Pioneer Woman's Chocolate Cake

Daddy let me sleep in this morning and that was great! The lil Miss shared daddy's bowl of oatmeal. We buy it in the bulk foods at the Winco and its had raisens and other goodies in it too. Daddy makes a big bowl and adds butter milk and a huge glob of peanut butter. I told KSov this morning you might have to start making her, her own bowl. Because she loves sharing oatmeal with daddy!
Apparently our sweet lil girl hasn't been getting good naps at daycare. So mommy took her Lamby and that has helped. Also even though her room has blinds now, I decided yesterday or the day before to put her tablecloth back up because the sun sets on that side and it sets late. It seemed to help today! She had a pretty good three hour nap.
And Mommy had herself a nice 2 hour nap too! So nice.
So since I didn't go anywhere today I got the bug to either cook or bake something. So I dug out Pioneer Womans Cookbook out and started flipping thru it to find something to make for dessert. I had everything to make it so I did and it was pretty fast for being homemade. I did have to add an extra 10 min. I haven't had any yet so I will let you know how good it was, but the icing was delicious. As you can see from the picture above, the Lil Miss agrees too.

I let her have the small lil whisk to suck on.

She certainly enjoyed it....

See her face? This is the look I get a lot these days. You see I had just told her to not touch her horsey because her hands where sticky. Yes, this is Grace, saying "So what Mommy, I am doing it anyway...what are you going to do about it? Hee Hee."

Shortly after this gleeful laugh her chocolate whisk was taken away and she was carried off to the bath. Which she threw a temper tantrum about. She is definetly going through some kind of terrible twos stage. She can be so persnickety! I am glad I am pregnant already! LOL!

Here is the end result for the chocolate cake...now I got to go eat it! Love and Hugs!

Dinner chit chat

Just decided to grab the camera as she was finishing up dinner tonight. She has been such jibber jabberer lately.

Just some pictures

I took these last week sometime. Funny how she keeps the paci upside down huh?

Avocados and Babies

We happen to buy avocados this weekend (44 cents each at Winco!) and since I am 16 weeks today and the baby is the size of an avocado I decided to take another pic and share the belly in a more flattering light. Although now that I have it posted that avocado looks tiny next to my belly! LOL! I suppose there is the uterus and fluid and some extra padding from before....

I love my daughter...Grace your so sweet and amazing. Daddy gave you a bath tonight after a delicious meal he cooked of grilled pork chops, brocolli and rice! (It's making me hungry again...wait I have Cold Stone) (Afterall I have the Biggest Loser season finale to watch! :) ) Anyways you were so cute with your little builder guy and tooth brush you love to carry them around lately. You kept running down the hall toward me your sweet blue eyes sparkling! Kiss Kiss all over your precious face.

Enjoy the video, more book reading sorry for the bad camera angle at one time...I dropped the camera.

15 Weeks, Baby Powder, and 16 Weeks

I took this pic last week when I was 15 weeks and now am posting it...finally. This was tonight and totally cracked me up! I gave the Lil Miss the closed baby powder to hold and now we know she can open it! LOL! I said, "Babe quick grab your phone and get this!"

After that I requested Daddy to bring in our camera so I could download the pics then daddy started play camera man! He didn't realize that I wasn't quite fully in the view finder..lol.

Look at those bangs always in her face these days, I wish the sides wold grow out too.

And now since I am going to be 16 Weeks tomorrow there is a shot of my belly! It looks kinda muffin topish because of were my jeans sit, but oh well. Today was a hard day. I woke up feeling fine and got to work and was logging the deposit bags with my teller and almost fainted. I suddenly got super hot and tried to sit down on her chair and then just ended up sitting on the floor. My nurse said that is normal because pregnant woman have a lot of blood flowing or something like that so there blood pressure can go up or down quickly. Hmm, who knew.

The rest of the day I had really bad gas pains off and on and was really uncomfortable, so far the Tums haven't been helping that much so I got some Gas-X. I have only took 2 of those so we will see how those go.

Sorry I was wrong about the videos being on the camera, it was just pictures. Just Grace up close with her paci. Here's to tomorrow and one more day closer to the 3 day weekend!

Just a quick recap...

of our weekend. Sorry I don't have any new pictures. Daddy used the camera for work and I keep forgetting to get it out of the truck. I think that I have a video on there that I need to upload, so I will get to that soon.

This weekend we just chilled out and we didn't clean or do laundry or anything! This morning we took Grace to the park and tried to run out some of her energy. Lately she does this whiny thing, were she just whines and whines when she is done with...whatever! Some of this is understandable we know, like when we are out to eat, there is only so much sitting still a 1 1/2 year old can do. But other times she is just so persnickty! Like refusing to say Thank You (which she knows how to do and then gives me a look like, "No I don't wanna!) And putting her beets in her mouth and chewing them up like she likes them and they are good and then spitting them out very loudly making her tongue vibrate and getting beets everywhere. So we think she is approaching the "terrible twos". Is this the age that happens? She loves putting her shoes and socks on but hates getting dressed and her diaper changed most times. So needless to say she went to bed early because she was wearing mommy down, especially since mommy was feeling really tired today. After the park we got lunch and then went right home and went down for a nap, the both of us!!

Now its time to get to bed early.

Barnyard Dance

This is Grace's favorite book right now. It's a little diddy of a book, and it has lots of farm animals in it, among them are her favorites, cows and ducks. Everytime she see the cow or ducks in the book she moo's or quacks. In fact it was funny we went to Famous Dave's on Saturday and she started quacking and we were like..."huh what is she...." And then we saw the wooden ducks on the wall! She loves cows and ducks. Also I think she roars when she sees dogs in the book.

Today I am 15 weeks along and the lil baby is the size of an apple, I think its about 4 inches long. I still feel tired, in fact we turned the light out at 940 last night and I was asleep shortly after and slept till 7am. Still trying to eat small meals and basically still have a some minor heartburn, when I eat too much or drink too much or too quickly.

I am feeling happy though, my sweet husband is home and Grace sure does love her daddy. She loves coming home and finding daddy. We look in the office and the bedroom and then he comes sneaking up the stairs and she starts laughing when she sees him. She knows now exactly who he is a loves saying da da, and sometimes she says daddy and mommy.

Well thats my update back to The Biggest Loser..

Riding her Rocking Horse

Grace loves her horsey now. We put it out in the living room because it wasn't getting played with in her room. Now she will go over and want us to pick her up and put her on it. And she will turn it on while she rides as well. She is so funny.

We busted out the potty chair this weekend and made a fun game of sitting on it and saying, "Ta Da!" We aren't really potty training yet (we did buy diapers this weekend as well) but we thought we would get her used to seeing it and sitting on it. But she did actually go potty on it yesterday before her bath. Mommy undressed her and then we went to the bathroom to take a bath and we sat down on her potty. She starting going tinkle in the potty and scared herself a bit I think, because she jumped up and stopped going. But then Mommy started jumping up and down and clapping and going really crazy, so she did too. Daddy brought a sucker and she got to suck on that while we tried to sit on it again and go, but instead we just slobbered pink sucker juice all over so we got into the bath nd got cleaned up. (Without the sucker).

We had a good weekend and it was so pretty outside, I am ready for summer to come!

Thursday night

This picture is cute of Grace but I sure look tired here. She was leaning in for a kiss....

Playing with the baby gate.

Silly baby bouncing around on the couch, getting mommy and looking out the window, and checking out the "baby" in the camera.

Whoopie Pies and My Own Sweet Pookie Pie

Our picture for Daddy...she looks a little crazy...but its quick take a picture before she throws a fit about not getting to hold my phone!

So apparently I have a fan following for Whoopie Pies, and although I am typically too lazy to get up and get a recipe and share it online...for you all I will.

This recipe I read in The Costco Connection and its from a lady called Ann Byrn who wrote a book called The Cake Mix Doctor. For those of you who really know me, you know I am a huge box mix fan and haven't ever really enjoyed store bought cakes or "fake cakes" as I used to call them. Don't ask me why...

Whoopie Pies:

1 package plain chocolate cake mix

1 stick of butter melted

1 large egg

2 cups powder sugar

1/4 cup vegetable shortening

1 large pasteurized egg white (for the uncooked filling she also mentions you could use ice cream)

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Mix cake mix, butter and egg in a large mixing bowl on low speed until they come together in a stiff mass. 1-2 minutes. Then form the dough into 1 inch balls with your hands and place balls on a baking sheet 2 inches apart.

Bake the cakes until they are still a little soft 10-12 minutes. I did 12 I think and of course it depends on your oven, but next time I would stick with 10. Let the cakes cool for 5 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely for 30 more min.

In another bowl mix the sugar, shortening, egg white (it should say on the carton how many tablespoons=1 egg white) and vanilla on low speed for about a minute until combined. Then its pretty simple just put as much yummy filling as you want (she says about a teaspoon) on one side of a cake then top it flat side down with another cake to make a sandwich. It should make about 18 I think I had about that.

I still haven't found out if they like them at daycare, but the couple bites I had were yummy just needed to be a bit softer...maybe I will have to experiment with some ingredients in order to get them softer.

Enjoy!

Teacher Appreciation Week

was last week. Ha Ha I made these Whoopie Pies for Grace's "teachers". I found the receipe in The Costco Connection Magazine and they were really easy except the ingrediants were not ones I normally keep on hand, like egg whites and vegetable shortening. Which now I have so I will have to find more things to make with them. They even tasted good. I think I may have overbaked them by a min or 2 because the cake wasn't as moist as I thought. So I tried to salvage them by sticking a peice of bread in with them overnight like I do for cookies to make the cookies soft. I will have to check with the teachers tomorrow and see if they liked them. But the filling was tasty and they sure do look delicous don't they??

This was Friday night I picked Daddy up from the airport and then we got Grace together, we just let her hang out in the bed with us (Daddy was super tired) and of course she got to eat a graham cracker and have some dinner in bed with us. (I know I know crumbs in the bed! But it was special family time). We had VH1 on and they were playing the top 100 songs from the 90's. That was so fun listening to some goodies that KSov and I grew up listening to. Oh and this little Monkey liked them too.

Tomorrow I have my next dr appointment for the new little one. I am still feeling really tired. Sunday Daddy let me sleep in till nine and then we got up and went to breakfast, then later we came back and I took like and 1 1/2 nap again. I also decided to stay home with KSov this morning and spend the day with the Lil Miss. I took a nap when she did and I swear I could have slept the day away, bummer thing was I woke up with a headache. It didn't last long, but I just can't get enough of the naps.

13 weeks

So I reposted this pic from Easter so you could see the difference.

Here is my new baby belly.
I put my belly band on so it would show more and obviously a tighter shirt, because I was wearing a loose sweater previoulsy with those work pants.

And that is not my belly button by the way...lol ...its the corner of the top of the pants.

My last Dr. appointment with the "old" new dr I was trying out, (by the way I realize that wasn't clear in my other post, but I had changed dr.'s and decided to stay with my old dr, the one I used with Grace. Not Grace's OB because she does not have an OB.) I had lost 5 lbs and now I believe I am back up 2lbs. But we will see on Tuesday, because it goes back and forth. Although I have really made a point especially this week to be eating a bit more calories and healthy calories and not junk. Apples, cheese, yogurt, oranges, strawberries, bagels.

And on a side note, Can I say, "Mmmm Milk!" Grace has been all about the milk lately, its "Mak" this and "Mak" that, and so have I. It is so delicious and tasty. In the evening its a glass of ice cold milk and a graham cracker with peanut butter on it. Mmmm. Must be the baby....

Trying to....

brush her teeth. Everytime I tried to get a picture on my phone, she would see herself on my display and exclaim, "Baby!" and then reach for my phone! So some of these are blurry.

Silly baby. I will post some baby bump pics tomorrow. I did take the pics, just don't have the energy to download them, in fact now I am turning this computer off! G'Night!

Graham Cracker Love

Can you see where we are sitting? Yeah, the kitchen. I sat down to get her picture and she decided to sit in my lap, where she was quite content! I tried getting up a couple of times, she wasn't have any of that, she wanted to sit in my lap and that was that! We bought some Graham Crakers to munch on from the grocery store yesterday, and those sure were delicous and fun to eat of the floor!

Yes, she was laying on her tummy and at one point I think she was trying to lick up the crumbs from the floor. It was hard to tell because I couldn't see her face. Good thing we had just vacuumed.

I think she was jammin out here to the music.

So on Saturday I finally organized all of her clothes! After looking at these boxes of clothes I am hoping we have a girl! lol Not really, but the top box is full of gender neutral clothes ages Newborn-3 Months. Then the next box is 3-6Months and the the third box is 6-9 Months And the last and the biggest are her 12 Month clothes. Now they are out of her room and downstairs in storage and her room is so much cleaner and organized! Love it!

So its Monday and we are starting another week without Daddy he had to get up really early and drive out of town. He made it safe and he should be home late Friday. Next week I will get to go to my OB (my first OB with Grace) and I will be officially into the 2nd Trimester. Can't wait. Feeling fine, a lil bit tired still, also still have the heartburn/gass without the burn, just sloshiness. Which I have come to appreciate because then I am forced to eat a lot of small meals and not overeat, also it forces my to eat better and not drink soda. I will try to take a pic tomorrow night of my baby belly, because I got one already!