You know it's summer when...

You go to a baseball game!! Our friend Seanna is leaving San Antonio to go... somewhere.. I don't remember. Anyhow, she is a huge baseball fan and for her going away party she wanted to go to a baseball game. This was the baby's first baseball game!! Go San Antonio Missions!

Here are Daniel and I at the game. I will never get sick of that handsome face!!

Our friends the Grangers gave us a ton of baby clothes on friday. Here they all are! Some of them aren't exactly our taste (sports, "I'm cute" shirts, etc.) or are the wrong season, but no biggie. Those we will re-gift to one of the eight bazillion pregnant ladies we know right now! And we are very grateful. I don't think we will have to buy this baby a single piece of clothing by the time he's here. So much cute stuff!!

They also gave us this swing! Sweet!!

Today our church had our quarterly "the church has left the building" day. Instead of having church one sunday per quarter, we plan an event to reach out to the community. For the spring quarter we had a giant free garage sale; went around the community to ask if people needed help mowing their yard, painting over graffiti, fixing something in their house, etc; and a third group went to a local gas station to pump people's gas, clean their windshield, and invite them to our church. Today our whole church paired up in groups of 2 and went door to door in all the neighborhoods around the church giving out small bags of homemade cookies (of which I made 4 dozen) and inviting people to visit our church. If people seemed receptive we were also supposed to ask them if they had anything we could pray for them about. Daniel and I went around our own neighborhood and got to meet some of our neighbors. I'm telling you, the cookies did the trick. Cookies may not seem so spiritual (or healthy... which I tend to have a problem with the church eating crap and not taking care of their bodies... but that is a whole different topic!!) but when we gave them cookies they became completely receptive to listening to us, and smiled, made eye contact, etc. I know at least in our neighborhood we get a lot of solicitors and a lot of jahova's witnesses going around, so people can tend to not answer their door or be awfully suspicious if they don't know who you are. They seemed relieved when they realized we were just being nice, weren't planning to stay, and weren't selling anything. It was actually a lot of fun (except for the 100 degree weather!)

My house is a disaster. Just 2 days of no laundry, no picking stuff up, not doing all the dishes every day, and boom! It's like an explosion. Sigh. Oh well.

YAY NEW CAMERA!!!!

I am sooo excited because we got a nice new camera! This picture is from Daniel's trip to Lima, Peru. It turns out my dear hubby has quite an eye for photography-- I never knew!!

This picture below is one that is on our fridge-- I took a picture of it. It must be 8 or 9 years old. I was either 16 or 17 and Daniel was 14 or 15. Aww!! This is one of my favorite pics of all time. We weren't dating yet at the time-- we were really just acquaintances. I remember getting the film developed, seeing this picture, and thinking how much we looked like a happy couple! I didn't even have a crush on him yet! :) This picture is our ultrasound. That was the best pic. If we had known how to use the video (!!!) function on our camera at the time we could have done that!! Oh well...

And for fun, here are 2 days worth of eggs from our chickens. We get 7 or 8 every single day!! One chicken lays green eggs, another lays speckled eggs. :)

I am soo excited to figure out how to upload videos onto here. This will be great!! my blog will rock!! :) :) :)

21 weeks

Here is a picture of me and the baby today. He turned 21 weeks yesterday. I have had 5 people ask me if I was having twins. Thanks a lot, people. Daniel says I should take it as a compliment... no thankyou, I don't think I will. I have gained 22 lbs. All the books say 10-15 by this point. My midwives think everything is just fine though, and they think my weight gain is healthy. So we must be doing ok. Sometimes I don't feel like I look very pregnant... that is, until I look at a picture like this one. Good grief! Keep growing baby!

This picture below is 14 weeks. And I thought I had a big belly then!! It was just a little pooch!

Brownies for Breakfast

I made these brownies last night. They rock--- very bad and sugary, verrrry delicious.

Cocoa Brownies

4 large eggs
1 C. Sugar, sifted
1 C. Brown sugar, sifted
2 sticks melted butter (don't use margerine)
1 & 1/4 C. Cocoa, sifted
2 tsp. Vanilla
1/2 C. flour, sifted
1/2 tsp. salt (You don't have to sift the salt ;)

Preheat oven to 300. Butter your brownie pan. Beat eggs until fluffy. Add both sugars, mix. Add remaining ingredients, mix. Bake 45 minutes or until done. Let cool before cutting. Enjoy!

It's a......!!

Ok, so we had our ultrasound today. Little baby was wiggling all around and kicking and flailing his arms, but alas, his hiney was poorly positioned, so we don't know yet if he is a boy or girl. But oh, we know! Both my husband and my step-mother-in-law had separate dreams about the same (unique) name, which is what we are naming him. He's a boy. It's just not "official" yet. ;)

I am freshly armed with a new, gaudy fake wedding ring. It's really huge and sparkly, which totally doesn't fit my personality. It was the smallest and simplest one they had at claires, and hey, it was only 6.50 so who am I to complain? Daniel laughs when he looks at it.

So we have been having a little fun because Daniel missed the last 4 or 5 episodes of lost while he was in Peru! We have to catch up, of course.

Alright well I am sleepy so I'm going to bed. :)

Hydrogen peroxide saves the day

Wednesday night Daniel nocked a glass of red wine over on the carpet at like 3 in the morning when he woke up to get a sip of water. Poor Daniel, he stayed up for an hour trying to scrub it out of the carpet! His alarm went off at 4am and off he went to work, stain still intact. When he gets home from work yesterday he shows me the dilema. So I tried looking on the internet and found this awesome remedy that worked! You can look at this page for better info, but the gist of it is this: Combine some sort of soap (dawn, laundry detergent, carpet cleaner) with hydrogen peroxide, scrub it in a little, let it sit, and boom! Your stain is gone!! This is what i did: I poured hydrogen peroxide all over the stain and then squirted resolve carpet cleaner on it. Scrubbed in, waited, gone! YAY!! Then I just sort of absorbed as much of the wetness as possible with a towel and let it dry.

While we are on the subject of stain removal, I have a great remmedy for oil/grease stains. As soon as possible, rub a whole lot of baby powder into the stain. Then squirt some sort of stain remover on, rub in, let it sit. Then wash as normal. This has gotten not only fresh oil stains out for me, but really old ones as well. Even ones that have been washed/dried before.

Onto other subjects, my wedding ring doesn't fit anymore. I noticed it was really tight last night and made a herculean effort to get it off. Finally I did, after much pain and suffering. But I don't like appearing to be pregnant without being married, so I am going to go pick up a cheap-o fake ring today to make myself feel better. I will put a picture of my new fake ring, as well as a new belly picture, soon!

20 weeks

So I am just so hungry all the time now. It is only 2 in the afternoon and already I am ravishingly hungry, after two meals. Breakfast(at 9:30): 1 scrambled egg with some sausage mixed in, a handful of cherries, and some plain yogurt with maple syrup mixed in (yum yum yum!). Snack: small cup of coffee and 3 hersheys kisses. Lunch (just an hour ago): Half a steak, sweet potato, zuchini and squash. And now I am thinking, hmmm... what's down there in the kitchen? Seriously I can't believe how hungry I am. I made homemade meatballs for the first time the other day and I might go eat some of those with spaghetti. That sounds good for my second lunch. :) Yes, I think I will have that. Too bad it's not homemade spaghetti, too.

Well this is my first official week as a housewife. Daniel says that isn't true since we've been married for 4 years now, but I feel like it's the first week since I am now jobless. It's pretty lonely being all alone in the house. Luckily Daniel and our friend Kyle always come home for lunch, so that's nice. I'm going to have to start doing things with friends in the middle of the day to keep from going stir-crazy. I have been cooking a lot more, though. This morning I made a batch of kombucha, and I am currently baking a batch of bread-- one loaf banana, one loaf appricot. Yum yum yum. I should post the recipe here because this bread is soooo moist, extremely healthy, and delicious. :) I also feel justified in sitting on the computer for a minute because there is a load of laundry in both the washer and dryer, so really I am multi-tasking like crazy!!

Alright, hunger pains are taking over. More updates later!

Healthy food

Here is an EXCELLENT article on eating healthy. Daniel and I have agreed with these standards for a while now and try to follow them, although it isn't always easy. Enjoy!

This was interesting :)

Sooo... how many of you still have beanie babies lying around in a closet somewhere? I am at my moms visiting, and I still have 2 rubbermaid boxes full of them in her basement. I decided I wanted to pick out 2 or 3 for my little baby to take back to Texas. So I'm sifting through them and wondering if I should just stick them back in the basement or what. I found this website! It sends beanies over to the troops so they can distribute them to the children in Iraq! I think that is so sweet. I'm not sure if I will do it or not, but I thought someone out there might be interested. :)

18 weeks and a day

Hello bloggers in blogland. I haven't written for a while here now! I've been bad about this on my trip, I think my blog is getting really boring.... I figured out why. Everything interesting that happens I e-mail to Daniel before I blog, and by the time I've written him I don't want to write the same stuff again. That makes sense to me.

There have been crazy storms here (ie of boring.. talking about the weather on your blog!) and I love it! That's one thing I miss about Ohio. We get some storms in Texas, but whenever it storms there I am worried about flooding and I can never really enjoy the storm. Here flooding isn't a problem and so it is nice!

I had a baby bird adventure the last two days. There was a baby robin in the yard who kept hopping all around the house. He had his feathers, he just couldn't fly yet. But he seemed perfectly healthy. Anyway, I kept a close eye on him for the two days because there are so many cats in the neigborhood. It was nice because he chirped every 5 seconds very loudly, so he kind of had his own radar-- I could always tell where he was from in the house with all the windows open. Anyway, I looked out yesterday and saw him flipped on his back and he couldn't get back over. I went out and turned him over only to discover that he couldn't walk anymore! I don't know what happened! I think he must have been malnourished. I guess parent birds will push their babies out of the nest if they know they won't make it. I just assumed his parents were around and taking care of him (I read that is what they do) but I guess not. Now I feel bad because if I had taken him in a day earlier I could have rescued him! There is an old lady down the street from my moms who works for some wildlife rescue place. My whole life she always had a large assortment of animals that she was rehabilitating. As a kid, whenever she would go out of town she would pay me to come take care of her animals. Anyway, I took my little bird to her house (when I picked him up he just relaxed in my hand and closed his eyes, it was so sad) but she wasn't there! Her husband said to put him in a dark place with water, so I did. I got a few drops of water in his mouth with my finger, but it didn't seem to help. A few hours later he died! It was so sad, because he had seemed perfectly healthy earlier that day, and he was so soo cute. I wish I had taken care of him when I first found him. And I wish birds went to heaven! Maybe they do, I guess we don't really know.