My 30th Birthday and 40 Weeks

Needless to say it has been a very busy few weeks and now I need to play catch-up! I celebrated my 30th birthday on the 8th and just a few days later I was 40 weeks pregnant on the 12th!! Add in Josh and I's 6th wedding anniversary on the 16th and it was quite the eventful week for the Seeley family.

With my birthday being so close to my due date, making a trip to the beach to celebrate (like we did for Josh's 30th birthday last August) was not going to be possible. But, Josh and I managed to escape for the day by ourselves since my mother was in town to watch Ethan. Our mission for the day was to check out tablets so that I could decide what I wanted for my birthday present! After much searching and comparing, I finally settled on what I originally thought that I wanted - an iPad2. :) Yeah, I'm kind of an Apple snob. We managed to find the one in particular that we wanted at just one store (the 32 GB, black one without 3G service) and I came home a happy lady!

Here it is in all of it's glory! :)

Yes, I'll admit that I am quite addicted to it already. There is an unbelievable number of totally cool apps available out there for the iPad and I am just getting started downloading them all! :) My current favorite is Similac's Baby Journal (hmm, I wonder why?). With it, I am able to track every diaper change (charting if it's #1, #2 or both and even the consistency and color!) Sorry, TMI? ;) It also tracks sleep time and nursing time (and also helps this mommy remember which side I need to start on). It charts everything and gives me averages - for example, tiny man is currently averaging exactly 2 hrs between feedings. His longest stretch of sleep so far is 4 hours and 34 minutes and he's averaging 9 diaper changes in a 24 hour period. Wow. So this may not be the coolest app for most people, but for mamas of newborns it is amazing!! :)

I also downloaded some fun apps for Ethan. I found a couple free flash card apps (eFlashEnglish and Parents Flash Cards) so that Ethan can work on words - a really great distraction while waiting for dinner or at a doctor's office! I also discovered that there is an app (OverDrive) that lets me check-out ebooks from our local library. You can only keep a max of 5 books for a 7-day period, but they have a decent selection of books for both Ethan and I to read.

Another one of my favorites is Dropbox. It gives you 2 GB of space (for free, or you can pay to up that amount) to put files, pics, songs, etc and makes them accessible to all of your other computers (when you download the Dropbox on those computers too) via the internet. This allows you to get files off of the iPad and onto your other computers easily, without having to sync to iTunes. Super helpful!

Skype is another essential app for us. We love being able to video chat with our families who live hundreds of miles away and the 2 cameras on the iPad2 make it extra easy to do this.

I like the Photoshop Express app for doing basic photo editing, Evernote for organizing my thoughts and ideas for projects and Dragon Dictation for dictating notes. Kayak also has an app for finding the best deals on flights and hotels. The Weather+ and Weather HD apps are also nice for quick looks at the local weather forecast.

More cool apps include barcode scanners (ShopSavvy and pic2shop). You can scan anything that has a UPC barcode and it will pull up the item and tell you where you can find it and for how much (both in local stores and online). Yay for saving money!

Then there are apps that are just for fun when you're bored...a labyrinth game; Virtuoso, which is a virtual keyboard to play; Shazam, which will listen to songs/music and tell you what the song is; Pandora, for listening to music; and abc and tv.com (cbs) have players for streaming their TV shows.

Some good food-related apps include Epicurious, which has lots of great recipes with the ability to search for recipes by ingredient; Foodspotting, for finding and spotting great dishes wherever you are; and Weight Watchers Mobile, which for members, gives you lots of options for tracking your points and also offers recipes too. Whew! So much fun and productivity in a cute, portable package. :)

As for the rest of my birthday, Josh, Ethan, my mom and I had a nice dinner at a local restaurant, Brickhouse Grille & Tavern. For dessert, a lemon meringue pie, of course. I even got some help from Ethan with my candles. ;) It was a nice birthday spent with my favorite people!

As I said earlier, I reached my 40-week due date just days after my birthday. Huge and miserable I went to my OB check-up the next day and we decided to induce the following day! Wow. Coming soon...the birth story! For now, here is a fun picture comparing my baby bumps at 40 weeks with both pregnancies. The bumps are pretty similar (I gained 30 lbs with the first and 28 lbs with the second), but my hair is quite different!

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Independence Day from the Seeley family!!

Yep, that was one of the big ones Josh set off for us last night! :) The threat of rain kept us away from the local fireworks display at the lake, but Josh had purchased some fireworks of his own to set off, so we celebrated here at the house! At first I was bummed we wouldn't be going to see the show, but it ended up being even more fun having them right here, up close and personal! :) Ethan LOVED them this year and kept saying, "More! More!" for Daddy to set off more! haha! Here he is watching the sky light up. I love the look of pure joy and excitement on his face! :)

He was skeptical at first about playing with the sparklers, but once he saw Mommy and Daddy both with one, he decided he wanted to hold one too. :)

Those were actually leftover sparklers from our wedding almost 6 years ago!! Good to know they still work fine. :)

Time to rewind. We started the day on a patriotic note by making star-shaped pancakes. My original plan was to color them naturally with fruit purees (blueberry and raspberry), but my raspberries had gone bad too quickly, so I scrapped that plan and decided to make a blueberry syrup with the fresh blueberries, some sugar and a little water. I heated it all up on the stovetop, then pureed it in the food processor to get a nice consistency. Topped with a little whipped cream too and they were delicious! :)

I also wanted to make a flag cake for dessert that evening because I make one every year. I kept it to a small round cake this year since it was just the three of us who would be eating it. To make my flag cake, I bake a boxed white cake mix (Betty Crocker Super Moist) according to the package directions, then let it cool. I turn it into a Jell-O cake by poking holes in the cake and pouring the Jell-O mixture (heat 1 cup of water to boiling, add a red or blue 4 oz Jell-O packet and mix until it is dissolved, then add 1/2 cup cold water) over the cake. Then you just refrigerate it for at least four hours to set-up and "frost" it with Cool Whip and garnish with fresh fruit! :) Yum yum!

I found another patriotic treat on a blog that I wanted to test out too for dinner. The recipe was for a patriotic mocktail, suitable for both Ethan and I this year! ;) The recipe called for 3 oz each of fruit punch, blue gatorade and diet Sprite or 7-Up. Going by their guidelines that sugar content would keep the three liquids separated, I bought Hawaiian fruit punch (26 g sugar), Glacier Freeze blue gatorade (5 g sugar) and Sprite Zero (0 g sugar)...

Unfortunately, I was not impressed with the results. :( The gatorade was not showing up at all like the picture posted on the blog! Major disappointment. Oh well, it was a novel idea and worth a shot!

We hope that you and yours had a wonderful day with family and friends! :) Getting close to baby time now...just one more week to go!!!

Chocolate Goodness!

Reading a friend's blog the other day, I came across a recipe she had tried for an absolutely irresistible looking brownie cookie that I had to make. She had come across it on another blog that she reads. The recipe was for Ghirardelli Brownie Cookies...

Ever since Josh and I visited the Ghirardelli Chocolate and Ice Cream Shop in San Francisco in 2007, we have been hooked on this chocolate. I am normally not a fan of hot fudge (I know, what's wrong with me?), but when you have a bit of freshly made hot fudge at their shop, it will turn even a hater like me into a fan! Whenever I make brownies now, I buy one of their packaged mixes to use. So, the thought of a tasty Ghirardellli cookie was delightful! We had friends over for dinner tonight, so I thought, what better time to try out this new recipe then for our guests?

Ethan and I gathered the ingredients and went to work.

Ingredients:

• 1 Ghirardelli brownie mix (I used double chocolate, so it already had chocolate chips in it)
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup oil
• 3 Tbsp flour
• 1 1/2 cups of peanut butter chips, or nuts, can be mixed in (optional)

Directions:

• Mix flour into brownie mix.

• Slightly beat eggs with oil and mix in.

• Mix-in any add-ins until combined. The dough should be stiff like cookie dough.

• Bake at 350 degrees for 10-11 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies. Use less time for cookies that are 2" or smaller. One recipe will make 24-30 cookies, depending on the size. 
• Let cookies rest on pan for 2 minutes, and then cool on baking racks.

I decided that I wanted to add in both peanut butter chips (because nothing goes better with chocolate than peanut butter, right?) and nuts (their nutritional benefits made me feel better about stuffing my face with chocolate), so I added 1/2 cup of sliced almonds (that was all I had left) and 1 cup of peanut butter chips, to equal 1 1/2 cups total add-ins. :) I was planning to use walnuts, but didn't realize I was out of them, so I used the almonds instead. I think that the walnuts may work better with this recipe, but the almonds were still good too. The only change I made to the recipe was that I baked them for 12 minutes. My batch yielded 24 cookies. They were SUPER tasty and definitely did not disappoint! I will surely make these again. :) Let me know what you think if you try them out too!

Happy Father's Day!

We kept it simple this year for Father's Day. We decided to pack up Ethan and Daisy and head to a local park (Clark Park) on West Point Lake for a picnic dinner. We packed up some goodies at home and stopped at Publix to get some subs, then made our way to the park. Though the day had been another hot one, it felt great sitting at a picnic table as the sun was setting.

Ethan enjoyed his GoGurt...

He's such a little sweetheart! :)

And here is Daddy with his kids! :)

We'll definitely have to plan more trips to the lake this year! We also spent a majority of the day giving the house a very thorough cleaning. I guess we were both nesting! ;)

Ethan and I made another trip to the park today. We had the area all to ourselves for quite awhile and he was loving it, going down slide after slide, only taking water breaks when I made him. 

A few more kids showed up later, including a particularly aggressive little 4/5-year-old girl. For some reason, this girl decided she wanted to chase Ethan around the playground. Ethan was not impressed. He kept trying to shove her away anytime she caught him, but she wasn't getting the hint. :( Eventually, he gave up and decided he wanted to leave. Poor guy. Fortunately, Mommy made it all better with a stop at the local smoothie shop on our way home for a yummy treat! I'm hoping we can get a few more trips to the park in before this little guy arrives, but we shall see. I am 37 weeks today, which means that I am technically full-term and he could arrive at anytime now! I am not holding my breath though, given how late Ethan arrived. But, at least I feel ready this time, so I am excited to meet this little man! :)

Family Pics

I decided I wanted to get a family pic of the four of us tonight. Probably the last pic we will get before we become a family of five in a few weeks! Yes, I do count Daisy in our numbers. ;) I was ecstatic with the results!! Who needs a photographer when you have a nice camera and a tripod?? ;)

First attempt wasn't the best since Ethan was a bit hidden by my huge belly and Daisy wasn't paying attention...

But the next attempt was PERFECT! I'm still not sure how we managed to get everyone looking and smiling with eyes open, but I'll take it! :)

Tasty Playtime Treat! :)

Over the weekend I had a spur of the moment idea that it would be fun to make some playdough for Ethan. He is really starting to get into coloring now, so I thought this would be a nice creative outlet as well for him. We had plenty of time on our hands with Daddy at work, so what better way to pass the time? I remembered an episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8 that I had watched awhile back (before it became just Kate Plus Eight) where they made edible playdough. Being that Ethan is just 2 and still enjoys putting things in his mouth occasionally to figure out what they are, I thought it would probably be a good idea to go the edible route...

So, I searched for Kate's recipe online and found this recipe. It calls for equal parts of peanut butter, honey and powdered milk with some added flour to achieve the right consistency. On another site, I read that powdered sugar was also a nice alternative to the powdered milk (and tasted better), but to use 2 parts of it for every part of the other ingredients.

So, I used one cup each of peanut butter and honey, then just 1/2 cup powdered milk and one cup of powdered sugar. I mixed them all together in my KitchenAid stand mixer. I added some flour at the end, but I didn't measure how much.

And here is Ethan ready to play with the final product...

It didn't take him long at all to figure out that he could eat the playdough...hmm...

We had fun playing with the tasty dough, but I did find it to still be too greasy. I think that I should have added even more flour to remedy this and give it the proper consistency. If I decide to make another batch, I think I will also stick to just powdered milk instead of the powdered sugar, as it was plenty sweet!

Earlier in the morning that day, Ethan and I visited our local farmer's market for the first time. I was hoping to find some local honey to use for this recipe, but unfortunately, no one had any. We did manage to score some homemade strawberry jelly, strawberry-blueberry jam and fresh harvest grain bread. It made for a very tasty lunch for us! I think we will have to continue to check out the market to see what other tasty goodies we can find. :)

In other news this week, I had a bit of a scare when my dishwasher wouldn't start one evening!! Not exactly what a 36-week preggo woman wants to discover when doing dishes by hand is probably one of the most miserable chores to do while pregnant. Fortunately, I had my two handymen available to help get it working for me again! :)

Poor Ethan also got his first time-out ever this week. :( When he was in trouble the other night, Josh told him to follow him to the corner and stand there until he stopped crying and could behave himself again. We really had no idea what he would do, but decided to try it out. Much to our amazement, he stood there, with his little nose pressed into the corner as he composed himself. Awesome - time out success!! Unfortunately, Ethan earned another timeout the very next day when he wouldn't listen to me. I was again surprised at how well he took his punishment and that it seemed to be quite effective. Later in the day I warned him that he was going to get another timeout if he didn't stop ramming his Chuck truck into the wall. He quickly stopped, but I guess he felt that Chuck was the real instigator and he proceeded to give Chuck a timeout in the corner for the rest of the evening. Too funny! I swear that boy never ceases to crack me up with his antics!

I also finally realized today just how close we are to this baby boy's arrival. Just 4 short weeks!! Wow. Where did the time go? That being said, I decided that I need to start taking advantage of the time that Ethan and I have left during the day as a twosome, before things get really crazy around here again. So instead of staying cooped up inside the house as usual this morning, we made a trip to a local park to play! Despite the heat, I lasted for an hour and by the time we left, we were both covered in sweat and craving something cool. We stopped at McD's for a delicious frozen strawberry lemonade and some tasty chocolate chip cookies. ;) Yum! As you can see from the pics, Ethan thoroughly enjoyed his time on the slides at the park and I hope that we can make it there again soon.

It appears he wore himself out as he is currently in the midst of a 3+ hour nap now! :)

Hot Eats and Cool Treats!

Nope, I'm not talking Dairy Queen. I finally got around to trying a new recipe last night!! I found this one in the April 2011 issue of Parenting. The recipe is for Spiced Chicken Mini-Burgers with Peanut Sauce and was created by Ana Kelly.

I gathered my ingredients and went to work.

Ingredients:
Burgers

• 1 lb ground chicken
• 2 tsp red curry powder
• 1 Tbsp peeled, grated fresh ginger
• 1 tsp salt

Sauce

• 1/3 cup natural peanut butter
• 1 Tbsp honey
• 1 Tbsp lime juice
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp water

Directions:

• Preheat broiler. Combine ground chicken, curry powder, ginger and salt, mixing well.

• Form into 12 balls and flatten to 1/3-inch-thick patties. 

• Broil 3 to 4 minutes per side, or until cooked through and lightly browned.
• Combine peanut butter, honey, lime juice, soy sauce and water in a glass bowl.
• Microwave on high for 30 seconds, then whisk until smooth.

• Split a dozen mini-pita rounds. Place chicken patties inside pita rounds, and top with a dollop of peanut sauce and 2 cucumber slices.

As for changes I made to the ingredients/recipe...I don't think I used an entire tablespoon of ginger, but there was a decent amount of it. I used regular Jif peanut butter instead of a natural PB. Also, instead of forming 12 small patties, I made 4 normal sized patties and 1 small one (for Ethan). These were super, super moist and very hard to work with. I guess ground chicken is a much moister meat? I also did not broil the burgers. Josh grilled them instead. He gave them about 12 minutes on medium-high (~350 degrees or so) heat. Here they are after being grilled...

I couldn't find mini-pita rounds at the store, so I bought whole-wheat sandwich thins instead. They are basically like a regular bun, but much thinner (similar to the thickness of a slice of bread). I also did not get any cucumber slices, but those may have been a good addition if you like cucumber (I obviously don't). ;) I served the 'burgers' with baked sweet potato fries, a family favorite, and I think they went very nicely together. Here is the 'burger' dressed with it's sauce...

And a pic of the inside...

I must say that these were quite tasty!! Even Josh said that he would eat them again!! Woohoo! If you remember, he was not a fan of my turkey burgers, but said that these were much better than the turkey. The chicken patty by itself had a lot of great flavor with the curry and ginger and even had a bit of a nice kick to it. I really like how the sauce paired with the chicken too. Unfortunately, Ethan wasn't a fan of the meat (not surprising though since the only 'meat' he eats these days is hot dogs and the occasional breaded chicken nugget or fried fish strip). :( He did enjoy dipping his hot dog in the peanut sauce though! haha! This coming from the boy who dips everything in ketchup (and who loves to just lick it off and keep re-dipping until the piece of food is barely recognizable anymore)!! Ahh, my lovely child.

As a follow-up dessert to the meal, I decided a nice cool treat should accompany our hot and spicy dinner. Given the number of mid-to-high 90-degree days we have had here lately, anything cool is nice and refreshing! We have become frequent customers at our newly opened local smoothie shop. They can make a mean smoothie from a nice variety of fruits to one of our favorites, PB&J (peanut butter, strawberries, bananas and yogurt). My personal favorite is still their Tropical Twister. It has strawberries and pineapple with orange juice. It is also supposed to include fresh coconut, but I hate the texture of it, so I have them skip adding that to mine. So, I have been wanting to try to recreate the wonderful flavor of the Tropical Twister here at home. Here's how it went...

I gathered the ingredients I would need.

We have a great smoothie maker that we received as a wedding present. It is labeled on the side with exactly how much liquid and frozen ingredients I need in order to make enough for 2 or 4 servings. So, I filled it to the liquid line with orange juice, then added in about equal parts of frozen strawberries and pineapple.

I blended everything together well, and viola! Tropical Twister smoothies in my own kitchen! :)

The taste was pretty close to the one I get at the smoothie shop, but I think it could have maybe benefited from a little more pineapple and less strawberry to give it a tad more sweetness. It was still good and refreshing though. :)

And of course Ethan loved it! :) I can't get the boy past the smoothie shop if he sees it!! Enjoy!