The much anticipated pictures:

7 weeks (the day we found out) :)


16 weeks


20 weeks


And.... 22 weeks (AKA last Saturday)

Since you asked!!

Stromboli:

Here is what we usually do, but it never stays the same for long. We buy Pillsbury French Loaf from the fridge section (be sure to keep it as refrigerated as possible because if it gets warm it gets really sticky and impossible to work with). When you take it out of the container you'll notice that it has a seam....carefully unroll the dough and put it on a greased cookie sheet. Use your fingers to flatten it out and make it more consistent thickness wise. I'm very sure using a rolling pin would be disastrous.

So anyway, unroll the French Loaf. Use a SMALL can of tomato paste and spread all over. (If it's important to you, Make sure you check the ingredients on canned tomato paste to get one with ONLY tomatoes in it.) We then add browned ground turkey (with black pepper, garlic, and other seasonings on it), turkey pepperoni (by Hormel...one of those refrigerate after opening items, so can be tricky to find in the store, but usually near the lunch meat), chopped onion, green pepper, black olive, mushroom, and garlic if you want...then a small amount of mozzarella. Then you attempt to your best ability to roll the dough back up. :) We usually end up with a few holes, you can just pinch them shut, and it's usually huge. But from here it's easy, bake the rolled up lump just like it says to on the French Loaf directions. All done! (sometimes I spray the top of the Stromboli with PAM so it gets brown and I'll sometimes put some garlic powder or even Parmesan cheese on it too.) Really easy!

Spicy No-Meat Chili:

Be prepared, extremely easy and fast.

Large canned diced tomatoes--you could use fresh if you want (again check labels to make sure you're only getting tomatoes and no extra weirdness)
Large canned spicy chili beans
Can of reduced sodium black beans (rinsed)
diced onion
you can buy bags of green/red/yellow peppers frozen or you can cut them up yourself
garlic powder, chili powder, black pepper, cayenne pepper (caution- with cayenne a little goes a long way)
We've at times added jalapenos, frozen corn, celery, and mushrooms

Dump everything in and heat it up. Shouldn't have to add any salt because of the chili beans, but you can add additional cayenne and chili powder to spice it up more.

Easy peasy. And super good.

Today...worse.

Yup, I think I knew it would be. But today my cold is much worse. :) Lucky me! But this blog isn't about my sickness diary or journaling all my new symptoms so I will instead tell you about what I enjoyed about today.

1) I've been working (not very consistently) on a 1500 piece puzzle of a flower garden to glue together and then hang in our guest bedroom. I actually got a lot done today. I'm telling you this is by far the hardest puzzle I've ever done. And it's taken me about a month so far and I'm probably 2/3rds done.

2) I turned up some music, grabbed a good book, and took a bath. Haven't done that in a long time. :)

3) I made beef stew in our slow cooker...I can't smell it, but it looks dang good. Only downfall...my favorite part of using the slow cooker is that you can smell the food all day long. BUT, it looks dang good.

That brings me to the next point of this blog. I really enjoy cooking. However, I do not enjoy recipes. Well, let me take that back. I use them more as general guidelines....or as ideas. Like the beef stew for example. It says put in stew beef, 5 cups of veggies (potato, carrot, celery), and some water. I say that's boring. So I put in corn, peas, green beans, mushrooms, green pepper, onion, AND potatoes, carrots, and celery. Then I added some garlic, black pepper, sea salt, and a slow cooker beef stew flavor packet. Much better. Never measured a thing. :) Not only does it make a ton more BUT it's additionally healthier each and every time we reheat it.

I did the same thing with enchiladas last night. The sauce has a recipe for beef ench on the can...you add cheese and onion an beef. BOO. What kind of ench is that? We made ours with chicken (boiled--which I love-you should try it), refried black beans, spicy chili beans, cilantro, green, yellow, and red pepper, onion, corn, medium salsa, and I think that might be it. SO YUMMY! :) And we usually skip out on the cheese that goes inside, and only put a bit on the top.

This is probably boring...but in case it is not, and you want some more ideas of things I like to make, I have a couple other made-ups that we make a lot.

1. Homemade pizza
2. Something similar to chicken/beef/turkey pot pie/shepherds pie.
3. No meat Spicy chili. Very good. And I'm telling you, you won't even miss the no meat (believe me, Josh loves it!)
4. Stromboli.

All fast, easy, healthy, and heavy on the veggies. :)

As I type, there is nearly constant thunder outside. I have Pandora set on "Hans Zimmer Radio". I have water. And it's great!!

Except I got this cold. My throat is about to fall off. And everything hurts. No good. And I have one of those sick things called 'a productive cough'. Seriously sick. Last night I laid in bed for several hours not sleeping...then I got up and took Martha's advice (I'm pretty sure it came from her) and ate a bowl of cereal. Then I read my book until my eyes were tired then fell right to sleep. 1:30. Originally went to bed at 10:30. Woke up at 10:15. oops. So that means tonight will probably be mostly the same. Dang it.

Side note: It is now pouring outside whilst still sunny. LOVE IT!

There's a lot to catch up on, my weekend in Kansas City with AHEM, Martha's 'Sprinkle' that turned out to be more like a 'Drench', having my Dad visit in Michigan as well...I'm still not home! :) Vacation is great! As we speak, Garrett is trying to climb over my legs and Ethan is tickling my arm. Ha ha.

But, my 20 week ultrasound is on Thursday morning....and you know what that means...what are we having!??!?!?

What do you think!?
Vote now, or forever hold your opinion. :)