Easter--A little Late

So Peter and I celebrated Easter this year.
We put up window gel-clings sometime at the beginning of April.
And then Saturday night, the night before Easter, we died eggs.
It was fun and we did it when we had time.
Not having children allows us a few freedoms with regard to bedtimes and holiday traditions. But not much longer!

Quality time together while showing our more creative sides!

The results

The one that looks white with some green on top is Humpty Dumpty as created by Peter.

Later he had a terrible accident from which he wasn't able to be put back together again.

The next morning we exchanged baskets/buckets and made creamed eggs on toast! MMMMM

At Easter I was 26 weeks along

I love using the colored eggs! It makes food exciting!

I love creamed eggs on big toast! Awesome!

After church we were invited to dinner with a family from our ward. It was so nice to share the holiday with friends. We ate dinner and created an Easter egg hunt for their two children. Holidays are a lot more exciting when there are kids around. Overall, our first Easter in San Jose was great.

Things I'm Doing

(click to enlarge)

You may or may not have received this in the mail. If you did not receive it, I assure you, it was not an intentional slight!

But Happy News! 

I'm graduating!

Actually, I already graduated, but this weekend I'm participating in the commencement ceremony at my school. 

The disheartening part of it is that my tassel says "2011," But I totally graduated in December of 2010. Oh well. I will remember I'm sure, and no one else really cares.

In other news, my baby and I are doing well. She's a very active little worm. 

And though I may not look 6 months pregnant, my doctor says that I am a classic text book pregnancy. So hah! My weight and size gain are right on track.

And if I don't get a phone call from the office today, I don't have gestational diabetes either.

Speaking of which, I took the glucose test yesterday.

They didn't give me a choice of flavors, but I got lemon-lime. At first it tasted like cold, flat, thick Sprite. Then the last 2 or 3 ounces were just--eww. Consider that this cold syrup is the first food-like substance I had eaten/drank in over 12 hours. I managed to get it all down though. (I also throw fits when Peter tries to make me drink cough syrup. He doesn't do that any more.) I made it through 2 hours of waiting and blood draws without fainting or becoming too nauseous.

The worst part about it was getting to the clinic. It's not that far away. Maybe a 10 minute drive if traffic is good. But traffic is never good. Especially at 8 am on a weekday. So it took me 20 minutes to get to the clinic--a few patches of 30 mph driving on 65 mph freeways, not to mention the metered on-ramps--only to realize that I had left the Oh-So-Important form requesting my blood work on the fridge at home.

BEAUTIFUL!

The ride home was fairly quick though because it was going into San Jose--the other direction goes towards San Francisco (commuters)--and I exit the freeway before the heavy traffic into town begins, literally right before.

So home again and then through another 20 minutes of slow traffic to the clinic. I started the test almost an hour after I had initially wanted to. That's another hour without food. 

OH well. It's not like I wanted to eat yesterday or anything!

I felt much better after crying to Peter about it on the phone. It's very easy to get overly upset about things when you're pregnant. Such things as remembering that you've forgotten a piece of paper that is 20 minutes away, and that getting that paper means postponing a long-awaited breakfast another hour.

So when I got home I made Sweet & Sour Meatballs and this delectable beauty. 

Yes, we shared a bit of it with the people taking us to the airport, but Peter and I also had some for dessert and possibly breakfast. :-) It's got fresh strawberries! It's mostly healthy!

Our house is almost entirely clean. Our laundry is done. And I'm almost packed. And when I say our house is clean, that excludes the fact that there are trains and legos strewn about the living room and office. He says he's organizing :-D

The office:

The living room: (can you tell where he sits?)

It's important to have them sorted

And all that's left to do:

Hope you had a great Easter!

Peter's Musings

Is there another color of milk I am not aware of?

Resolve

Disclosure: This is potentially incredibly boring.

Yesterday, or maybe the day before, I decided that I need more structure in my life. I am free to do whatever I want each day which usually ends up with me wondering what exactly happened with all of the time. I do one or two scheduled tasks and then suddenly it's time to make dinner. It doesn't take all day every day to do one or two things--really. So...

The things that usually hold me up? 

Blogs

and

Planning 

I read a few blogs, ok, maybe a lot. Some are about crafts, a lot are about families, food, and meal planning.

I'm constantly searching for ways to get food on the table each night and save money on groceries.These experienced mamas say that one of the first steps to meal planning  is creating a list of the top 15 or 20 recipes your family likes to eat.  So therein lies my problem. I've been married for almost 3 years and don't have 15 reliable recipes to draw from. 

Peter and I are no longer students--well, Peter still is, but that's a totally different story!

Because we were busy students and only 2 people, Peter and I tended to eat like college students. I cooked once, sometimes twice a week, and then we had leftovers, cereal, and sandwiches until I cooked again. While in school, I assured myself that as soon as school was over, I'd be the perfect housewife: we would always have dinner, our house would be sparkling, and I'd make cookies for neighbors and friends pretty much every week. Obviously, this isn't so. There's not really a good reason as to why this little dream of mine can't be a reality.

My problem with meal planning is that I usually end up with rotting meat or produce in my fridge that was used once and then forgotten--but not really forgotten, I probably just didn't have any other ideas as to how to use the stuff. Because we are only two people, I can't really cook every night without expecting some things to go bad.

But no more excuses.

This is my public proclamation of resolve. I've read enough recipes and tips that I should be capable of actually accomplishing something worthwhile in the kitchen. Now it's time to put those things into action and start developing my own list of delicious and easy meals. One day, hopefully in the not so distant future, I will be able to plan my meals so that they coordinate with each other and actually use those random ingredients.

Goodbye blogs; you will be missed.

Plan of action:
Don't go online
Make meals

Haha, that's all I've got so far. I figure that if I stay away from the blogs, I won't get lost in them as I usually do. And hopefully that will leave me more time to actually work on making meals--not thinking about or planning them, but actually doing them.

We'll see how it turns out.

My Handy Man

So a couple of weeks ago I had an incident with my oven that made it clear that our pans needed a permanent home, FAST!

Upon moving into this apartment, I quickly realized that our cabinets are pretty much useless.

I cannot fit my 12" pan inside of any of the drawers or cabinets--except under the sink--in any way or form. (The smaller pans didn't fit too well either and I really like keeping similar things together.) So the temporary solution was to keep them inside of the oven. Bad choice, I know. I realized the risks in doing this, but I hated having all the pans on the counter, and there really was no where to put them.

We ordered a hanging pot rack. This one to be exact. It was nice, but there's a firewall in the ceiling above our kitchen. Also, the studs are un-cooperatively placed and, therefore, the hanging pot rack was a no-go.

I was generally pretty good about remembering to take the pans out of the oven before I started preheating it, but it only takes once to make a catastrophe. 

One night Peter called and asked me to start pre-heating the oven in 20 minutes for the Costco pizza he was bringing home. He reminded me to take the pans out before I turned the oven on. So I had 20 minutes to go and get the mail, read through it, and generally tidy up before turning on the oven.

I turned on the oven and went back to reading the mail.

Just so you know, Peter and I are fine, and Nothing was damaged.

Also, as a means of protecting the teflon, we lined our pans--which were nestled--with drawer/cabinet/shelf liner when we weren't using them. Genius, unless you keep the pans in the oven where it potentially could get hot: like say if you started pre-heating the oven with them in there!

Anyway, to sum up this rather long story (sorry) I noticed after probably 10 minutes that something smelled funny, realized that it was the pans, turned off the oven, took out the pans, and proceeded to wave baking sheets at the smoke alarm to keep it from beeping until Peter arrived home at which time he started doing the same thing.

We now have a pot rack that hangs on the wall, thanks to my handy husband, Peter!

We used peg board which has to stick out from the wall in order to get the pegs in. So we glued on some wood.

Peter, figuring out all the specifics of how it goes together

We screwed the back board into the wall--thankfully there was a stud close to where we wanted to hang it!

It's hard manually pushing a screw into a stud, so I helped!

Then the cover board was screwed into the wood pieces on the sides.

We added some molding and hooks and now have a place for our pans!!!

Peter thinks that one day I'll laugh about this whole experience.

That day hasn't arrived quite yet.