The Waiting Game!

I have put off my blog for a little bit now because i didn't want to blog again until I had really exciting, "I'm not pregnant anymore!" kind of things to blog about. Sadly, as this is not the case, I thought I'd write down a few last thoughts before little girl arrives. Being 38 weeks and 2 days pregnant with your second child, you start to grow weary of waiting. How long do you have to pray for patience until it actually starts to stick? A lifetime I'd say. I am so hungry with the idea of holding a sweet newborn baby girl in my arms and showing Carter finally that Baby Clarissa IS real, even though he can't see her when he lifts up my shirt! So anxious to feel the success of a natural birth and to put to use all of the pink and purple things that I want to dress her in! I am also anxious to breathe again, to run, to take back my own hormones and let baby Clarissa take hers packing. Anxious to not be swollen, kankle lady! To bend over with ease to pick something up, to not rely on nap time every day to get by, and to be able to get out of bed during the night. The grass is always greener isn't it? I know that once baby is here I will be equally exhausted and have a whole new person and schedule to adjust to, but I am so excited to see her sweet little face! It's a shame that each pregnancy and baby has to be SO different. With Carter, at this point I was progressing great and ready to have him a week early! I have no such hopes for this child sadly. It is even more tantalizing to feel like every pregnant person I know at present (aside from 1!) is holding their sweet baby in their arms...so we will do what we have to do to get her here safely..but with haste! I never thought I would be so excited to give birth! :) But I am truly anxious for the experience again. So here's to all the pregnant people out there who are stuck in the middle of the "waiting game". May there be few days left of sausage-like feet and fingers, and a fast approaching delivery day! Signing off until I have pictures to plaster this page with of a sweet new face :)

Homemade Yogurt

Who even thinks when they go to the grocery store and pick up a carton of yogurt, "hey I could make this stuff!" and puts it back on the shelf? I never did! Because I never knew how! Well thanks to my sister Karlie and her hubby Ryan who have begun a new gluten free and incredibly healthy lifestyle, I have had healthy urges to change the way that my family eats. Karlie says that if you want to start to make that change in a small way, something you can start by doing is making things yourself that you normally wouldn't. Ex. Cream of chicken/mushroom soup, chicken broth, healthy snacks to put on your shelves, yogurt, spagetti or pasta sauces, etc. And all of those things I have learned, can be so easily made on your own! Starting with yogurt. So here is a post to document my almost 2 day project of culturing yogurt myself, and making delicious homemade granola to go with. Hope you find it interesting! If you are up for a fun little homemade project with a yummy finish- do this. It is fun to watch and really healthy for you as a finished product!

The thing about making your own yogurt is not the amount of work you have to do, but the amount of time you have to wait. When I first started making it, I was so anxious to see the final result, but it takes a good amount of time. I followed the recipe at :

http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2013/01/diy-homemade-yogurt.htm#

To start your project you'll want to being around 4pm in the afternoon to time things just right. This worked perfect for me. You will need:
*1 gallon of milk (I used whole milk, but 1% or 2% work fine too) My sister has even made hers with substitutes like soy or coconut milk and it turned out yummy too for you who don't have much to do with dairy.
*1/2 cup plain yogurt, making sure that it contains active live cultures. Lactobacillus bulgaricus and S. Thermophilus in particular.
*A slow cooker and candy thermometer
*Cheese cloth
*Yogurt Toppings of choice

To start, you will want to pour your milk into your slow cooker (which should be a 4-5 quart cooker), cover it, and turn it on to heat up. You want to heat your milk to 180 degrees. This takes 2-3 hours usually.

So by about 6:30 pm my milk had reached the 180 degrees. Once it has heated to this temperature, you want to pull the pot out of the heating base, and let it cool to 112-120 degrees. It is really important that you don't A. Overheat your milk to start, and B. You don't let it get to cool. The heating and cooling process is vital to the active yogurt cultures keeping alive. To cool my milk to about 2 hours. So around 8pm, I was ready for the next step.

Take your half cup of yogurt, and put it into a container. Then take 1 cup of your now warm milk and combine it with the yogurt and whisk it all up! Once it is smooth, you can pour this back into your crock pot and cover it. Now you'll want to preheat your oven to 250 degrees. While it is preheating, you are going to swaddle your crock pot like a wee babe inside a bath towel :) For insulation purposes. Wrap the towel around the crock pot so there are no openings. Once your oven reaches 250, turn it off and put your baby inside. 

Quickly close the oven door, and turn on your oven light. Guess what? More waiting. By this time, you will want to leave it in overnight.

When morning comes get excited! Around 8 am, pull your pot out of the oven. It will look thick, and have that watery layer over the top (whey). Something like this...

It made me really excited to the yogurt at this point, and I knew I was almost done! Lastly, comes your cheese cloth. Put a colander inside of another larger bowl, and line the inside of the colander with your cheesecloth. You are going to scoop all of your yogurt into the cheesecloth lined colander, so it looks like this-

Cover it with a lid of some sort, and put it in the fridge for 4-6 hours. The purpose of this is to strain all of the excess why and fluid. And boy will you be shocked at how much there is!! Here is what it looked like after the fact.

SO much thicker with all of the fluid drained! I wish I had taken a picture of how much there actually was! At this point you are practically done! I took my yogurt and put it into my blender and pulsed it to smooth it all out. I initially just whisked it, but it was still a little clumpy (which is fine) but i wanted mine silky smooth. Then viola! You are through! Put it into a container to store for up to 2 weeks in your fridge. But do eat some first. It is pretty tart on it's own, so if you want you can sweeten it you can add some sugar during the blending process, but I highly recommend honey instead. We used raw honey and it is SO good!! Also featured on our yogurt are blackberries, strawberries, and my homemade granola. (Which will be a much shorter blog post to come) Your own homemade parfait. 

BON APETITE!

YUM. 

Dinosaur Time

Thank you Grandma for sending such fun dinosaurs and crafts for the kiddos to paint! Here's a few photos to let you know it went great. You'll see it was a success because-
1. Everyone got to kick it shirtless for the morning. Alright, not everyone. I know what you were thinking. I was still wearing my shirt ;)
2. Carter only ate one mouthful of paint. So sick.
3. Only one dinosaur was broken, and then poorly repaired.
4. They looked awesome. Here you are!

Dean

Carter

Sissy

Best I could get...no one would look at me. Don't mind dean's face. He can't help it living around his parents 24/7.... :)

And to finish it all off- a bath.

Everyone was a happy camper! We love you Grandma!

The Fatal Accident..

Ever wish that when something bad happened you could walk back in time 20 or so minutes to prevent it? Ever wish it bad?? I know I do. The most daunting thing about something like this happening, is that you know before hand you warned yourself that something might not go quite right and that you should not go through with it. Such was the day that Carter's beautiful hair was shaved off.
One of Carter's great features has always been his hair. He has always had a lot of it and we have always gotten compliments on it from complete strangers. And so it became one of my favorite traits of his. Just when you become that much vain, stop yourself. Because this is what might happen next....

OUCH. Yeah, this is not a joke. And for a day I had to decide whether or not it was hilarious, or worth sobbing over. Well the good news is, I didn't sob and kept it together- but did have a few tears intermixed with the laughter. What else can you do but laugh when this happens to your child's head?? Not much. Except wish. Wish you'd listened to your inner conscious and stepped away when you should have. This is how the incident played out...

After a morning at Tata Karlie's (Aunt Karlie's) Carter was pretty well worn out. Poor little guy had been teething like crazy, was clingy, grumpy, and tearful all morning. I had gone over in the hopes that Kar would help me cut his hair because it had grown so long. She has cut Carter's hair in the past, and even Nate's and they looked rockin' so who could have seen this coming? The morning flew by and I decided maybe it was best to do it later when he wasn't so grumpy, and I should go put him down for his nap. With our 3 kids surrounding us in what someone might call chaos, I decided "What the heck. Let's get this over with. He won't be happy any time we cut his hair anyways." That was when I should have stopped- gotten things together- and said, maybe next time. Little cousin Ainsley wanted to help her mommy so badly that she was getting in all of the hair that was falling from carter's head (yuck) so Kar gently nudged her out the door and closed it to keep her from getting in a big mess. She didn't like that much, so her crying and waling joined Carter's creating a billowing throng of howls. Dean, the eldest of the three, sat in the dry bathtub throwing bath toys around and playing make believe. I am trying to talk over the noise of it all to calm Carter down, and Kar is being so sweet and doing her best to get it done quickly. On the VERY last stroke of his hair, to finish the haircut and send us on our way, the black comb on the clippers fell completely off, leaving nothing but the razor blade right next to my little man's head. In truth, we are lucky he didn't get cut. But you can imagine how both of us gasped and froze after we saw what had happened to his head!! 

I am still surprised by it every day. It reminds me of when my cat got fixed and had to be shaved. Or when she had a sore on her back that needed to be taken care of, so they shaved a patch of her fur off leaving her pink kitty scalp bare in the middle of her soft lovely coat. Yuck. Every time I look at Carter I have to remind myself that he's not hurt, and that he doesn't know the difference. This is my burden to bare haha After the initial shock wore off, Karlie managed an "Oh my gosh......I am SO sorry! This has never happened before!" and all I could muster was, "He's bald! It's BALD!" If you have seen Bride Wars, please refer to the "My hair is blue" line. It was fairly similarly said in my case. 

So, now we wait. We wait for his handsome hair to come back. The only regret I have now over this incident is that it hadn't been recorded. The grand prize with America's funniest home videos would surely have been ours!

A Saturday in Concord

There are so many amazing things to do in a town with so much history! And we ought to be doing them more often! But this Saturday we took the bull by the horns and just did it! Per my request, we visited THIS beautiful place-

Near the heart of downtown Concord, lived Louisa May Alcott and her family- the authoress of Little Women. I could not have been more excited to learn about her life and aquaintances and passion! Unfortunately, no photography was allowed inside because SO many of what was inside were their actual items! Furniture, paintings, personal items, and even some of the costumes Louisa made for their at home performances :) (You little women fans will love that-I did) I was amazed at the condition the house was in- so beautiful and all of their belongings so well kept. Incredible!

Ralph Waldo Emerson lived nearby and he actually helped the Alcott's purchase this home. What a pal!

This is a school that Mr. Alcott had built to help educate women and "colored" people of the day. It is right outside their home. They were an amazing family- all of them.

Sadly this is the extent of our photography, but everything inside was truly sensational! Sometimes I feel like I may have been born in the wrong era.....

So after our history lesson for the day, how better to wind down than with some ice cream? This shoppe in Concord is a personal favorite. So quaint, and cute! All homemade ice cream too!

"Reasons to be Cheerful" :) They'll give you a good 15-20 flavorful reasons.

Darling right? Lots of nights they feature live bands downstairs.

Moo loves his ice cream!

Love me some chocolate Ainsley face.

So a truly successful Saturday! So fun and so enlightening! I really enjoy seeing new places and living somewhere new and exciting! More adventures to come!

Blizzard of 2013

We survived!!! Well actually, After living in Utah, the winter in Concord has made me laugh from time to time. School is cancelled here at the drop of a hat or the drop of a few measley inches of snow. I don't remember hardly EVER having a snow day in Utah regardless of the awful conditions outside! Winter here has been really quite mild until the "Blizzard of 2013". So all weekend long the news covered the snowfall on most all channels, substituting "Well folks, the snow is officially knee deep at this point in time...it's sure freezing cold" for a good night of Dateline or Restaurant Impossible. So even though this big "Noreaster" storm did pummel us pretty good, it was very short lived, and much of it washed away by rain within a few days. Still, I feel I ought to document some of the great pictures that we got as a result. Dear Massachussetts residents, wish you could all have spent your winter in Utah this year. Then the 2013 blizzard would be more of a numbered occurrence :) Enjoy!

The snow did prevent us from opening our garage door or back door any and was at least a few feet tall only from a 36 hour storm.

But how can we complain when we get to put snow clothes on our cute kids and make them look even chubbier! 

Carter couldn't quite grasp the, "you sit on the sled-not lay down" concept :) Dean had some real ab workouts going on here!

Mush Ryan, Mush!!

Do Ignore my "pear" shaped body. My prego belly doesn't fit inside this coat anymore. Shoot....

And finally the warmin' up. Cutie pies.

Well, just a few snapshots to remember how cute the kids looked and how quickly the snow melted. But I won't complain! Bring on the Springtime!!