Beach sand carpet

Beach sand. That's what our new carpet feels and looks like (except without the sandyness of sand). It's so soft. The girls love running on it - I snapped a picture before Erik moved all the furniture back. I feel like we have a new house now!

On Thursday Jenna had a sleepover. Her friend Paige came to spend the night. The girls were up until 10pm talking! The next morning we colored eggs and had an Easter egg hunt around the house. Jenna had a blast! And took a 2 hour nap - she was so exhausted.

Today we went to an Easter Egg hunt at New Hope church where Jenna goes to preschool. It was great fun. There were activities as well as the Easter Egg hunt. The girls decorated foam eggs with a magnet on the back so we have those on our refrigerator. There was also a big trough of dirt and the kids got a cupful of it and then planted flower seeds in it. I guess I'm supposed to remember to water them. Then they decorated Easter egg cookies. Each of the kids could find 13 Easter eggs and both girls found so many more so we had to put some back. Sarah was really not a fan of that.

This upcoming week is very exciting. Holy week is a great time to reflect on God's love for us. Jenna is working on the following memory verse this week: Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." ~John 14:6. She's doing a great job memorizing it! I'm excited for Good Friday to go to Stations of the Cross and Easter Sunday.

The following week will be exciting too! Joel and Megan and Grandma and Grandpa will be visiting. We haven't seen Joel and Megan in a long time and are very excited. The girls are really excited to see them. They know Uncle Joel likes ice cream and Aunt Megan likes tacos :)

In other news:

1. I'm currently reading two books: The Legacy of Heorot by Niven, Pournelle, and Barnes. I've really liked everything these authors have written and this is no exception. Fossil Hunter by John Olson. This is a book given to me by someone at church and is really good. It is about evolution - a topic I like to read about.
2. I decided that I could do Pilates. So I went to a pilates class at Lifetime. This video (sorry about the ad first) shows one of the exercises we were supposed to do. Yea. Right. I'm 7 months pregnant - I do not bend.
3. 73 points on Quiddler today!

Where is Thumbkin?

We should be getting new carpet early next week. So Erik is in home improvement mode and is painting all the trim in the house (while I sit on the couch and eat kettle corn). He ripped the carpet out of our closet to paint the trim and in doing so had to move all the shoes.

Jenna was wearing Daddy's shoes all over the house. I just had to snap a picture.

Since today is Sunday and not technically part of Lent, we decided to have a sweet treat and go out for ice cream. So I went out for ice cream. I got a cookie dough concrete mixer (similar to a blizzard from Dairy Queen but WAY better) from Culvers with extra peanut butter and marshmallow cream and chocolate instead of vanilla ice cream. Let me tell you it was fabulous! My sugar was 165 (highest it's been this entire pregnancy but who's counting). Tomorrow is another day - no ice cream for me. But oh yea baby. I'm getting that again!

I was innocently singing "where is thumbkin" with Sarah the other day when I realized her rendition of "where is thumbkin" doesn't quite sound PG. Listen to this video and let me know what you think.

Today was the most awesome day in Quiddler ever! I got the high score 103. I had to take a screen shot - yipee!!

Spring First

Today was the first day of Spring (or Spring first as Jenna says). So we woke up to birds chirping, fresh air and a beautiful sunny sky. What an awesome day!

We took the girls to Glacier Ridge Park in Plain City. While we prefer the atmosphere of Highbanks, Glacier Ridge had nice paved trails for walking. Jenna walked a considerable amount of the trip too. You can see Sarah falling asleep in the wagon in this picture.

After our walk in the woods, we went to Yutzy's Farm Market. It's a fun, family place where you can buy bulk foods, cheese, meat, etc. The best thing we bought was Kettle Corn. This Kettle corn was SO good. I didn't know popcorn could taste like this. Maybe I have had previously low standards for popcorn.

In exciting news, Jenna has mentioned several times that she wants to be baptized. Erik and I wanted to gauge if she really understood that she was committing to follow Christ. Jenna said "I've made Jesus the Lord of my life a million times." So I guess that means something! The thought of being dunked underwater really scares her though so we may wait.

The other picture I posted was Jenna and Sarah's shoe store. They walked throughout our entire house and found all the shoes and put them on the floor. Then they wanted us to come out and try on shoes. So I bought a few pairs (of my own shoes) and had fun but I just had to get a picture. I really think I had turned my back for 15 minutes when they did this to the house.

90 points on quiddler today.

Pi!

This past weekend was filled with excitement! We had our friends over to play D&D and I caught an action shot of them. We had so much fun and did very well against the Drow. Sarah is also in the picture eating sausage (Sarah = carnivore! sausage, meatballs, ham.... as long as it's meat she loves it). Jenna was paying attention to the game and asking questions. She wants to roll the dice next time we play!

I've included a picture of our miniatures. Mine is named Christabel and is a cleric and Erik is Caed and is a rogue. In EQ2 we have characters named Caedwynn and Caedmon so Erik stuck with a similar name.

We were very excited to find out one of our fellow guild and D&D players is expecting a baby in October. Now we won't be the only ones with screaming kids :).

In even more exciting news, Sunday was pi day! 3/14. So we celebrated by making a double chocolate silk pie. This pie required 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream and 5 egg yolks. It was very custardy, smooth, and amazingly delicious. The girls also made pies for Daddy (although Sarah's pie never made it to Daddy - she ate it first).

Baby is moving like crazy! I can see my belly jumping too. This baby is an acrobat - almost as much as Sarah (don't tell Erik).

95 on Quiddler today!

My two little chefs

This new semester has been a handful for me. I'm teaching two onsite classes and two online classes. The online classes are taking quite a bit of my time as I have to be in them constantly. However,

it has led to some exciting developments I'll share in a bit.
I thought that giving up sweets would result in me craving sweets less....umm no. Maybe by the time Lent is over I won't even want Reeses eggs (not likely).

So I've been baking breads and muffins lately instead of cookies. Jenna and Sarah have been using their great cooking skills as well. Jenna and Sarah each made a muffin for Daddy. (They pretty much always make things for Daddy - what about Mommy??). Sarah's muffin had strawberry quick, chocolate chips, sprinkles, and who knows what else in it. Jenna stuck with basic cocoa powder and chocolate chips. Daddy loved both.

I've also been making my own pasta and tortillas lately. They have much less carbs than store-bought versions. Every time I make tortillas the girls make a pie for Daddy out of the extra tortilla dough. Erik always eats the pies no matter what they put in them!

Jenna has decided that her new careers of choice are: meterologist, geologist, chef, and artist. We'll see what she actually decides to do. I don't even know why she picked some of them.

I walked out of the kitchen to see Sarah standing on the trash can. All of the trash was strewn about the living room and she was telling me how tall she is. It was one of those moments where you want to laugh and tell her not to do it and also go run and get the camera.

In the picture of Sarah on the trash can you will note the horrid state of our carpet. It is really bad. I know it is not in our budget to get new carpet until we pay off the house. But Erik said to me the 5 words that every woman wants to hear, "we can get new carpet." Yipee! Due to the fact that I am getting paid extra for these two online classes, we are going to get new carpet in the living room. We bought cheap carpet since we figured it would be trashed in the next few years by the kids. However we plan on carpeting the whole house in 5-10 years. The carpet should be in next week!

Terrible on quiddler today - 58 points. I thought extoon was a word. You know, if you used to be a cartoon but you fell out of fashion?

Iron Chef: Baby?

I have the most fun, creative husband in the world. We did Iron Chef yesterday and the secret ingredient was baby. No - not real baby, baby lettuce, baby swiss cheese, baby corn, baby ruth, baby pickles - things like that. Last Iron Chef was Prego and this one was the result of Prego. He's such a kidder!




For Iron Chef I made 4 dishes:

1. Baby corn salad over green chile corn bread. Erik said this dish was good and original - yea! I made a corn salad with corn, tomatoes, chiles and lime juice. Then I baked some corn bread and topped the warm corn bread with the fresh salad. Yum!
2. Beautiful baby salad. This salad was a traditional salad (so I got dinged on originality points) but it was laid out very pretty in neat rows. I used baby lettuce and baby swiss cheese along with yellow and orange peppers, tomatoes, and pepperoni.
3. Baby swiss pork chops. I baked some pork chops with melted swiss on it. Then I made a swiss cheese sauce with green onions and shallots. Yum! I poured the sauce over the pork chops. Erik didn't like the appearance (he doesn't like goopy food like I do). But we both agreed it tasted fabulous.
4. Caramel and baby ruth crepes. I told Erik that I didn't care what the secret ingredient was, I was making a caramel sauce. I made a simple caramel sauce with heavy cream (so low fat!). I also made crepes and put chocolate cream, crushed baby ruth candy bars and crushed toffee cookies (from the freezer!) in the crepes. Then I folded them and covered them with the homemade caramel sauce. Yum! Erik loved these and so did I!

We also celebrated Erik's 35th birthday on Saturday - he is SO old! It was a great birthday weekend for him. We played games with Tim and Jen, we went spinning, we went out to eat to Asian Star Buffet, I made him a triple layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, we went to church, and we did Iron chef! It was a fun filled weekend! The cake I made was the moistest cake I've ever made! I used a recipe from allrecipes chocolate lovers favorite cake. I've never had such a moist cake - it was more like brownies than cake! Of course I only ate some on Sunday since I gave up sweets for Lent!

Jenna talks a lot about Honey Pie pony. Pretty much constantly (although that's my life these days with these two girls). I just realized that I think Honey Pie is her imaginary friend. She lives in Pony world and does all sorts of pony things. It's actually pretty interesting to hear the things Honey Pie does.

In one week we get to go to the Ohio Right to Life Banquet and see Sarah Palin speak. I'm so excited! God has given me such a heart for the unborn. Although I can't see why anyone wouldn't have a heart for these innocent babies being tortured and killed: http://ow.ly/1cIdV . It is too terrible for words.

On a positive note, I went to graduation yesterday and saw one of my students I hadn't seen in over a year. When she was my student she had lost her house. She was homeless with 2 kids but kept on working for her degree. Me and another student took her out in the hall and prayed with her for God to work in her life for good. She was so down. Well yesterday she accomplished her three goals - she got a job, she has a house, and she finished her degree. Not only that - she was the student speaker. When she told her story, I was bawling. God blessed me through her. Wow - God answers prayers!

87 points on Quiddler today!