Pregnancy Brain

Hahha remember how I said I might post more often? I was wrong. I think blogging is one of those things that if you do regularly, it's hard to forget. But once you slack off, it's hard to remember again.

Today I'm just having a problem with pregnancy brain. I keep forgetting everything, including one of the digiscrap sites I go to the very most (Sweet Shoppe Designs). Which wouldn't be so bad, except that I had to look up the website address YESTERDAY. But hey, now if I can't remember, I can just come to blog and click that handy link. If I can just remember that I blogged it. Shoot. Now I can't remember why I needed to go to Sweet Shoppe!

I just realized today that I had also completely spaced my "Today I'm Grateful For" list. I'd like to start it back up, as it's fun. Seriously though, I forgot for five entire months. I'm sure I've been grateful about things since then.

Quick update on our lives:
-I went through the temple for the first time.
-I'm 8 weeks pregnant.
-We're getting a new-to-us fridge and possibly a new-to-us TV today (woohoo!)
-The kids have been spending Wed-Fri with us in the summer.
-I'm still working as a baby photographer, which is miraculous.
-We've been camping
-TuffStuff turned 9 and Miss Fancy turned 6.
-Hubby's brother has been called on a mission to Dominican Republic
-TuffStuff and Miss Fancy are taking piano lessons from Hubby's brother until he leaves
-I've been called to teach the Valiant Girls in primary
-I've had my first experience with morning sickness. It was technically minor but I felt awful for about 1.5 weeks, I seem to be better in the past few days *crossing fingers*
-We got a library card

That's all I can think of for now. If I had been blogging regularly I'm sure you would have heard of these things as they happened. Oh well.

Gary and I have pretty much made the decision to have our next baby au naturale, aka a home birth. I've started a blog that is specific to our adventures with home birth and midwifery. That blog is called Sweet Granola Baby. <-- Click there to link to my new blog.

That's pretty much our life in a nutshell. We're really excited to go pick up the fridge tonight, and like I said, possibly a TV. The fridge is a stainless-steel side by side and... *deep breathing* it makes ice. ICE. I know, I know, it's pretty high-tech. I can't wait to freecycle our brown 1970's monstrosity. On the downside of that, it means the kitchen needs to be rearranged, but that can't happen till Hubby puts the downstairs bathroom back together and that can't happen till... well, you get the idea. I'm trying to be patient!

My word!

Last time I wrote, I gave you my word that I would post pictures and do better at posting. I failed to mention that anytime I promise anything, specifically in the journal-writing/blog-posting category, I usually start feeling guilty for failing said promise. When I feel guilty about things, I avoid them.

I call this the back-of-the-fridge procrastination. I may KNOW there is food that needs to be tossed. I may KNOW that there is something growing on the food that needs to be tossed. But my fear of how bad it is (which always trumps how bad it actually is), just begs for procrastination. So... I procrastinate, and let the problem grow worse, literally. An outside force must motivate me beyond procrastination.

The outside force in my FINALLY blogging is that I was about to start another blog. See how bad I am?? This is the reason I have 10 different journals, and none are even half finished. I'll let you know if I get around to starting another blog. For right now, I'm getting sick, Sophia is getting molars in STILL, and I'm all around going crazy. Ooh, I may be in the middle of making scones. I better check that...

Yeah, it's a hockey puck.

I'm still going to try and keep up with this blog, but no promises okay? AHHH AND THE BISHOPRIC IS COMING OVER IN 30 MINUTES AND I FORGOT.

I Owe My Blog

One million pictures. I know, I totally need to update this and add pictures of my cute little house. I WILL. I just need to, you know, make it cute first. This, digital scrapbooking and a little toddler discovering tyrannical capabilities, are taking the majority of my time. And my old house STILL isn't completely empty. Nor is it clean. I'm hoping I can just tidy up and call it good. But I promise, at least three pictures of the new house by Sunday evening. You have my word!

Home (and soon-to-be) Sweet Home

Yes, we've moved. I'll give this a moment to sink in. After all, it's been over a year of house searching and offers and potential "I think we got a house" claims. So go ahead... let it sink.

Now that we've gotten over the shock, here's the rundown. Naturally, it is NOT the house I posted about a month or so ago. It's a house about a half-mile (as the crow flies, if you're into corny sayings) from our last home. Oh yeah, we were robbed last week at our old house. Another post, another day! Sheesh. Focus. As I was saying: it's very close to our old house which means it's still in an extremely good area. This neighborhood seems to have a lot more children which hopefully means grown-up friends too. :) It's a cute little bungalow, and if you have the definition of bungalow, I'd love to hear it. We're renting-to-own from my father-in-law so while it's not "ours" yet, we're definitely settling in for the long haul. And by that I mean at LEAST four years! That's just crazy talk, I know.

Hubby officially has a honey-do list about a mile long. Some of the goodies include:
-fix disposal (at this point I can wash NOTHING down the sink, including water)
-replace kitchen sink faucet and bathroom faucet
-set up internet (obviously accomplished last night)
-set up entertainment center
-install dimmer switch on our bedroom
-hall closet needs a door
-fix upstairs shower so it stops raining in downstairs bathroom
-build bathroom storage cupboard

And so on and so forth. I haven't taken pics yet but I think they still might be online from when the house was listed to sell. Of course, these pics are realtor pics which means everything looks MUCH larger than it actually is. And let me tell you, it's not big. The house is almost exactly half the size of our old house, with very little in the way of storage. It's stressing me out. The kitchen is probably 1/3 the size of our old kitchen and if you know me, you know I collect kitchen equipment the way your grandma collects doilies.

However, kitchen aside, I really do love the house. It's cozy and I've decided it's better to have a too-small house than a cavernous house that's mostly empty. This already feels more homey since we no longer have giant empty rooms to collect dust and run up energy bills.

We have a lot of plans for the house. Short term, we want to renovate the kitchen slightly to add more cupboards and counter space. Oh, and to bring the fridge into the kitchen, because that's always fun when it's not in your hallway. Long term we hope to bump out the entire rear of the house. We'd like to enlarge the MBR and add a master bath as well as make the kitchen BIG by absorbing the small upstairs bath. We'll put a bathroom behind the kitchen, and possibly a powder room by the living room. Of course, that's long term and would only happen if we stay here say five years. Or more!

I also have a zillion decorating ideas for the house. I've been collecting ideas for a house for ages and it's fun to be able to implement them. Currently, the $0 budget has been slowing me down, but I hope to get around that soon. I'm aware that this post is already forever long, so I'm going to wrap up here. I'll post more ideas about decorating when I have a budget for that!

I can't find the pictures online, so I'll take some this afternoon and post them then. Back to unpacking!

Desperate Chicken Casserole

I've had a bit of a problem planning dinners this week. See, I thought I was going to be paid on Monday, and planned my groceries accordingly. 6:00 p.m. came (the time we inexplicably receive our mail) and went, with no check. So we had to scrounge Monday for dinner, no big deal. Then Tuesday came and went, and today, I still hadn't received my check. Yesterday Hubby ran to Costco and got me a Costco-sized bag of those frozen grilled chicken strips. I absolutely love those. You can throw them into virtually any dish with no prep beyond warming! I pulled together my fantastic BBQ Chicken pizza.

Tonight was tricky. I had no idea what to make for dinner. We have bits and pieces of a lot of things, but nothing that could easily be thrown together to make a healthy, satisfying dinner for 5. I spent 30 minutes recipe searching for what few ingredients I had on hand. Finally, I decided to take a few variations of several recipes and add my own twists. The result... fantastic. It received rave reviews from the four speaking family members and one enthusiastic baby sign for "more please."

I wish I had taken pictures of the meal, but I totally spaced it. I'm already looking forward to what little leftovers remain. Here's the recipe.

Desperate Chicken Casserole
1 lb. Egg noodles
8 oz. frozen grilled chicken strips
1 large can whole tomatoes
4-5 slices bacon
1½ cups mozzarella.
2 garlic cloves
1 t. basil
1 t. oregano
1 t. garlic powder

1. Bring pot of water to a boil. Salt water and add egg noodles.
2. 2. Heat grilled chicken strips on grill pan or griddle.
3. Peel garlic cloves and mash with a knife. Cook garlic with bacon until bacon is crisp. Remove bacon, and cut into bit sized pieces. Toss garlic cloves.
4. Dice whole tomatoes into bite-sized pieces and add to frying pan. Scrap bacon bits off bottom of frying pan. Add basil, oregano, and garlic powder and stir. Cook until heated through.
5. Preheat broiler. Drain egg noodles when al dente. Pour into bottom of casserole dish. Pour tomatoes onto noodles. Top with chicken and bacon. Add liberal amounts of mozzarella and broil for 3 minutes. Serve immediately.

Is it professional to want to bite someone's head off?

Today wasn't a great day at work. But my story starts yesterday, when a co-worker called in sick to work. Long boring story short, no one ever went in to photograph the babies. And despite Hubby's attempts late into the night, my car simply refused to start. Even though it lives in the garage, it freezes over, so Hubby tried everything he could to warm the garage up to the point of thawing. I swear, my car is such a baby. My sister gave me a ride to work this morning which was nice, but figuring out transportation issues always makes me crabby. And for whatever reason, I was EXHAUSTED this morning. Had I not had work, it would have been a sleep-on-the-couch-while-Sunshine-watches-Baby-Einstein kind of day.

So by the time I got to work today, I was ready to go home. I was, of course, greeted by a large stack of requests for babies being photographed, since no one came yesterday. I got half-jokingly chewed out by one nurse, and seriously chewed out by another nurse. I really like both of these women, and I love that they care enough for their patients that they take issue with the fact that some babies weren't photographed. I dealt with it extremely professionally, even when I had to deal with yet another nurse. I did everything I could to make them happy, as we contract with the hospital and making the nurses unhappy is a death sentence.

My job, by nature, involves a lot of waiting. Sometimes Mom isn't ready for pictures, sometimes baby is hungry or getting tests done or jaundiced or just circumcised or who-knows-what-else. It get all that. However, by the end of this extremely long day, when I had to wait for a Grandma who is "almost here with the outfit" for an hour, and stuck with virtually nothing else to do but wait... well, that just presses my buttons. Especially when the mother doesn't even order the pictures! And then, as I'm transferring the pictures I've taken via the Internet, a nurse approaches me and asks if I gotten such and such rooms before they were discharged (which I never saw the request form for)... I found it really REALLY hard to be professional. I managed, but just barely. I had completely lost the desire to pacify this nurse. Sorry, they had left. Sorry, I didn't see the form. Sorry, but I don't really care anymore.

Because you know what? The babies I photograph are cute and all, but I have something even better at home. Wouldn't you be eager to rush home to a face like this?

That's what I thought.

Photoshop Bliss

After a lot of tinkering and playing (and a lot of fun!) I came up with a post-processed image that I absolutely love of Sophia and I. It's the one from my last post, so if you care, you can even do a before and after. You probably don't. Oh and here's a hint for people with vision problems: click on the picture and it will make it REALLY big.



And uh, no, my legs are sadly not this tan in real life. But let's keep that just between us!