12 Weeks

The one thing I regret about my first pregnancy is that I had virtually no pictures taken of myself. I hated getting my picture taken, so I pretty much avoided it entirely. It wasn't until after Tyler was born and I started scrapbooking, that I realized the importance of it all.

So with this pregnancy, I'm determined to do a better job. Today is the last day of my first trimester....or so I think. I'm not sure if week 13 is considered first or second trimester, but I'm just going to round up and say I'm about 3 months along.

At this stage, there really isn't much to look at. I still look about the same as I did pre-pregnancy.

I've only put on 2 lbs so far, but I've already started growing out of some of my pants. We'll call those my skinny jeans....it somehow makes me feel better about the process.

From the side you might notice a small pooch in my lower stomach. But like I said, there isn't much to see. I'm fine with that. The longer I can go without a big obnoxious belly, the better.

I have my first appointment with the doctor scheduled for next week. I actually went in the other day, but due to a little snafu with the insurance company, I was turned away. Apparently, instead of upgrading our insurance plan, they canceled it completely. So now that we've straightened that out, hopefully I won't run into any more problems when I go back.

Three Day Weekend

I know it seems like my New Year's resolution must have been to give up blogging completely, but the truth is that I've just been so exhausted that everything has been falling behind. Hopefully it won't be too much longer before I'm feeling better and things start getting back to normal. In the meantime, here's a look at how we spent our weekend.

On Saturday we enjoyed a nice dose of rain.

Normally I'm not a fan, but I couldn't have been happier to see most of our snow melting and washing away. And with the temperatures hanging out in the 40's, I'm hoping that it'll stay away for a while.

For lunch Rick took us to this burger and teriyaki place that he claimed was really good. He ordered the teriyaki chicken and a philly steak sandwich for us to share.

I can't really comment on the rest of the food though, because I was too busy eating onion rings. It's terrible, I know, but it's the only thing I wanted.

Back at the house, Rick began waging his war against our local FOX network. In our market, Directv has dropped FOX from its lineup because, apparently, they're charging too much for the privilege of carrying their content. That means that Directv costumers in our area (like us) cannot watch FOX unless they are somehow able to tune in the off air signal. The problem with that is that our local FOX station  has a super low signal strength, which is practically impossible to pick up.

Enter the largest antenna known to mankind. Take that FOX! Now to mount the thing somewhere inconspicuous.....

On Sunday Tyler and I were up early making muffins for breakfast.

They're called Donut Muffins, but I think they tasted more like coffee cake.

Later in the afternoon, Tyler and I continued our game of Monopoly Revolution...we'd already been at it for two days.

And in the end I creamed that poor boy. Can you believe it? I never win Monopoly.

I spent the rest of Sunday blazing my way through The Kitchen House. It was so suspenseful that I could hardly put it down.

Today Rick had to go to work as usual, so Tyler and I were on our own in terms of entertainment. I thought we'd decided yesterday that we'd go to the movies and see Yogi Bear, but today Tyler had changed his mind and wanted to go bowling instead.

So that's where we went....rusty arms and all.

Ouch! And that's with bumpers! I think we'd better stick to bowling on the Wii....it's much easier.

More of the White Stuff

Just as the weatherman promised, it snowed Tuesday night. He said we'd get anywhere from 1 to 3 inches, which is kind of light, so I was expecting something more on the low end of the scale....like maybe 1 inch. But on Wednesday morning I woke to find that it had actually snowed 2.5 inches.

I know that's nothing compared to the kind of snow the East coast is seeing, so I shouldn't complain, but darn, I'm not the biggest fan of shoveling the driveway at 7:00 in the morning.

We were off to school as usual, and as always the case with fresh snow, we had to park at the bottom of the hill and hike our way up to the classrooms. It's not that big of a deal. In fact, by the afternoon, the snow had already melted off the roads and I was able to drive up the hill just fine.

This morning, though, was another story. All the water on the roads froze overnight to create the slickest mess you've ever seen. Most of the public schools went on a 2-hour delay, and some even closed for the day. Oh, but not Tyler's school. I'm pretty sure they never close. Lucky us. Thankfully we made it to school in one piece. Now we just have to wait for it to warm up a bit so the ice will melt. Who knew that ice would be a way bigger nightmare than snow.

The Upgrade that Downsized

One of the perks of Rick's job, besides free service, is the free upgrades to our DVR receivers. So this weekend we had a technician come out and replace two of our old receivers with the new fancy HD version.

It sounds like an easy switch, but it must have been rocket science because the guy was here for over 5 hours before he finally had them up and running properly. And now, much to Rick's delight, all the DVRs in the house can talk to each other, share recordings, and do all the neat stuff that our old ones could not.

But while Rick is pleased as punch, I'm just plain mad. I'm mad that in the transition, I lost all of my recordings. Well actually, the only ones that matter to me are the Cathe Friedrich workouts I had recorded off of FitTV and the episodes of GLEE that I watch while I run on the treadmill. Well those are all gone for now and replacing them is going to be harder than I thought.

This morning I discovered that FitTV has cleared out it's lineup, getting rid of all those pesky workout programs, and replaced them with reality programming. Now the network has a limited 3 hours of fitness programming, while the rest of the day is devoted to shows like Dr. G: Medical Examiner, Bringing Home Baby, I'm Pregnant and...., The Bronx, and Trauma - Life in the ER. Really!?! No more Cathe on FitTV? Seriously? Ugh!

So I continue to make my way through Cathe's monthly rotation, but wonder what I'm going to do now that I'm suddenly missing a good chunk of her videos. Thankfully I've amassed a decent collection of her DVDs over the last few years so I'll be able to make substitutions here and there, but if I want my old favorites back, it looks like I'll have to break down and buy them already.

Good Cooking

I can't believe it....the 5th night of Tyler's cooking has already come and gone. I'm already coming up with ways to trick him into doing it again. I loved this week! I loved that Tyler was so excited about cooking each day and that the recipes were simple, but most of all I loved having help in the kitchen.

On Wednesday, we had Number Salad, which is basically a fruit salad that calls for a specific number of different fruits.

In go the eight grapes.

My thought is that salad would have been way better if the fruit were actually in season. I guess it's not the thing to make in the dead of winter. On a positive note though, Rick enjoyed the addition of shredded coconut and I liked the cubes of cheddar cheese, neither of which are things we normally put into fruit salad.

To go with the fruit salad, I made a batch of Maple Bacon Waffles. Delish!

Then on Thursday we had Quesadillas and Zuchinni Moons.

The recipe said to put the quesadillas in a dry skillet with no butter or anything, which I thought was kind of wierd. I tried to get Tyler to spread butter on the tortillas, but he absolutely would not stray from the written word, so butterless it was.  Much to my surprise, they still crisped up nicely.

While the first quesadilla was cooking on the stove, Tyler started prepping the next one. They had a simple filling of refried beans and cheese....kind of like a bean burrito.

Yum, another tasty dinner!

And to finish out the week, we had Marzetti Swirls.

This was the most complicated meal of week, in that it started out with raw ground beef. So I browned up the meat and Tyler took it from there, adding the seasonings, water, tomato and pasta. Then we let it simmer while the pasta cooked up in the sauce.

About 12 minutes later it was ready to eat and according to Tyler it was the best meal of the week. I didn't think anything could surpass his mini pizzas, but I have to agree...this was really good!

My Personal Chef

As if an angel fell from the sky, Tyler put himself in charge of creating the menu plan for this week. He looked through his two favorite cookbooks and planned 5 days worth of dinners.

It looks like we'll be having some of his regular dishes like the mini pizzas and salad bar, but we'll also be trying several new recipes.

So yesterday was day 1......pizza. We used the same recipe as before, but this time modified the sauce slightly, using onion powder instead of chunky dehydrated onion flakes. Much better, as far as texture goes.

Here they are out of the oven. Don't you like the cute little faces? Except for the third one, which is more like a tic-tac-toe board because I complained I wanted more pepperoni.

For tonight's dinner we made a salad bar. The first step was making the dressing, which Tyler whisked up using his new set of kitchen tools that Anni gave him for Christmas.

Then we got busy chopping up the rest of the veggies and labeling them as we placed them in the bar area. Eggs, cucumber, tomato, shredded carrot, cheese, mushrooms, olives, avocado, croutons, and chow mein noodles. Yummy! Tyler and I both went back for 2nds.

Merry Christmas

Tyler set his alarm for 7:00, so we were up bright and early this morning. We started things off with the usual homemade cinnamon rolls, but this year we decided to bake them in the shape of a Christmas tree and decorate them with sugar sprinkles.

Yummy!

Then it was time to start opening presents.

Santa brought all kinds of presents wrapped in fancy red glittery paper. Someone must have been really good this year! Tyler ripped into those first and found a new Wii game system and a K'NEX roller coaster.

From Grandma he got an animal atlas and a little harp seal.

Rick got a new coat, slippers, gadgets for the garage, and a new poker chip case.

I got a new Cathe workout DVD and some accessories like this toning tube band....Tyler thought he'd break it in for me.

Also under the tree were a number of new board games....Operation, Connect 4x4, and Monopoly Revolution.

Cookbooks and more cookbooks! I can't wait to start looking through them!

For dinner this year we wanted to do something kind of simple. So instead of turkey or ham, we made a pot roast....a quick and easy one from one of Tyler's cookbooks. I went instant on the stuffing, but did take the time to make the mashed potatoes and cut up some fresh green beans. For dessert we had red velvet cake.