9 Months

Here it is - I'm entering the home stretch. Today marks the start of my 36th week and also the beginning of of my 9th month.

The doctor is estimating that the baby weighs about 5 lbs right now and that he might put on another pound or so before he's born, but that he certainly won't reach the 8 lb mark that Tyler did. And it makes sense. Although I feel as big as a house, I'm smaller than I was with my last pregnancy....coming in a full 10 lbs lighter.

I'm not sure if that has to do with the fact that I continued to workout all the way through to week 32, at which point I became too sick with that cold/cough/ear infection. Or if it has to do with overall better food choices. Or if it was just bad timing - being so sick for the majority of my 8th month, inhibiting weight gain for me and the baby. Who knows...it was probably a combination of all three.

At any rate, I'm ready to be finished with the process, minus the fact that we still haven't come up with a name yet. Yikes, we'd better get on top of that!

Donut Bakers

For Christmas I got a gift certificate for King Arthur Flour, which I hadn't used until last week. Isn't that shameful? The problem was, not that I couldn't find anything that I wanted, but that I couldn't make a decision. So I finally sat down, marked a bunch of pages in the catalog, kept debating back and forth until Tyler declared the decision for me.

A standard donut pan plus a few mixes to go with it.

And so it was. I placed the order and all we had to do was wait....and wait....and WAIT. Wow, am I spoiled with Amazon's prime 2-day shipping. Waiting the 12 days for KA shipping made it seem like our package was riding the slow boat from China.

But it finally arrived yesterday.

And we started baking immediately. First we tried the chocolate mix, which we whipped up and had in the oven within a few minutes.

After about 10 minutes in the oven they were ready to come out, so I made a quick batch of chocolate glaze. Tyler was in charge of decorating with sprinkles and coconut.

Don't ask me why he needs to have a silicone cup suctioned to his mouth. It must be some 'artist at work' sort of thing.

Yum! That one has my name on it.

So how did they taste?

Like a baked donut....or in all honesty, a cupcake. I never expected them to taste the same as a fried cake donut because it's impossible to get the same crispy exterior in the oven. Still I thought they'd be more substantial, with a dense coffee cake or pound cake sort of texture. Instead they were really light and delicate like a cupcake, which is fine for dessert, but not my idea of a breakfast donut. Well I guess once we finish baking the mixes, I'll have to be on the lookout for a recipe that yields a firmer donut.

Irredeemable

Last week when I was grocery shopping, which I do according to my weekly meal plan, I was looking for fresh green beans. Normally I buy the bulk of my groceries at Walmart and then go to a local store for all of my fresh vegetables, fruit and meat. Well, the smaller store had no green beans that day so I decided to go the frozen route. Frozen green beans aren't my favorite anyway because they tend to be too soggy, so I thought I'd go with one of those steam packs that you just throw in the microwave, thinking it'd be of slightly better quality.

Boy, was I wrong!



Yuck! Are you kidding me! Those are the most unappetizing green beans I've ever seen. All I could think was - what in the world do you have to do to a green bean to make it look like that!? Needless to say I wasn't about to serve those with our meal. I had made Tequila Glazed Grilled Chicken with Coconut Rice and there was zero way those beans were going to hit the plate. I ended up throwing them straight in the garbage and heated up some frozen peas instead. And a more respectable brand at that.

After dinner I got right on the computer and wrote an email to Western Family expressing my disgust. Surprisingly, both Western Family and their distributor wrote back to me the very next day.

Both letters included apologies, but the distributor actually provided a cash refund and tried to assure me that this was a fluke incident and that I could trust the quality of their products in the future.

I almost wanted to believe them because I'm a fool like that, until I remembered the time I'd bought some frozen Western Family edamame.

Not quite as horrifying as the green beans....at least the edamame were in the ballpark colorwise, but I'm pretty sure I'll never buy Western Family frozen vegetables again. Why would you, when you can get other affordable brands that are a much better quality?

4th of July Weekend

On Sunday we went over to the fairgrounds for the 4th of July carnival that was running through the weekend. In the past we've always gone on the 4th, but we decided to go earlier this year. Turned out it was a pretty good decision because we beat the crowds and Tyler didn't have to wait in line to go on any of the rides. 

We arrived almost 45 minutes before the place even opened up....I guess you can blame me for not double checking the time, but darn, 2:00 seems kind of late for a weekend carnival to open. Anyway it gave us a chance to take a few pictures.

As usual we got Tyler a wristband and let him go crazy with the rides, but it occurred to Rick and I that he's starting to outgrow the kiddie rides, but he's not quite big enough for the adult ones yet. Hmmm, well at least he enjoyed the roller coaster, fun house and the slides.

And for the first time, he actually got to play some of the games. He tried the one where you throw darts at a wall of balloons and get a prize based on the number of balloons you pop. Then he tried the ring toss, the sledge hammer, and a few others.

He didn't do so bad either....he came away with these cute little guys.

Then on Monday we stopped at Baskin Robbins for some ice cream.

Tyler was all talk about getting Strawberry Shortcake (a flavor I've never heard of, but he swears he saw last time) or Strawberry Cheesecake, but was ultimately swayed by the flavor of the month. I kept calling it Captain America, but I guess it's really called Soldier Swirl or something like that. It's vanilla with blue chips and a cherry swirl.

For dinner we had a BBQ with the usual suspects.

Bacon cheeseburgers on ciabatta rolls, baked beans, corn and chips. I was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture until I was already halfway through my burger. Oops!

And for dessert we had cupcakes and chocolate covered strawberries.

Then it was back to the fairgrounds to watch the fireworks display. We pick a different viewing spot every year and this time we crossed the freeway and watched from the arboretum. It turned out to be a great spot, except for the mosquitoes.....we'd better cover up a little better next time!

Walking Casper

Since the weather was only in the low 70's today, I decided it was a good day to go walk a dog. So Tyler and I headed over to the Humane Society and picked out a smaller dog that didn't look like it'd pull us around too much.

I'm not sure what breed he is, but his name is Casper (although I kept wanting to call him Chester) and he was very mild mannered. He didn't try to jump all over us like the Chihuahua we walked last time.

The Humane Society is right next door to the Greenway, so it makes for a perfect pathway for walking dogs. We started out kind on slow though....Casper was more interested in sitting in the grass than anything else.

But we finally got things moving and walked to the 3/4 mile marker and then turned around and came back. We could have gone farther, but that particular part of the path wasn't shaded and Casper was starting to pant up a storm.

The view sure was nice though.

Once we made it back to the start we hung out on the grass for a bit before it was time to return Casper to the shelter. It's a little sad in there seeing the animals cooped up in small quarters, so hopefully he finds a good home soon.

Art in the Park: Thank You Cards

Yesterday was the second Art in the Park project and this time the kids were making Thank You cards, or just cards in general, I guess you would say. The assignment was to make 2 cards - 1 for a friend or family member and 1 for the community Meals on Wheels program.

First Tyler decided to make a card for me.

He's been on a real Phineas and Ferb kick lately....he's even got a temporary tattoo of Perry the platypus on his hand. So that was his inspiration. On the front of the card he drew a picture of Perry.

And on the inside he cut out a heart and wrote 'I love you Mommy'.

Then he moved on to his second card, the one to be given to a Meals on Wheels recipient.

On the cover he drew some flowers and colored in a blue sky.

And on the inside he wrote 'Have a nice Day' and drew another flower.

Then after he finished both cards we headed over to the playground for awhile.

Huh!? Tyler doesn't need help on the monkey bars anymore? When did that happen? I must have blinked my eyes.

Tyler in the Kitchen

I haven't been feeling well enough to care about trying new recipes lately. All that matters is that I get something on the dinner table each night. Period. I haven't been making much in the way of desserts or breakfast treats either, but that's where Tyler's been picking up the slack. He's been working his way through the June section of his Gooseberry Patch year-round cookbook.

As soon as school was out, his priority was to make some Chocolatey Lava Cakes.

The recipe says it serves 8, so we cut the ingredients in half, but still ended up with 5 cakes.

The first step was melting together chocolate chips and butter and then stirring in some vanilla.

Next he mixed the dry ingredients together.

And combined them with the wet ingredients. Then I helped him beat in the eggs using a hand-held mixer. After chilling the mixture, we divided it evenly among 5 muffin cups.

And then waited for exactly 11 minutes for them to bake up in the oven.

Then it was show time....except for the fact that I couldn't get the little buggers out of the pan.

Note to self: Next time don't follow the instructions of greasing the pan with butter and then dusting with cocoa powder. Just use Baker's Joy instead. You'll be sorry otherwise.

We finally managed to scoop them out of the pan with a spoon and then topped them off with whipped cream and M&M's. Delish!

Next he made Lemon Shake-Up.

It's basically a single serving of lemonade using just 1 lemon.

First he cut and squeezed the bejesus out of the lemon.

Then he added some ice, sugar, and water and started shakin'.

After it was all mixed up, he poured it into a cup, garnished it with a lemon slice and put it on the table to go with his lunch. The color came out a little 'orange' because we used agave nectar for the sweetener instead of granulated sugar. Next time, I don't know, I might just stick with the regular sugar, because the taste was kind of off as well. But then who am I to criticize. Tyler drank it right up without a single complaint.