Today marks the half-way point in this pregnancy and the baby is as long as a banana! So why is my tummy as big as a melon? All I know, is I look forward to to the day when I can brush my teeth without gagging. Yes, my little banana. This is a troubling point for me.
The green furniture from Ikea was not doing it for me. I started feeling just a little icky about it, and put together a new plan. I am still loving the yellow for the dining and living rooms. I actually bought curtains and roman shades, and am anxiously waiting to see how they look in real life. They should get here sometime this week. I think we are going to paint our entry way and stairwell Wedgewood Gray. It is a little tealish - with some gray mixed in to keep it mellow. I'm hoping the aqua mint roman shades will match from afar. I made the mock room above on the Benjamin Moore website. You can see how the yellow and blue will look together, and imagine my gold stripey curtains in there too. I want to get some neutral tan or maybe chocolate brown couches. I mean, everything goes with chocolate, right?
Here is my mock dining room, looking into the green color I am thinking of putting on my accent wall in the kitchen. I'll paint my cupboards a creamy white color (so much easier said than done). I bought these black toile curtains online to dress the 2 windows in the dining room. I am crossing my fingers that my haphazard decorating skills will all work out in the end!
Look! It's another picture of Hope eating a pancake! Hope has a very boring eating repertoire. She normally gets oatmeal and applesauce for breakfast, banana snack, cheese sandwich lunch, yogurt snack, and scrambled egg dinner every day. Lately she has been rebelling against the same ol' same ol', however, by fist squishing and chucking overboard her old favorites.Blender Wheat Pancakes
1 Cup Milk (translation for powdered milk is 3 T. Milk and 1 C. Water)
1 Cup Wheat Kernels, whole & uncooked
2 Eggs (2 T. powdered eggs 1/4 C. Water)
2 tsp Baking Powder
1-1/2 tsp Salt
2 Tbs. Oil
2 Tbs. Honey or Sugar
Put milk and wheat kernels in blender.Blend on highest speed for 4 or 5 minutes or until batter is smooth. Add eggs, oil, baking powder, salt and honey or sugar to above batter. Blend on low. Pour out batter into pancakes from the actual blender jar (only one thing to wash!) onto a hot greased or Pam prepared griddle or large frying pan.Cook; flipping pancakes when bubbles pop and create holes.
We still made it to the festival after everyone had eaten and had a little emotional cool down period. The festival is also famous for all the garage sales that happen in the area the same weekend. We spent a good 3 hours following signs and yard hopping, looking for treasures. I found a great stash of baby girl clothes, and couldn't pass up the above freebie on the side of the road. It needed me.
We have been up to our eyeballs in yellow paint chips this week. I think I've finally found a combo I like: Benjamin Moore golden honey for the dining room and good vibrations for the living room. Tomorrow I'll buy a couple sample pots to try them out in larger size, and hopefully we can paint in May when Jon has some free time before finals week.
Emma has had a busy couple of days. Yesterday her sisters went to Faith in God. The project of the evening was making sock puppets. She was all kinds of distraught that she couldn't go and participate, so we got out some supplies at home and she made a trio of puppets to perform for me. I particularly like the orange pony tails and red dog ears.
Emma has also been trying out a new reading program. We have tried doing the Phonics program, but we all end up short of patience with each other by the end of a session. Emma's teacher suggested we try Headsprout, an online reading program. Emma has been a little frustrated with it, because the first 15-20 lessons were too easy for her, but things are starting to get more challenging. Yesterday she made this cheat sheet to help her distinguish between ship and sheep. I thought that was clever.
Finally, our Emma has signed up to play T-ball this spring. Today was her first practice. She had some good running,
almost caught a ball or two (we need to work on the fear factor),
and proved herself an excellent hitter.
I used my new wheat grinder today for the first time. After cracking open one can from my small stash of wheat, I nervously poured a few cups of wheat berries into the hopper and watched as they began to trickle away and disappear into the mill. I put the small lid on top of the hopper, and then made the mistake of peeking too soon into the mill to see if the wheat had all gone through. I got a face full of dust, and soon learned to listen instead of look to know when the wheat had all been ground.
I've been reading about gluten, and wondered if I should get some to make my bread more light and fluffy. Maybe that's only necessary with 100% whole wheat bread. I used our family's tried and true recipe, which has 1/2 wheat, 1/2 white flour. I'm assuming the gluten in the white flour is sufficient, because my bread made today from my freshly ground wheat flour was incredible. I even messed up the recipe and put in too little flour. This is a great fool-proof, no rolling wheat bread dough. It is super wet, though. You definitely need to mix it in a Bosch or Kitchen Aid, then just scoop the dough up and put in your pans.
We had a nice day at church today, complete with a linger longer afterwards. I only freaked out once or twice about the obscene amount of cookies and cake my children seized from the dessert table. We have a new rule as of today, limiting them to 2 goodies at potlucks. The cookie hording insanity stops today! After church I came home for a well-deserved nap on my grandma couch. When I awoke, I was surprised to see the floor all around me covered like a patchwork quilt in dozens of blankets and scarves. The girls have run wild with their imaginations all afternoon in their fantastical land of cozy cover-ups.
I had a great birthday today. I drove to the Detroit Temple with some wonderful friends. Lots of great conversation the whole trip. We enjoyed a session, then went to Ikea afterwards for some browsing and shopping. I bought a bunch of fun things for Hope - I could not help myself. I also got excited about some furniture possibilities for our living room. To go super leafy or semi-leafy, that is the question.
We had our first ultrasound today. Baby was very wiggly and not super cooperative, but all appears to be healthy and well. And if you were wondering...
We are welcoming another little girl to the family. :)
With Teacher Appreciation Week coming up, I've seen lots of cute ideas for teacher gift-giving. I particularly loved this idea - a door hanger tag with pouch hung on a bottle of water. Inside the pouch is a candy bar and a Crystal Light stick. I made this one for a friend who is doing a special favor for us tomorrow, and I would like to make a few more for teachers. The door hanger is a little time consuming - I'm hoping now that I've done it once, the next ones will go easier. I found a template here, but found that the template was a little misleading. Although some of the dimensions seem to be upside down, they are a good place to start.
Here we go. I finally got a few good photos of Hope. She liked sitting in this chair with the gold bedspread draped over it. Very queenly. She loves being outdoors so much. We have a meltdown every time we bring her back in. Today she walked most of the way to pick up her sisters from school. When we got there the kindergardeners were still at recess. She was immediately drawn to the boys playing football on the blacktop. Their ball rolled right to her, she picked it up, and ran for it. The boys were so sweet and just watched forlornly as their ball was being hi-jacked. I swooped in for a hasty retrieval and all was well. Hope moved on to the many other pleasures of the playground without a second thought.
It's finally a nice enough day to spend a little time outdoors. All the neighbors were out raking their leaves that got covered in our first snowfall in November. Madelyn loves this little dog that belongs to the neighbors whose yard bumps ours. He just recently got a haircut, and Madelyn was nearly convinced it was a completely different dog.
Emma doing her thing.
Cailin got her ears pierced while I was in California. It was a big deal for her, because she was very uncertain about the whole gun to the ear thing. She loves her new earrings, though, and is counting down the days until she can take them in and out.
Check out Photofunia. Upload a photo and they have all kinds of cool effects you can play with.
We drove a half hour away this morning to visit the butterfly exhibit in the next big town over.
We heard there was a great collection, and were not disappointed. In fact, Cailin and Emma were a little freaked out by the fluttering throng. Madelyn, however, could have stayed in the conservatory for hours.
Hope was fascinated by it all. Here she is being wowed by some pretty little birds at the entrance.
The girls enjoyed the craft barn afterwards; coloring stained glass window butterflies, making butterfly finger puppets,
eating pinecones,
getting their faces painted with you guessed it... butterflies and
caterpillars,
and taking silly pictures in cardboard cutouts.
Emma has finally lost both of her front teeth. Her teeth like to stay in until the bitter end. They do not release easily. This last one finally came out when Emma was trying to lick Madelyn in the face like a puppy. A little shove from her sis, and sweet release! The tooth was out. Getting Emma to give me a normal smile is near impossible. All of her pictures look a lot like this one.
Our community art foundation is sponsoring a banner exhibition. Madelyn and Cailin submitted sketches of banners with the theme of "Painting the Town". Their sketches were selected to be blown up on banners, which the girls painted this morning.
The banners will be hung all over downtown, and displayed for a few weeks. The girls love being a part of this project!
