Since it is Valentine's Day, I'm stuck home sick and everybody else is posting about love, here is my lovey dovey story for the week.
We have never celebrated Valentine's Day.  In fact, I usually forgot about it being a holiday.  Aaron proposed on February 11th and that is lovey dovey day for the year.  This year was no different.  We had been wanting to try a new pizza joint in town for a while and it seemed like the perfect opportunity.  We dropped Kira off at the grandparents and headed to the restaurant.  As you may have noticed, food is a huge part of our relationship.  Scratch that.  Food is a huge part of my life.  My priorities go something like this: God, family, food.  They didn't have a huge menu but the kitchen was right in front of the bar so you could watch them make your pizza after ordered it.  We decided to try getting pizza by the slice so that we could try more varieties.  We tried pulled pork with fresh mango, a pizza that was loaded with all kinds of meat and no veggies, the mashed potato, bacon scallion, and finally a plain old, boring chicken and basil.  Super yummy!  We enjoyed talking about the flavors and discussing what we would change about each pizza.  The other big thing we did was find out our baby's gender together!  I had had an ultrasound earlier in the day and Aaron was unable to make it so I asked the technician to put the gender revealing picture with a caption in an envelope.  I enjoyed not knowing the gender with Kira but it was also special to get to find out with this one.  If we have more children, I can easily see us going back to not finding out.
We will be announcing the gender hopefully tomorrow night at a little party for family.  Unless Aaron gets sick or the roads become impassible with all the snow we are predicted to get today.  So keep an eye on facebook.
After we left the restaurant, Aaron said that he had an idea of something that he wanted to do.  He started driving down the street but I really didn't know where he was taking me.  He pulled up into the Hobby Lobby parking lot and presented me with a gift card.  He told me that I had to spend at least part of it tonight and I could buy whatever I wanted.  This is where things got really weird.
After being in the store for only about 5 minutes, the store manager approached Aaron and asked to speak to him in his office.  When Aaron asked him what it was about, the manager replied, "I'll tell you in my office.  It will only take a minute."  Aaron asked if I could come too and we set off to the back of the store.  The whole time we were walking there, I was sure that either we were 1. going to be accused of stealing something or 2. going to be given a huge prize since were the billionth customer.
When we got to his office, the manager pointed to his desk and said, "Can you explain this?"  Sitting there was a huge bouquet just like the ones Aaron gave me when I proposed.  I couldn't believe it!
After that excitement, our evening was rather uneventful.  We just took the flowers home since we were only a couple of minutes away and then went to Lowes to look at faucets and freezers before picking up Kira.  My biggest regret is not being able to take pictures since our camera battery was dead.

$1 DIY Maternity Skirt

Lately, I've been having a little problem: All of my skirts are starting to get too tight around the waist and all of my maternity dresses are still way too big.  On Sunday mornings, I only have a couple of skirts to choose from.  So I started researching ones that I liked on the internet.

I found several that I really liked such as this one from Motherhood Maternity.  This one costs around $25 bucks.  I thought about ordering this one or another like it but I decided to try to make my own first.  That way if it didn't turn out, I would only be a couple of bucks out and if it did work, then I would save tons of money.  

Since I was feeling so very motivated, I hurried to my fabric store and started looking through their clearance fabrics.  On their clearance rack, they had colors of the same fabric which were all originally marked $14.99.  I picked out the purple and the red since I was having a hard time deciding between the two.  When I got to the counter, I found out the purple was only $1.49/yd while the red was somewhere around $5/yd.  I quickly decided to start with the purple and see how it turned out before purchasing the red.  

I looked at some tutorials online for some inspiration but largely just ended doing my own thing.  I knew that I wanted it to be a pencil skirt since I didn't need to look large and flowy on the bottom since I already look that way on the top.  After about a day's work, here is what I came up with: 

After wearing it on Sunday, I decided that it is definitely not perfect but it will certainly do and it is extremely nice to have a skirt that actually fits.  

Price breakdown: 

Fabric $1.19

Elastic: Free because I already had it but I think it might have cost $1-2 when I originally bought it. 

Time: I had way too much free time that week so it worked out well for me. 

Seeds, Seeds and More Seeds

I'm obsessed with gardening at least for now.  Probably about June when I'm 9 months pregnant, I'll deciding that weeding and watering aren't so interesting.  For right now though, I'm officially obsessed.  I've decided to try something new: Organic and GMO-free.  I do not usually buy organic at the store simply because it is so expensive and I'm not super-anti-freak-out-mom who hates GMOs.  With that said, why not spend $.50 or less extra on a seed packet and get the organic and GMO free kind?  It seems safer and better with little effort and cost especially since I'm only buying a few packets.  I do plan on using some of the varieties of seed that I still have leftover from previous years which are not organic.
I've been poring over the Baker Seed Heirloom Seeds Company's website.  The real question is not should I buy cucumbers or zucchini, but what type of cucumbers?  Should I play it safe and get the same old, normal kind that looks like what you buy from the store?  I have an idea of how they should taste and what I can use them for.  Or should I branch out and buy something new, exciting, never been tasted, never been tried variety?

Here are some cool ones that I've found so far:

How about a dragon's egg cucumber?  If I had boys, I would totally buy this!

Or why not the Hmong red cucumber which is from Asia and primarily enjoyed by the Hmong tribe?

And finally, I present to you the Thai Petch Tsai cucumber which seeds were collected by the company directly from Thailand.  

And these are only the cucumbers.  You should try checking out the melons, tomatoes, peppers, etc.  Just be careful because you might end up catching the gardening bug.  

My Babies

Baby #1 - 17 months old

• Last night she pulled up to standing for her first time ever.  Ya, she's only about a 9 months behind other children.  We love her anyway. 
• She is learning so many new words and concepts.  She is just starting to put words together such as "Bye, bye, Dada."  Aaron and I think that we hear saying things like "Here you go" and "Where's Dada?" but we aren't 100% sure that she is actually saying these things.  Last night she learned the word for "apple" and "broccoli" all in the same meal.  We were proud to say the least. 
• She still isn't walking on her own but we insist that she walk all over our house all day long.  She seems to be improving and gaining confidence.  
• She is not a huge fan of chicken or beef but she absolutely loves pork and ham.  She would be willing to eat an entire meal consisting of only ham.  
• She was weaned in the past week and a half!  I won't publish all the gory details on the internet but basically she just became less and less interested until I just decided that it wasn't worth feeding her one meal a day if she was only going to eat for 1 minute.  

Baby #2 - 17 weeks 

• I finally had my first prenatal appointment and ultrasound.  We wanted to wait until after the New Year because any appointments in 2013 we had to pay out of pocket whereas all of 2014 appointments merely go to our deductible which we know we are going to reach. 
• Everything looks healthy and I feel quite fine.  My belly literally just popped out in the past day or so.  
• I'm sure I felt the baby move at 15 1/2 weeks but then right at 16 weeks I felt the baby kick me.  I haven't hardly felt anything since.  
• I was super blessed to be able to get my midwife again.  She recently started a teaching position and after accepting me and one other client, she decided that she no longer has time for her private practice.  God was so good to provide this! 
• My child supposedly weighs 5 oz.  I guess this explains my weight gain.  ; )  

I Would Never...

How many times in your life have you started a sentence with "I would never..." and then had to later eat your words?  It can apply to so many areas of your life. How you parent, what you think about others, lifestyle choices, etc. I think that the place I notice it the most is with my crunchy mama ways.  I find myself becoming more and more crunchy every day.  I think that part of the "problem" is that I have a lot of free time on my hands and a good internet connection so I'm always seeing good ideas online or feeling inspired by either the blogs I read or pinterest.  Here are just a few "I would nevers" that I definitely do. 

• I would never cloth diaper.  I distinctly remember telling my husband while I pregnant with Kira that while I was sure that cloth diapers were better for the environment, cheaper, and safer for babies, I did not want to use.  They were nasty.  I told my husband this in private and yet it seemed like the whole world heard me.  Literally the next day, a friend started telling me how she wanted to cloth diaper her child and how wonderful and easy it was, yadda, yadda, yadda.  And what do you know?  It didn't stop there.  Pretty soon the world ganged up on us and repeated told us of the many benefits of cloth diapering.  A couple of weeks later, I told my husband, "Well, I guess we're cloth diapering."  Overall, cloth diapering has been a good experience.  It has certainly saved us tons of money. Some weeks I get really tired of it but we keep plowing through.  
• I would never make homemade laundry detergent.  I remember hearing that the Duggers made their own laundry detergent and I thought it was weird and ridiculous...and then it became cool on pinterest/the entire internet.  Now I make my own detergent.  It takes me about 10 minutes every 2ish months and costs probably less than $1 a batch.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. 
• I would never make my own deodorant.  Seriously, that is nasty and weird.  I made my first batch about 2 months ago.  Sometimes I really like it and sometimes I really don't.  I'm not sure if I'll keep making it or not.  I do like not having to be concerned about getting cancer though.  
• There are lots of other things that I surprise myself by doing such as obsessively reading urban homesteading books, trying to convince my husband to make rain barrels, canning food, but I don't know that they were "I would nevers."  

What "I would nevers" have you been up to?    

Christmas Present Roundup

As is my custom, I made a few Christmas presents this year.  I didn't take a picture of all of them but here are a few.

This is a super easy arm-knit infinity scarf I made for my friend Kelsey.  I don't actually know how to knit but this scarf came together in about 30 minutes and it is super cute to boot.  I actually got a scarf like this in purple for Christmas and I love it!

I made my dad a case for his Kindle.  Lucky for me, our Kindles are exactly the same size so it was easy to make sure it would fit.   

This is the outside of the Kindle case. 

 

This is a creeper shirt I made for my brother Ethan.  I can't get the picture to rotate for some reason so you'll just have to admire it from this angle.  Apparently, a creeper is a character from a video game called Mine Craft.  I have never actually played it but my sister Sara suggested that Ethan would like it.  

As for my gifts?  Well, I have yet to actually open them all.  I did decide that I wanted an immersion blender for Christmas all of two days or so before the actual holiday.  As you can guess, I didn't get it...but I did get some money.  I'll give you three guess what I hope to spend it on.  

Vacation!

We just got back from a week long vacation in Florida.  My grandparents own a condo way down south.  Fortunately for us, they were having record highs which meant it was in the upper 70's-80's all week long.  The unfortunate part for us is that it takes 14 hours plus however long you stop.  After making it down there, we immediately decided to make the drive back in 2 days instead of trying to make it again in 1.

Kira took to the water like a fish and she kept laughing and saying hi to everybody the whole time she was in the pool.  She also liked putting her toes in the sand.  We spent everyday at the pool.  Aaron and Kira spent a lot of time swimming while I spent more time reading in the sun.  

We built this giant sand castle which was mainly masterminded by Aaron.  All I really did was decorate the thing.  Somebody had to help them.  

We went on a date.  I really wanted to have Greek food but we couldn't find a good Greek restaurant so we went to a restaurant that served Thai, Peruvian, and Japanese food.  We ordered a fresh spring roll as our appetizer. 

I ended up ordering ceviche which is a Peruvian dish just so I could try something new.  It came with these giant pieces of corn.  Besides the size of it, the corn wasn't anything spectacular and the main dish had so many red onions that I felt sick afterwards.   Aaron ordered Thai food and I wanted to eat his whole bowl.  

Right before we left, Aaron took Ethan and Zach to the Delorean dealership.  Today is our first whole day back and the high was only 27.  Eek.  We are freezing to say the least.