Ultrasound Pictures: Week 6, Week 11 and Week 14

We really, really look forward to ultrasounds! It is so much fun to see the baby!

First Ultrasound! Baby looks kind of like a gummy bear.

At our 11 week ultrasound, Baby kept sucking his/her thumb.

Around 14 weeks, we had a big scare. I woke up with some bleeding, so I called out of work, Nate rushed home and we called the doctor’s office. We got in that day for an ultrasound.

But baby was ok!

It turned out baby was ok, and they couldn’t find anything wrong or any cause for the bleeding. We also got a guess at the gender, but we’ll wait ’til it’s 100% on Thursday.

Big Hiatus

Oops! Sorry for disappearing off the face of the earth for a couple months there.

We found out that I’m pregnant on November 26, 2012!! We didn’t want to announce it to the whole world right away, and I just couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to write about before I could talk about it! By the time we had our first ultrasound, I was so tired all the time I couldn’t drum up the motivation to start blogging again.

But, we’re back online! I’ll definitely be posting ultrasound pictures as they happen. We’ve also been trying to take weekly baby bump photos (though, really, it took until 16 weeks to have a real baby bump. I think we’ll be better about it now that there’s really something there.) And, of course, I’ll keep posting about our crazy pets and any interesting things we get up to. Also, expect a couple recaps of things we did that are too cool not to mention (like Nate’s Emmy nomination)!

Pinterest Food Experiment: Lasagna Soup

I picked this recipe pretty much on a whim. It looked delicious and I waited until it started getting colder to make it. It was delicious!

Wonderful soup for a chilly evening

Original Recipe: http://thedeenbros.com/index.php/recipes/recipe_detail/bobbys_lighter_tastes_like_lasagna_soup/

Ingredients:
2 tsp olive oil
1 pound Italian sausage, casings removed
1 onion, chopped
3 minced cloves of garlic
1 (32 oz) container chicken broth
1 (15 oz) can tomato sauce
1 (14.5 oz) can petite diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp salt
4 oz broken whole wheat lasagna noodles (about 4-5 noodles)
3 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
1/2 c mozzarella cheese

Instructions:
1- Heat the olive oil over medium high heat in a large non-stick saucepot (I don’t have non-stick pans, and it turned out OK though.) Add the sausage, onion and garlic. Cook until sausage is crumbled and brown (8-10 minutes.)

Cooked sausage

2- Add the broth, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes and salt. Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer for about 20 minutes.

All liquid added, before boiling

3- Add noodles and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the soup thickens a little and the noodles are tender. (10-12 minutes)
4- Remove from heat. Stir in the cheeses.

Soupy, cheesy goodness

Verdict: This was wonderful! It takes a fair bit of time with the boiling and simmering steps, but it was definitely worth it!

Jekyll and Hyde

We bought season tickets to the Broadway Lights Series in Charlotte for the 2012-2013 season. The series includes Jekyll and Hyde, Sister Act, Les Miserables, Wicked, Traces, War Horse and the Lion King. We are so excited!

Our first show was the “re-imagined”Jekyll & Hyde in its 25 city tour before opening on Broadway.

Tickets! So excited!

We had an interesting time navigating Uptown to get to the parking garage we were supposed to use. We then had an even more interesting time wandering around the “skybridge” we were supposed to use to get to the actual theatre from the parking garage. The security guard who was preventing theatre goers from accidentally crashing a wedding gave us terrible directions and we ended up in totally the wrong place. Luckily, we got to the theatre really early so we ended up finding our seats in plenty of time. We also found out that if we don’t go straight past the door into the theatre, we end up pretty much right at our seats.

We got all dressed up and didn’t feel overdressed or underdressed

The show itself was great! Constantine Maroulis (of American Idol and Broadway’s Rock of Ages) didn’t end up performing, but his understudy did a great job. It was even darker than I remember the show being from the performance I’ve seen before.

 

Barkbox- October

October’s Barkbox was an interesting assortment of things. It included a bag of turkey liver treats from Feelgood Treat Company, a Lollycadoodle (handmade wool toy from Nepal), a discount pet perscription card (boo, Barkbox), a mustache toy from Moody Pet, teeth cleaning gel from Tropiclean and decorative poop bags from Metro Paws.

Barkbox full of goodies!

We haven’t tried the teeth gel yet, but I’m a little skeptical. We also ended up giving away the poop bag (barely visible in the upper right corner) to Becky because we don’t pick up poop since we don’t live in an apartment.

Fiona took first crack at the Lollycadoodle. She really enjoyed playing with it for a little while, but it was dead within about an hour. Fiona is a toy destroyer.

Fiona killing the Lollycadoodle.

Dexter enjoyed the mustache toy. It’s a piece of hard rubber stuff with a little ball he’s supposed to carry it by. He likes chewing on it and carrying it around, but he refuses to carry it by the ball so it would look like he has a mustache. Mostly, he carries it by one of the mustache curls.

Dexter chewing on the mustache.

The turkey liver treats have been a big hit. They both really seem to enjoy them. The only complaint I have is that the treat pieces aren’t even close to being uniform in size, so I feel like I’m shorting one dog when I give them different sized treats. I don’t think they notice, though.

(And, just so you know, the hurley from September’s Barkbox is alive and well. We play with it almost every day.)

Pinterest Food Experiment: French Dip Sandwhiches in the Crockpot

It’s been a long time since I put up a Pinterest recipe. I have been slacking a little on actually making them, but mostly I’ve been slacking on remembering to take pictures and blog about them.

I picked this recipe because it looked tasty and easy to make. I made it for game night after working all day. It seems like I end up working an awful lot of Saturdays lately, so we’ve been doing game nights even though I worked all day. That usually ends up meaning dinner can’t be an elaborate endeavor because we’d run out of time in the night.

Original Recipe: http://www.shugarysweets.com/2011/10/slow-cooker-french-dip-sammies

Ingredients:
3.5 – 4.5 lb Beef Rump Roast
1 tsp salt
2 tsp Grill Seasoning
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1.5 cup beef stock
12 ounces dark beer

Instructions:
1. Mix the salt, grill seasoning, garlic powder and pepper together.
2. Place the roast in the crock pot and season all sides with the mixture from step 1.

Seasoned meat

3. Add the beef broth and the beer to the Crockpot.

Nate poured the beer

4. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours.
5. Remove beef from Crockpot and shred it. The recipe claims you could slice it but ours was just falling apart all over the place, so we went with shredding it.
5. Strain the fat and bits out of the juice in the crock pot.
6. Serve the beef on a nice bread with cheddar cheese and the au jus on the side.

Verdict: They were delicious! We got so wrapped up in eating them we forgot to take a picture of the finished product. Oops! This one is definitely going in the recipe book to be made again in the future!

Game Night!

Game night is becoming an almost monthly occurence at our house. I really enjoy having people come over. I like feeding people and I enjoying playing hostess.

We’ve also expanded game night to include my friend from work, Becky, in addition to Nate’s friend from work, Blaine. We all get along well and really enjoy the variety of games we play.

So far, the pattern for game night seems to have established itself as eating dinner then playing 2 games.

Most recently, we had French Dip Sandwhiches (recipe coming soon!) and Crispy Green Bean Fries for dinner. We then played Munchkin, which is a really silly and hilarious card game. It seems to be quickly becoming a bit of a favorite. It’s a really fun game because we start off being all cooperative and helping each other out, then when it gets close to the end it all changes and we try to prevent anyone from beating a monster and winning the game. After Munchkin, we opened a new game, Castle Panic, where it’s the players against the game.

Blaine, Becky and me during Castle Panic

We ended up winning at Castle Panic, but it was a near thing!

We’re looking forward to our next game night already!

Halloween!

I had to work, so I missed some of the early trick-or-treaters, but I also got to buy dog costumes when they were 75% off (plus my 15% discount for working at Banfield.)

Halloweenies!

We tried having the dogs help us hand out candy, but it turns out it was really not their thing. They did lots of barking, scared some children and got put in their kennel in the back of the house.

Hodgins did much better and spent preetty much the whole evening hanging out on the end table by the door watching the children come by. He seemed to be evaluating all the costumes.

We tried putting a costume on Hodgins, but he REALLY hated it.

Hodgins hates dressing up.

Visiting my grandparents

My grandparents live just outside Tampa. We couldn’t spend a week in Orlando without taking at least a little time to see them.

It was a really nice (though short!) visit. We went out to dinner at a really neat little restaurant on the beach at sunset.

Family around the table

It was lovely and it was so nice to talk to them for a while! We haven’t seen them since our wedding.

Pretty sunset

 

Disney- Minigolf

Nate’s one special request for vacation was that we go to one of the Disney minigolf courses. I sort of groaned and moaned and stomped my feet about it all week, but I sucked it up and went. (I tend to get really frustrated playing minigolf so I mostly avoid it. But I was a good sport.)

It did actually turn out to be an enjoyable time. There may or may not have been mild cheating. We’ll never tell.

Ready to mini-golf with Santa at the beach