In the home stretch!

I still can't believe I have less than 3 weeks until I meet our newest addition. This pregnancy has gone SO quickly that it doesn't seem like the baby is almost ready to come, but the calendar and my belly size tell me otherwise!
TheBump.com's calendar of things to do told me to pack my hospital bag around 20 weeks... I'm now 37 weeks and the bag is still not packed... I will definitely have it done by the end of this week, I promise! (FYI: I've ignored 99% of their list, at least their timeline for doing things.)
Anna and I toured the Labor & Delivery wing of the hospital last week and I liked what I saw. The rooms are LDRP rooms which means I'll be in the same room for everything and so will the baby. They have a baby station where they do measurements, first vaccinations, bath, etc, so Baby P won't have to leave the room at all.
The other nice thing is that the nurse mentioned some of the standard procedures which gave me a lot of peace about having the baby there! One of the things that I'm most happy about is that unless there is something wrong, they let us bond with the baby before doing all the neonatal stuff. Since Anna was delivered by C-section, I got to see her for just a few minutes before they took her away while they finished with me in the operating room.
The other thing that made me very happy is that they only make you stay 24 hours after the baby is born (unless you deliver in the middle of the night, then you stay an extra night so they're not discharging you when you'd like to be sleeping!). Since our guess date (March 19) is so close to Daniel's graduation (March 23), I am praying that I am able to be there for his graduation so I can pin on his career badge. I'm stressing too much about this, I know God has a plan and He knows how important this graduation is to us!

One thing we did this time around that we didn't do last time was to have professional maternity photos taken. We used our self-timer feature to get some when I was pregnant with Anna and that was enough for us. This time, we were lucky enough to find wonderful photographer who was giving away 2 free sessions to help build up her portfolio. We took the pictures at a beach in nearby Ocean Springs and we are so happy with how they turned out. Here are a few of them. I'll be picking up the CD with all of them this week- I can't wait to see more!

My very own, real life Suzy Talks A Lot

Our Anna is one chatty Cathy. She is always parroting us and trying out new words. Some 'stick' better than others and get quickly incorporated into her vocabulary. Others tend to get tucked away and she'll bring them out at the most surprising times.

Here are some of her more entertaining and extremely adorable phrases:

• "Key not work, Daddy" - when she tried to unlock the bathroom door with a car key
• "Daddy, I worked it!"- when she opens a door successfully
• "Bri. Rebel. Best friends."- Bri & Rebel are friends of ours who are married. We have a book about Gossie & Gertie (little ducks) who are best friends. She's decided whoever you spend the most time with/are seen together with is your best friend. Although, it doesn't apply to her, she says Uncle Ben is her best friend and she hasn't seen him in person since November!
• "Mommy, no talking!"- She has finally figured out that just like I can tell her no, she can tell me no. The only difference is that she can't put me in time-out!
• "Anna want puppy"- We were at a friend's house and she has 2 dogs. Anna asked to see Shelby (another dog she knows) and I told her that Shelby doesn't live here because she is Bri's puppy. After thinking about this, she told me she wanted one, too! (Not a chance! She's getting a younger sibling in 3 weeks and there is no puppy in our future!)
• "Ar-besque, sottay, shepay" (translation: arabesque, sautee, echepee)- 3 of her ballet moves she's picked up from Little Einsteins. She'll say them as she does each one. I'll be posting a video soon so you can see our beautiful ballerina.
• "Bestest movie ever!"- we're still not sure where she picked this up, but she says it every time one of her shows comes on.

Anna in one of her many 'princess dresses.'

It is so much fun to watch her develop her vocabulary. She's recently started waking up and calling us in to her room, then tells us that she had a dream. It always contains a princess, who is usually running to a castle. :-)

I *heart* U

Four days ago, Daniel and I celebrated our 5th Valentine's Day as a couple. Each Valentine's Day, we've exchanged cards and Daniel has given me beautiful flower arrangements- always with red roses- and something chocolatey. This year he gave me the best 'assortment' box ever! Dove chocolates: peanut butter meltaways, dark chocolate filled with milk chocolate and chocolate caramels..... Yummmy!! Over the years, I've given him different gifts to celebrate the day and this year I took the phrase "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach" to a whole new level.
For breakfast, I made him delicious, from-scratch, heart-shaped cinnamon rolls. This was a true labor of love because even though I made the dough, sliced it, and placed it in the pans, I still had to wake up to pop them in the oven and make the cream cheese icing. This meant waking up when Dan's 5:30am alarm went off and not immediately falling back asleep! The recipe I used is from this blog. To get them in the shape of a heart, you simply roll the dough from both sides and meet them in the middle.

For lunch, I made some heart shaped breadsticks and calzones. I used Pillsbury breadsticks and pizza crust, both found in the refrigerated section of the commissary. I added some melted butter, garlic salt and Italian seasoning to the breadsticks for extra flavor.

My heart-ish shaped calzone.

I also made some extra special sweet treats for desserts. The first creation was a large batch of peanut butter chocolate hearts (think Reese's cups!). I used this recipe and instead of rolling the peanut butter mixture into egg shapes, I used a heart shaped cookie cutter.
Dipping them into the chocolate was by far the hardest, most challenging part of the process. Though the peanut butter hearts had been refrigerated overnight, the chocolate thinned with Crisco, and I was using my fancy double boiler from Pampered Chef, it was not easy to make them look pretty and have them evenly covered with chocolate. The original blog post says she used a skewer to dip them, but I found a carving fork (like the one from this set) sprayed with a little Pam worked the best. It allowed for the hearts to remain secure and not fall to pieces and the Pam helped to slide them off onto the wax paper for cooling.
The last thing I made was a batch of super-moist chocolate cupcakes. I got my inspiration from this blog:

Source: glorioustreats.blogspot.com via Kelly on Pinterest

Though I didn't use the recipes for the cupcakes or the icing, I did do the heart-shaped decorating technique. This was definitely the easiest thing I baked all day! I used a double fudge chocolate cake mix from a box and canned thick and creamy vanilla icing (Betty Crocker). I used a couple drops of food coloring to turn the icing pink and when the cupcakes were cooled, I sliced the 'dome' off of them and cut out the hearts with a small cookie cutter. Then I simply iced the flat part of the cupcake and replaced the dome. I didn't use powdered sugar, but I was pleasantly surprised that my cupcakes looked a lot like the ones in the picture!

Daniel enjoyed everything- and said he probably gained about 10 pounds! It was an extra sweet Valentine's Day for us- our last one as a family of 3. Anna also got to taste everything I made, though I think her favorite was the lollipop that came with her flower & teddy bear from her Daddy.

Our little love bug enjoying her sucker.

Buffalo Chicken Dip

For everyone who wants this recipe, here it is! And to answer Jeff's question, no, it does not contain crack or any other addictive substance! This recipe comes from my mom, who is the hostess with the mostess and knows how to feed lots of people delicious food!

Buffalo Chicken Dip

Ingredients:
(first numbers gives you 6 quarts, numbers in parentheses will give you about 3 quarts)

• 4 (2) chicken breasts
• 4 (2)cups of Frank's RedHot
• 8 (4) cups of cheddar cheese [I used 4 cups of mild and 4 cups of sharp]
• 4 (2) 8oz. packages of cream cheese
• 3 (2) 16oz. bottles of Ranch dressing [For an spicier version, you can simply reduce the amount of Ranch you add. Daniel said the 6 qt version had a pretty good kick with 2 bottles, but the 3 bottle variety had a broader appeal.]

Directions:

• Trim the chicken and boil it until it's thoroughly cooked through.
• Cut the chicken up into chunks then put the chunks into a food processor until it's finely chopped.
• If you're making a big batch, I recommend you make it in a slow cooker on High. If you are making a smaller batch, you can make it on the stove top in a large pot on medium heat. If you have a really big pot, feel free to make the larger portion on the stove top, too.
• Combining the ingredients:
• Add the cream cheese and cheddar cheese, stir them together and allow them to start melting together (the melting part is more for the stove top version)
• Add the RedHot, chicken and Ranch dressing
• Continue to stir occasionally until everything is combined into a beautiful light orange dip that is simply irresistable- especially to Class 12006. :-)

This was the food table from Drop Night- the beautiful Stacy is
cutting up King Cake next to the big crock pot filled with Buffalo Chicken Dip!

• It took about 45 minutes in the slow cooker for everything to melt and combine. Be sure when you stir it in the slow cooker that you stirring everything on the very bottom or it might start to burn the stuff on the very bottom. Once it was all cooked, I turned it to warm since I was serving it immediately.
• For the stove top portion, I'd plan for about 20-30 minutes of cook time before it's ready to serve.

Serve hot with tortilla chips- Tostito's Scoops work very well! [6 qts will require about 4 large bags of chips.]

Refrigerate any remaining dip in a covered container.

Enjoy!

Drop Night!

It finally happened....the assignments came down, the murder board* happened and drop night occured. What a relief to finally know where we're going after Daniel graduates!
*no one actually gets killed at a murder board, which is where the instructors decide who gets what assignment and apparently it can get pretty ugly.

We'll be moving to Ft. Meade, Maryland!

Daniel got a great assignment that will certainly challenge him and keep him interested while we're stationed there, which will probably be 2-3 years. We are so thrilled with this assignment. Our #1 goal was to be closer to our family up north and this certainly puts us within reasonable driving distance (right now, we're 17+ hours from them!).

Overall, the drop night was great. We split up the food and drink responsibilities between the class & the spouses and had quite a spread! For warm dishes, we had pigs in a blanket (mini hot dogs in crescent rolls) that disappeared completely within the first hour and buffalo chicken dip. We also had some chips & pretzels with dip and an authentic King Cake from a bakery in New Orleans!

King Cake!

While most would think the military runs likes clockwork, the actual drop night didn't begin until 5:30, which turned out to be OK since most of the guests were fashionably late. I completely lost track of time because I was busy setting things up, chasing Anna around and talking with my fellow spouses about how anxious we all were for our husbands and friends to get there assignments!

Bri and Ayla (whose mom, Jackie made the girls matching dresses!)

Audrey (Ayla's big sister) with a Mardi Gras umbrella!

Anna in her Mardi Gras gear eating King Cake

Since the class is made up of 8 men, giving out the assignments didn't take very long. Daniel designed the slideshow that displayed pictures of each classmate, their hometown and favorite quote, along with a slide to show where they were going. Since it was Mardi Gras themed, he had beads fly up and knock away the 2 choices that weren't the actual assignment. The one remaining was where they were heading and would get nice and big before they switched to a video from the squadron the person would be going.

They were the Krewe of Nerf because they are having an all-out Nerf gun war in their classroom. And yes, these are the same men defending your freedom. :-) Don't worry, they will use more than Nerf darts to fight the terrorists.

Here's where everyone is heading:

• Josh: McChord AFB, Washington State
• Andrew: Barksdale AFB, Louisiana
• Justin D.: Columbus AFB, Mississippi
• Caleb: Holloman AFB, New Mexico
• Justin M.: Kadeena AB, Japan
• Daniel: Ft. Meade, Maryland
• Rebel: Nellis AFB, Nevada
• Byron: Fairchild AFB, Washington for the Air National Guard

I took video of each assignment as it was given out, capturing the person on stage and then panning to the choices on the slideshow. When it came to Daniel's, it took a second to focus so 2 out of the 3 possibilities that I saw were Qatar and Ft. Meade. (The other one was Curtland AFB in New Mexico.) I think my heart stopped when I saw Qatar, but thankfully, that one went away pretty quickly and Daniel said that it was supposed to be a joke... yeah, a joke for the class but not for spouses who see it and think "Oh my goodness, my husband is getting a remote tour where I can't go with him and we're about to have our second baby and I'm going to be in Mississippi far from family for 2 years and my friends are all PCSing away." (Not kidding, in the 1.2 seconds it was up there, that's what went through my mind.)
I was so relieved and happy and excited about Ft. Meade that I couldn't stop smiling! And the next assignment given out kept me smiling since Rebel was next and got his #1 choice, which sends my friend Bri to Las Vegas!
After we mingled and celebrated and cleaned up the room we used, we headed home so Dan could change and then we went to Olive Garden with Rebel and Bri to continue celebrating and get some real food in our tummies!
Once we got home and put Anna to bed, Daniel went to the after-party down the street and brought more of the buffalo chicken dip. Apparently, it was a huge hit because Daniel sent me a text that they were swarming it as soon as he walked in the door. I was worried because I made 6 quarts of it, but half was gone at the end of drop night and another 1.5 quarts was polished off at the party afterwards. Several people have been asking for the recipe, so I'll be posting that next. :-)
I still can't believe we're moving up north, or that I have friends already there and another friend from Keesler who will move there just a month before we get there. What an amazing feeling to know that we'll be in one place for 2-3 years, with friends, and in an area of the country we really wanted to go!
God is so good and I'm looking forward to the plans He has in store for us when we get to Maryland!

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

So living in the South has taken on a new meaning the last couple weeks. Apparently, it's Mardi Gras season... that's right, these people take Fat Tuesday to a whole level and turn it into a season! This includes parades, parties, balls and all sorts of things. There are actual Mardi Gras stores filled with beads, masks (some costing $100+), costumes, decorations, and everything that you could need to get into the Mardi Gras spirit.
I visited one of these stores because Daniel's class will have their drop night (where they find out their job and where they're going after graduation) just a few days before the actual Fat Tuesday and the theme for the drop night will be Mardi Gras. So Stacy (one of my fellow spouses) and I went shopping to see what we could find. We got a ton of beads and some plastic medallions so that the guys will have a memento of the night. On the front, the medallion will be decorated with their name and on the back, the instructors will write the assignment. Only 4 more days until drop night! I'm so excited!!!

We also found plenty of fun things to put on Lucas & Anna. These were the first ones we found but they both chose different ones that we ended up buying.
Just last Sunday, Lucas, Stacy, and Justin invited us to come to our first Mardi Gras parade. It was a beautiful day and since we didn't have much planned, we went and it was a lot of fun. It was in a small town next to Biloxi called Ocean Springs so it wasn't super crowded and we were right up front so the kids were able to see everything.

It was a very different parade experience for me. For me, parades have connotations of marching bands, dance teams and other groups actually walking the parade route as well as being cold with lots of crowds because the most frequently attended parade for me is the Pittsburgh St. Patty's Day parade. However, at this parade, it was so hot poor Lucas got heat rash from his long sleeved shirt and Dan & I both got a bit sunburned!

Anna with her Mardi Gras feather headband and new baton someone threw to her from a float.

A the Mardi Gras parade, there were mostly floats decorated according to a certain theme, "Medieval Times." Each float is put together by a "krewe" and our favorite one was the Alice in Wonderland float- complete with all the characters, including the Queen of Hearts who turned out to be a man in drag!

After the parade, Lucas and Anna easily had about 200 beads!

Anna and Lucas had a great time dancing to the music and putting on so many beads they could barely walk! After most of the floats had been seen, we headed home with more beads than we knew what to do with! We're going to steer clear of New Orleans even though we do have a 4 day weekend  preceding Mardi Gras. Too many people, specifically too many drunk people, for our taste but we'll get our fill of authentic New Orleans King Cake at drop night, so I think it'll be a great Mardi Gras. :-)

Our Little Story Teller

Anna loves princesses and she loves stories so naturally her stories are all about princesses. Below are the first two (many more to come, I'm sure) that she has told me. The words in bold are the ones that she actually said, the rest are just added to put it into sentence form based on questions I asked her to continue the story.

"The Princess Goes to the Beach"
On[c]e upon a time, there was a blue princess who lived in a blue castle. One day the princess decided to go for a run. She ran all the way to the water. At the water, she found blue carrots. She ate them. Then she decided to go to the beach. She went swimming at the beach and was very happy. The End.

"The Princess and Her Puppy"
On[c]e upon a time, there was a blue princess. She had a puppy. Her puppy wore a pink bow. One day, the princess and the puppy went for a run to the blue castle. They found green carrots and ate them. They were yummy. The End.

I think she's taking after her daddy. He's a very good story teller and in the process of writing a book himself (which he has read to me and I'm confident that it will be published one day and be very successful!).

Trial and Error... The Risks of Pinterest

So far my Pinterest finds have resulted in more successes than failures in several areas- recipes, organization tips, hair styles, crafts and lots of fun with Anna. However, it doesn't have a perfect record. But that's how you learn, right? Try something new and see if it works for you!

Here are some of my favorite "wins"-

• Box O' Princesses / Boyville: I loved tapping into my creative side with these projects. They were Christmas gifts for 2 of my cousins and they loved them.

Here's Lilly with her princesses!



Ariel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Jasmine, Belle, Tiana and Rapunzel

• Up do's: I have found several wonderful hairstyles that are very elegant but are very simple to do. One is a half up look that is now my go-to hair style if my hair doesn't want to cooperate. The 2 others are up do's which are great for everyday chic and keep my hair out of my face. I've decided to use the simple Gibson tuck (below) for when Baby P arrives instead of a ponytail because it's easier to lay back with it.

Source: saralynnpaige.com via Kelly on Pinterest

• Cloud Dough: This is the latest of several things that I've made for Anna. It's 8 cups of flour & 1 cup of baby oil. It stays flour consistency until you squish it then it becomes moldable into shapes like playdough.
• Cinnamon Rolls: Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmy! is really all I can say. OK, perhaps I can say a little bit more. Despite being a little difficult to roll out, the recipe was straightforward and didn't require any yeast so I didn't need to wait for any 'rising' to happen. The cream cheese frosting recipe that came with it was also very good!

And some less than successful things I've tried:

• Homemade fingerpaints: While they were lots of fun, they are perishable! They grew mold after a few days even though they were stored in airtight containers. I'll definitely make them again, but plan to make a smaller batch or have Anna's friends over to help use it up!
• Marble cookies: The marbling was a success, the cookies were bleh.... way too dry and not chocolatey enough. They were supposed to be peanut butter chocolate cookies. The marbling technique was a mess but I eventually got it to work, but that is the only redeeming thing about the cookies.
• Bantu Knot Out Curls: The idea is to twist your wet hair into sections and secure with a pony tail holder. When it dries, it will be curly or wavey depending on how many sections you did. I did it to see if it would make my hair curlier than a sock bun which has been pretty successful. And while the curls were a bit curlier, it was really uncomfortable to sleep in! Definitely off my list for hairstyles during third trimester- I have enough trouble sleeping already!

So there they are, some wins and losses of my Pinterest attempts. I have lots more to try and I'll be posting more about them as I get to them!