Monday, August 22, 2011

lunch + niece









we have a secret chinese all you can eat buffet in our town. we've driven past it a million times and only just the other day did we see the words "all you can eat" on the window. i'm so in.

it was one of those places where you put all the delicious things you want in a bowl and then very skilled men cook it up for you with giant flames.

the flour and egg drop soup was delicious. we all had a love affair with the sesame seed chicken.

i have a niece staying with me this weekend. she's lovely, and enjoying exploring portland while us old farts stay home and nap all day. i enjoy her face and feeding her.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

you're so smoothie

i froze the last of the delicious strawberries and chocolate covered bananas from the edible bouquet craig gave me so that i could turn them into smoothies.

craig's smoothie had bananas and carmel ice cream and milk


shilah and squirt's smoothie had bananas and strawberries and milk.


once upon a time my daddy gave me this smoothie maker. he was in colorado at the time and he left behind most of the contents of his suitcase so he could pack it and bring it home to me. how precious is that? =]


Thursday, August 18, 2011

first trimester

disclaimer: low quality mac-book photobooth pictures are included with reading this blog. some days they just come with the package. i won't complain if you don't. deal? deal.





here is my first trimester post, finally. i've had it written out for a few weeks now but i never got around to taking [crappy] tummy pictures for it until today. now that i'm almost 16 weeks, instead of barely 12 weeks when i actually wrote my first trimester wrap-up, i've become much older and wiser and have decided to scrap the paragraphs upon paragraphs of monotonous summary i originally planned to inflict on you. categories and bullet points? psh, who has time for that. not this guy.

but in all honesty, when i read over everything i had written i realized this pregnancy can be summed up very easily: it's going great! i'm a little afraid to say this just in case i have to eat my words later, but it's been really quite easy. i hardly feel different and when i do i feel better. i haven't suffered from any sickness or nausea and i get to eat yummy, healthy things all the time. i've only gained about four or five pounds since my super low diet weight of 123 [you know, when i was on a hard core diet and then mysteriously stopped losing weight. you owe more for that, squirt]. by about week ten i was no longer feeling super tired and sleepy all day and i've had loads of energy ever since. i can stay up a little later and wake myself up early enough to get lots of stuff done before work. it's very exciting, especially since there's so much to get done [yikes...]

the only negative pregnancy symptom i've had so far are a bunch of blasted headaches. they happen about every other day, hurt from the back of my neck all the way to my forehead and temples, last all day long and only go away when i sleep and sometimes not even then. i'm actually hoping we're past the worse of them by now, the last couple days they've been less severe. i just drink lots of water and wait it out. they can't last forever!...right?

as for this tummy of mine, i think some of that bump is finally baby as opposed to just shilah-chubbys. he's supposed to be about five inches long now, at least, and my uterus is roughly the size of a grapefruit. so yesh, i should probably have a tummy. although, unless i've just eaten a cow, which i do often, i still don't feel like i look much bigger than when i started. i'm looking forward to when i look actually pregnant instead of just chunky. cause then i'm going for the maternity pants. yessir! no more rubber bands for me soon [seriously, awesome trick, you should try it].



oh oh oh! i had a weird pregnancy craving a while back. but only for like a second and then i was like, ew that sounds gross. i wanted peanut butter real bad but i remembered we were having hamburgers for dinner. so i wondered what if i put peanut butter on my hamburger :O only for a second, mind you, and then it was gone. when i told craig about it later so we could laugh about it he promptly decided it was the best idea ever and went home and put peanut butter on his burger. best husband ever. he gave me a taste. it was pretty delicious. man, i'm smart.

some days i can barely grasp that soon i'll have a baby. some days i really don't feel like i can wait until february. some days i'm so nervous! craig isn't scared or nervous one single bit, just like when we got married and i was a bundle of nerves and he was calm and excited and pretty much inhuman. i'm so happy every time we get to see this baby and every time he's still doing so well and growing so big. so far everything about him is perfect, all of my test results came back completely negative and i've seen him developing all the things he's supposed to have later! you know, fingers, toes, a head... i am SO excited for september 19th when we can see if he's really a boy or not, and get more pictures of his cute little self. i want an ultrasound machine. how much do you think one costs? i don't need anything too fancy, i just want to watching him kick around in there all the day long.

Monday, August 15, 2011

anniversary adventures part one: tidal raves





last year craig and i honeymooned along the oregon coast and stayed in depot bay. i love depot bay so much, it's absolutely stunning. craig and i are kinda like old people because we like to do the same things over and over again. like going back to depot bay for our anniversary, staying in the same hotel, and eating dinner at the same restaurant. i even got the same meal: cioppino. i've seriously been dreaming of this dish for months now. last year was the first time i ever had cioppino and i was in love. this is time number two. still incredible.




 the beauty of cioppino. it's like taking bites out of the ocean.


craig got seagull bread like he did last year but instead of some noodley concoction he chose a spinach and shrimp bisque. i think he liked it even better. i told him to look excited. he looked way too excited.




no seagulls were harmed in the making of that bread.  

the name of the restaurant is tidal raves. and the view is simply fantastic. sometime we'll take a charter out and see if we can spot some whales. maybe next year. this year, i'm still scared of the ocean.





last year when we were having dinner at the tidal raves a sweet old lady came up to us and asked us if we were honeymooners. either it was obvious [we're still pretty gross and mushy all the time, it sickens even US somedays] or she had that extra awesome old lady intuition. she told us when her and her husband got married they honeyed mooned in depot bay and they were there that night eating dinner and celebrating their 50th anniversary. how incredible and adorable is that? i loved it so much. i never want to forget it.




after dinner we went to find the italian man who sells paintings in depot bay. last year we wondered into his shop and he was trying really hard to sell us something but we were newly wed and poor and just couldn't spare a hundred, not even for a stunning robert lyn nelson nautical print i fell in love with. in the end, he just handed it to us and said congratulations and come back again someday. we were so thrilled! it was the most amazing honey moon gift we came away with. this year we went back in hopes of really purchasing a painting. he was still there, and when we asked if he remembered us he sure remembered the painting! he was getting ready to move shop down the coast to another town so things were a little cheaper. we bought a print with a white elephant and two tigers that i adored from last year, i was SO glad it was still there! we also walked away with another robert lyn nelson for only twenty dollars. i hope we can still find him next year. it's one of my favorite traditions now.

this is the robert lyn nelson we got this year. i can't ever find pictures of the one we got last year and i actually haven't seen it since we got it, it's been in california so grandma bev can frame it. i hope i can show it to you soon, all hung up and everything.


next up: adventures at the newport aquarium, tillamook pioneer museum, and the tillamook cheese factory.


Happy Anniversary

one crazy, busy week of preparing and making sure everything was perfectly in place and it's finally here. now i'm exhausted from all the relaxing we got to do today. no joke. being pampered is hard work.



craig woke up early before church to go get my secret, surprise present. i've never even seen an edible bouquet in real life! it was so pretty and so far still super tasty.











craig got all dressed up in the suit he married me in to go to church and teach his new primary class [so proud of him, it's adorable]. i wore a dress that wasn't really fitting my expanding areas but the accessories almost made up for it. the gorgeous necklace was a gift from my sister jolain, she made it for me to wear when i got married. the earings were worn the same day, and i also wore the same boots and tights i wore under my wedding dress. my dad said they made me look like an elven princess. which obviously made my day. you know, besides marrying the love of my life. 




after a glorious five hour nap we got to work on our first attempt at homemade sushi. everything turned out so bomb. especially our first batch of sushi rice. it was perfect, not mushy or crunchy, and so so sticky [i had been worried]. after all the cooking and chopping craig took over with his new found, mad sushi rolling skills. he was combining sauces and ingredients like nobodies business. it was so much fun, and so so tasty. i want to make sushi forever. we had enough for two meals [and i mean pregnant people meals] and barely scratched the surface of all of our ingredients [how long does wasabi keep? anyone?]

we bought fancy little wasbi-soy sauce bowls and matching fancy chopstick sets. somehow they magically matched our new rug, which really ties the room together, and our fancy coasters. fancy fancy fancy. oh, also, we eat on the floor in front of the tv. always. like kings.

my husband took all the fancy pictures. here's what i got for you.






















oh, and cupcakes. we got strawberry filled and red velvet to roughly match our wedding cake.

i love being married. from now on every time we celebrate our anniversary we'll have babies. i say babies instead of kids/children because i'm not ready for them to grow up yet. we're just getting started.

i pray for so many more.