Lauren's Hair-do

Today I took Lauren to Evan's for a haircut and style.  She asked for curls and they really gave her curls!  When she got in the car, she said, "I guess I have Idaho hair today!"  It was actually really cute, even though it was a bit on the huge side. 

On a slightly different note, she just came in from playing outside.  She had been playing "500" with some kids, including a kid named Wesley who has been going to Primary Children's hospital for cancer treatment.  She came in and imitated how obnoxious Wesley had been during the game and said, "I don't care if Wesley has cancer, he's still a brat!!"  Lauren:  keepin' it real.

Orange Marmalade!

My friend Jenny had been given 2 boxes of oranges, so she invited me over to make orange marmalade with her.  It's a 2-day process, so we each sliced 8 oranges, 4 lemons, added 16 cups of sugar and 16 cups of water and 2 vanilla beans to our pots, brought them to a boil and then let them sit overnight.  (I brought mine home after it had boiled and cooled enough to transport.)  Today I simmered it 2 hours, boiled it hard for over an hour, then poured it into jars and processed about 19 jelly jars of orange marmalade.  I love how it turned out!  Kind of bitter and sweet at the same time.  The vanilla beans added tiny little black flecks throughout.  Really yummy.









20 Week Ultrasound

As everyone knows by now, the 20 week ultrasound was a major disappointment because we couldn't see the sex of the baby.  In approximately 2 weeks we're going to get another chance to see what gender our baby is, so we're looking forward to that. 

Disappointment aside, we were actually really thrilled to see such an active and very healthy looking baby.  We saw arms, legs, hands, feet, nose, lips, stomach, kidneys, heart--with all 4 chambers, and a whole lot of movement.  Ready to see the lamest ultrasound pictures ever?  Here you go:

If you look carefully, that is the profile of our baby's face.  It looks a little Alfred Hitchcock-esque, but the little baby was darting around the womb so fast that all the pictures turned out blurry. 

This is hard to see too, but that white blob is a foot with 5 little toes on it.  We were just happy it has all the important body parts.  

Lasagna

Every Saturday we watch America's Test Kitchen together.  Last week they made a vegetable lasagna and it looked so good that Landon and Emma begged me to make it this week.  I won't even say how much it cost, because I had buy almost every single ingredient, but sometimes you just need to splurge.  It was amazing!  It has eggplant, summer squash, zucchini, crushed tomatoes, fresh basil, heavy cream, and lots of Parmesan and mozzarella cheese.  Definitely not a healthy dinner despite all the veggies, but very tasty and worth the effort. 

 We savor any time Landon is home with us these days, so Lauren got creative and used the ottoman to cuddle up to Dad to play her DS one Sunday morning.  Emma got so jealous that there wasn't room for her that she actually started crying.  Everyone wants to be by Dad--especially Mom.  I try to spend time at Kennedy once in a while to help Landon with making copies or whatever he needs, and we try to go out to lunch about once a week. 

Easter 2012

We had so much fun in Pocatello, that we didn't put a lot of time into creating a fancy Easter for the girls. They woke up to baskets we had scrounged up from digging through their closets (we didn't want to go into the crawlspace for baskets) containing plastic eggs filled with candy. Lorina and Christina had sent a package, so we saved their goodies to put in the Easter baskets so it looked like the Easter bunny brought more than he really did. The girls still made us hide the plastic eggs so they could "hunt" for them, even though they had already seen them. The girls dyed eggs Sunday morning, even though by Sunday afternoon we were planning to eat them. They still enjoyed it.We had gotten the girls new dresses in Pocatello so they could wear them to church. Here's what they picked out:Lauren's dress is a cute, more "little girl" type dress, so this will probably be the last year she'll be able to get away with that kind of style. But she loves it and it's cute on her. Emma definitely has her own style. She's really independent and knows what she likes. I love her confidence and her eye for what looks good on her. She ended up getting two dresses because she also loves a good bargain and found these two dresses for the price of Lauren's one.Dad took this lovely picture. Apparently the girls didn't like looking into the sun. After church, Emma had BYC and Landon had to stay after to count tithing money. Lauren came home with me and made the deviled eggs for dinner. She has decided that they are her absolute favorite food ever. Dinner was DELICIOUS! We had a spiral-cut ham with homemade honey mustard sauce, twice-baked potatoes, homemade rolls, green salad, and deviled eggs. Emma made a chocolate cream pie for dessert. We had so much left over that we'll be eating ham and rolls for weeks to come.

Hey, by the way, I keep forgetting to announce this: Emma made the yearbook staff for next school year! She had to apply with an essay, fill out an application, have good grades (she has a 4.0), and get 3 teacher recommendations. There were lots and lots of applicants and she is only one of two 8th graders who will be on the staff. The rest are 9th graders. Next year, she will get to attend lots of school activities to take pictures, and have lots of opportunities to create layouts, write articles, and meet deadlines. She did this all on her own. She didn't have any friends who were planning to do it, we never talked about it at home, she just decided it sounded like fun. She's such a good, sweet, smart, independent, confident kid! I love that I have this blog so I can brag about my little angels!

A Little Bit About Me

So, just in case anyone cares, I'm still growing a baby. Any day I should start feeling it move and I'm looking forward to that assurance that it's really in there. I've begun thinking about baby stuff quite a bit...here's an example:

Doesn't my 3-cheese, artisan bread that I bought at Broulims look like a baby, crowning? Or is it just me?

This is me looking 17 1/2 weeks pregnant. The top set of lumps would be my boobs, but the next bump down is a roll of fat that has been steadily moving outward as my uterus moves upward. The lower bump contains the actual baby. I'm looking forward to the two bumps combining so I look less fat and more legitimately pregnant. I've gained 8-10 pounds so far, which is much more than I had gained at this stage with the girls. I just thought I'd update anyone interested in the progress of the little fetus. We find out the sex on April 24th! We've gotten closer to a boy's name, but haven't really discussed any girl's names. Suggestions are welcome, (but not necessarily taken seriously).

Spring Break in Pocatello

We haven't done anything fun for SO LONG! Landon is putting in huge hours teaching drivers' ed., so we couldn't leave town for spring break. We decided to do a priceline deal for a 2.5 star hotel in Pocatello for $50, and had a really fun 24 hour vacation. We left town around 2:30 Friday afternoon, and spent the afternoon shopping in Pocatello. We went to Ross and found 2 cute dresses and a new swimsuit for Emma. We went to the Pineridge mall and found a cute dress for Lauren and a new shirt for me at JC Penney. Next, we went to Walmart and found a cute swimsuit for Lauren and Emma bought herself a camera with money she's been saving. Finally, we went to our hotel and spent a few hours swimming in the hotel pool (we had it all to ourselves!). After swimming, Landon and I scouted out a NY-style pizza place near ISU and brought a pizza and some salads back to the hotel room for dinner. So good! We know that Pocatello and Idaho Falls have good pizza, now if only Rexburg could get some good pizza in town! We'd be so happy!

This is how "comfortable" Emma is riding in the backseat of the truck these days. Poor kid! I held the camera over my head and told Lauren to get in line of the lens.You can tell it was a special day because we NEVER buy a pretzel in the mall! When you can buy a pretzel at Sam's Club for $1 why would we spend $3 on a pretzel in the mall? We splurged on pretzels for a snack at the Pineridge Mall. Livin' large.This is a family portrait at the hotel pool...I had a pedicure on Thursday just for this occasion. After sleeping about 12 hours (yay for vacation!), and complaints of at least 2 of us snoring like wild animals (Lauren and me), we had a good breakfast at the hotel, and a couple more hours of swimming. Then we went to Outer Limits Fun Zone, which is a mini-golf/laser tag/indoor playground/arcade place in Pocatello that Lauren had researched and begged us to visit while we were in town. It was really fun, actually. We played "mini-bowling" which is like real bowling, but you use little 5 pound balls and you get tickets for spares and strikes.
Lauren, Emma and Landon played video games and tried to earn tickets. I'm not a big video game fan, so I was happy to hold everyone's tickets and cheer everyone on. The funnest part of the whole experience was paying for the girls to ride a roller-coaster "simulator." We thought it would shake and jiggle and maybe tip forward to make the girls feel like they were really riding a roller-coaster, but it was so much MORE! They wore shoulder harnesses and seat belts, then the attendant closed and locked the girls into a "pod." While Landon and I stood outside and watched, the pod started moving up in the air and twisting and turning upside down and shaking back and forth just like the girls were in a blender. We were so freaked out! We were convinced the girls were being traumatized and were never going to be the same when they came out. Well, as soon as the pod stopped and opened, both girls were grinning ear to ear and saying that was the funnest ride they've ever been on! They LOVED every minute of it. It was such a relief, and we were so glad they liked it. I think we're going to have a hard time passing through Pocatello without stopping to go on that ride in the future. I took video of it so they could see what was happening to them from the outside. It's dark and kind of hard to see, but you get the idea.

We went to Red Lobster for lunch with a gift card my parents had given us for Christmas. Lauren ordered a petite lobster tail from the kid's menu, which I thought was kind of funny. She loved it. After lunch, we drove home stopping at the Army Surplus store south of Idaho Falls, for Landon's benefit. We were gone about 26 hours, but it was actually one of our nicer vacations! I guess the longer we go between fun stuff, the more we appreciate our time together!