame and I've hated it since about a month after we got it. It never worked right so word to the wise, never buy the display because it's the last one they have! So in the end I'm willing to have a lighter body casing on a fabulous camera then a heavy metal casing on a sucky camera.

If you're looking for a great little digital camera this year, I would say to try this one out. You can always take it back if you don't like it, but I have a feeling you'll be keeping it!

A Great Thanksgiving

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving visit with my mom and brother and we got so much accomplished while they were here. It really was a great time and I'm so glad that they were able to make it out here on Tuesday night, even if it was a little later than planned. We needed every day that they were here.

My mom and I cooked Thanksgiving dinner and it was super yummy. We tried out a brined turkey recipe this year that we hadn't done before and it turned out really well. The turkey was very moist and the meat had a sweetness to it from the brine. We made mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, rolls, pumpkin pie, and peacan pie. Here's a quick picture of our spread and below that is the recipe for the turkey brine.

Brined Turkey Breast
16 cups of water
2 cups sugar
2 cups coarse salt
5 gloves of garlic, crushed
1 Tbsp pickling spices

Combine ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until sugar and salt dissolve. Cool to room temperature. Poor brine over breast and refrigerate, loosely covered, overnight.

We also worked on getting Noah's nursery put together and I think that it's looking great. We put up the border around the room and did it at a chairrail height. It helps to break up the whiteness of the walls. I figure this will be easier to remove from the walls than having to completely repaint when and if we move again. We also hung a curtain rod and put up the window vallences and I'm working on a project to hang above his crib that will have his name on it. We got all the bedding out and put in on the crib to see how everything looks together and it's super cute. I'll post pictures once I get the room finished.

My etsy shop has been quite busy lately and I have to say that I am very thankful for that. I'm quickly approaching the milestone of 200 sales and I'm hoping that I'll hit that before the end of the year. I would just be thrilled. Over the weekend I added a whole new line of Amy Butler tins into my store and I'm excited to see how people like them. Today is another busy day so I'd better be off and start working on my to-do list. Ah, the never ending list.