Prayers for Cohen Button

I'm pretty sure the handful of people who read my little ol' blog are already apprised of Megan's story and are praying for sweet baby Cohen.

BUT, in the event that you do not please had here to read Megan's story!

Megan and I went to school together in our hometown, and I've enjoyed keeping up with her through the past year via the blogging world. Her journey through dealing with PCOS, (something way too close to my heart), and becoming pregnant with Cohen is pretty amazing. I'm not sure I would have the strength that she has had through all of it.

A couple of weeks ago they discovered issues with Cohen's heart that would require surgery when he is born. I cannot begin to imagine what it must be like to go through what they've been through in the past year.

Please join us in praying baby Cohen!

The new blog button for Cohen at the top right of my page is courtesy of Allison at designing woman, another sweet, talented PG alum, head over to her blog if you would like one of your own!

Jennifer

Winter Wonderland...Again?

The DFW area is currently under another winter weather advisory, I think the news said this is seventh time we've been under one this winter. If we get 2 more inches of snow tonight/tomorrow at DFW airport it will officially be the most snow the area has ever gotten. Ever.

I finally uploaded the pictures from the "big snow" a few weeks ago onto the computer today. I put some up after it had been snowing a few hours here, but these are the final results. Here's to hoping we don't wake up to this again in the morning!

I thought this picture was pretty cool. There's a park at the entrance to our neighborhood, this picture is from in our neighborhood looking out at the park, the building in the background is the club house to an an apartment complex across the street.

I realize these next few pictures are really blurry, but I wanted to show you something. Now, we live in the metroplex and therefore it never gets completely dark at our house courtesy of light pollution. Most of the time you really can't see the stars from our house, which is one of the things I really miss about living out where my parents live. It's odd to me to go from living somewhere you can see so many stars, to not being able to see any. Even though you really can't see the stars, because of the weird haze in the sky, it does get pretty dark.

These pictures, however were taken at about 3:00 a.m. (y'all know I'm a night owl), without the flash on, and without our outside lights on. They show just how bright it was all night long. It literally never got dark. It was the weirdest thing. Of course this could be completely typical for snowy nights, but I'm a Texas girl, and am unfamiliar with that! ;)


Thankfully even with a foot of snow on the ground, the roads still didn't get too bad around us, but Jonathan had a little trouble getting in the garage in the morning.
The car wouldn't budge past this point. He ended up having to park in the street out front until the snow on our driveway melted enough to get in the garage.

Seriously though, as much as I gripe about the snow, I really don't mind it (too much). I would rather it snow and be like 30-40 degrees outside than be like the second weekend in January when it was 11 degrees outside and we didn't get above freezing for 4 days, leaving the fountain that's in the first picture of this post looking like this:

Stay warm, and if we do happen to have another snow day, be safe!

Jennifer

Low Cal Dinner Recipe Series - Balsamic Chicken and Roasted Veggies

As promised today I'm beginning a series on our favorite low-cal/low-fat/healthy recipes. First up Balsamic Chicken and Roasted Veggies, (seen here with steamed broccoli, I have a weird thing about having to have at least 3 separate dishes on a plate).

I like this recipe for roasted veggies as an alternative to the normal roasted carrots, potatoes, and onions roasted veggie recipe as I'm trying to watch my starches. Every ingredient in this is in my SuperFoods book and if you've ever heard nutritionists say to eat a rainbow of colors of food, this dish definitely fits that bill! It's really easy, and the most time consuming part is chopping all the veggies, but even that doesn't take long. Since it takes 20 minutes to cook, I assemble it all and stick it off to the side, when I'm ready to cook my main dish, I pop the veggies in the oven, and they're usually ready right when the main dish is! It doesn't get better than that! :)


Roasted Veggies

Ingredients

1 red bell pepper - cored, seeded, and cut into strips
1 yellow bell pepper - cored, seeded, and cut into strips
1/2 large red onion, peeled and chopped
2 medium zucchini - sliced/chopped
1 medium yellow squash - sliced/chopped
8 ounces fresh mushrooms - sliced
4 cloves garlic - peeled, crushed
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp EVOO
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp dried tarragon

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Wash and chop all the veggies.

In a small bowl add crushed garlic, balsamic vinegar, EVOO, herbs, s & p; whisk to combine.

In a large bowl toss together all the veggies. Drizzle EVOO mixture over veggies, stir to combine.
Place the veggies in a baking dish or roasting pan and put in the oven.
Roast for 20 minutes or until tender and slightly browned, stirring several times. I forgot to take a picture of them when they came out of the oven, sorry!

Nutrition Facts: 3 servings. 95 calories, 5 grams fat per serving


Balsamic Chicken
Ingredients - ignore the toaster and decorative olive oil bottles in the background, you won't need those. ;-)

12 ounces chicken breast/tenders (If you use chicken breast, you may need to pound them flat, the tenders are fine as they are, I took them straight from the package into the pan)
1 + 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 a small red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup reduced sodium chicken broth
3 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
salt & pepper

Heat 1 tsp EVOO (is everyone ok with Rachael Ray slang?) in a large skillet, cook chicken breasts about 5 minutes on each side. Remove chicken from pan.


Add 2 tsp EVOO and red onion to the skillet and saute for 5 minutes or until onion is soft and semi-translucent.
Add chicken broth, balsamic vinegar and dried thyme-cook until the liquid reduces by a third. Add the chicken back to the pan and heat through.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

Nutrition Facts: 2 Servings. 245 calories, 5 grams of fat per serving

Dinner is served. 397 calories for the entire plate.

Just a note, Balsamic vinegar turns the food pretty dark, don't think you burned something if it's dark-that's normal!

Oh, and also, if you wanted to turn the balsamic chicken into a pasta dish it would be really easy. Cook your pasta of choice as directed on the package. After you've removed the chicken from the pan and added the onion and garlic, when the onion and garlic is about halfway cooked add some mushrooms (if you like them) and some chopped tomatoes or whole grape tomatoes. Saute them for about a minute and then continue with the recipe as written. After you've added the chicken back to the pan add in the pasta and some parmesan or feta cheese. Then you have a yummy pasta dish.

Enjoy!
Jennifer

P.S. It's hard to take pictures of food, sorry some of these are so bad!

Lazy, Rainy Weekend

Just as I predicted, we have had a super lazy weekend. I didn't sleep well last night, (thanks in part to some drunk guy who kept calling my cell phone until I turned it off at 4:15 a.m.), so husband and I went to Sunday School but skipped church in favor of a nap.

This afternoon the rainy, dreary day kept us inside, but I did manage to work on one sewing project that I'm super excited about! My sewing machine messed up when I was about 70% done, so if I can get it to work tomorrow I'll do a post about the project tomorrow. Who knows, I might post about it even if I don't finish it, it's that cute! ;)

Last week my goal was to do a blog post every day, because I tend to be such a slacker in that department, and I did pretty well. I thought this week I would give y'all a break from reading about our boring lives and try to do a series of posts about some of our favorite low-cal/low-fat recipes. Anyone interested? If so, I'll probably start with that tomorrow too! I like having these mini-goals and things to do! ;) Plus, if I have to blog about cooking, it means I actually have to cook instead of eating at Blue Goose like we did tonight!

Jennifer

Well, I Feel Stupid...

So, I found all the papers I was looking for.

Would you like to know where they were?

In the top drawer of my dresser. As in the dresser drawer I open everyday to get my socks out. Yeah, I feel really stupid. After going through every drawer, cabinet, box, and any other storage space in our house, I found everything while getting a pair of socks out. You may now have a good, hearty laugh at my expense. I told you I knew I didn't "hide" them very well.

Anyway, I did find some interesting things while searching the house for the papers, (some of these I knew about, I'd just forgotten, some were a total surprise).

1. We have 42 full-size bath towels.
I am not kidding. We both had quite a few when we got married and they were still in good condition, we got a ton of towels for wedding presents, (most of which we did not register for), and we have a couple that match each of the 5 shower curtains we have that are primarily for decorative purposes. I knew we had a lot-they fill up the cabinets under both of our bathroom sinks and the guest bathroom sink. I just didn't realize we had that many. Is that a little excessive for 2 people?

2. 4 articles of clothing I've never worn and still had the tags attached!

3. 2 tubs of old t-shirts from high school and college, including several Mission Team shirts, 1stex shirts, april madness shirts, and my student body shirt. I really need to find someone to make one of those quilts out of all these, or just get rid of them so they're not just taking up (a lot of) space.

4. A book on learning to knit complete with knitting needles that I was looking for a couple of weeks ago.

5. My hiking boots, which made me miss Arkansas. :(

6. The floor of our closet. haha


Oh, and in case you're wondering what in the world was so important that I would spend so long searching. The envelope contained our marriage licenses, social security cards, and the title to the truck. See why I was so anxious to find it?

I hope you all have a great weeked! Our's will be pretty low-key I'm sure. Husband is at his 5th night of work right now. I know that doesn't seem bad, but keep in mind he works 12 hour shifts, (which are actually 13 hours, I still don't know why they call them 12 hour, whatever), so by tomorrow morning he'll have worked 60+ hours this week. The hospital has just been crazy busy this week, they're full and have had lots of surgeries every day. They actually called earlier to see if he would work tomorrow night too! He drew the line at that, (thankfully). 5 nights he can handle, 6 is just insane. So, after his week I'm pretty sure we'll just lay low this weekend.

Jennifer

Warmer Weather Ahead

SO excited that the high for tomorrow will finally be above 50 degrees! It was right around 50 today, but I didn't want to chance it and not have the paint dry correctly. But, tomorrow I will most likely be in the garage for a couple of hours so that hopefully our dining room chairs will no longer look like this:


And this desk:

Which I managed to get sanded and primed before my parent's came to visit, will no longer be just super-bright primer white! (btw, this picture is from our old apartment, the desk has a new home in our current house)

Why, yes, I do realize I'm way too excited by all this. It's just driving me crazy to have all these unfinished projects. I'm ready to be done with these so I can get started on our "new" coffee table I mentioned last week.

Jennifer

Mystery Solved

So, like many of you, with the beginning of the new year, we started trying to eat better and get in better shape. Well, since this started my weight has been slllooowwwly creeping down, while my husband, who didn't really need to lose weight, has been dropping it like crazy! Don't you hate that?!

Are you ready for an old-school photo? Well, this is the oldest one I have of the husband and I on this computer. Sadie Hawkins 2002 - I told you it was old-school!!


See, when we met he was overweight, and while I thought I was huge at the time, (love to be that 'huge' now, btw), I was about average size, certainly not grande like I am now.

Over the years, thanks to eating crappy food and not exercising enough in college, and the crazy hormones thanks to pcos, my weight gradually increased.

Meanwhile, husband through working summer jobs during college, an increased interest in running, and eating dinner with me which was a LOT more healthy than eating say three McDonald's cheeseburgers for dinner, like he did before we met, had lost about 50 pounds from the time we met until the time we moved last summer.

Some pictures of us through the years that may help illustrate what I'm talking about... Just to let y'all know, I'm not proud of some of these so this proves how much I love y'all. ;)

This is us at my grandparent's 50th anniversary party in December 2005. Between the two pictures I'd probably gained 20 pounds and he's lost about 30.

Here we are about a year later at our wedding. Shortly after we got married my ob/gyn changed my birth control to help decrease some of the side effects of pcos, mainly weight gain, and horrible skin. It succeeded in helping me gain 15 pounds. in. one. month. Yes, you read that right. I was absolutely miserable and felt terrible the entire month. At the end of the month I went back to the kind I'd taken for years before, but the 15 pounds weren't as easy to get rid of.

This TERRIBLE picture was taken in October of 2007 and I look awful. I was exhausted from working overtime and being stressed constantly. I was pale and fat and miserable. I think this was days before I put in my two week notice at my office job, I just couldn't take looking/feeling like that anymore. I hate all pictures of me from our first year of marriage because they pretty much all look like this. I look terrible and Jonathan who'd just started running looks pretty handsome.



By the next year at my sister-in-law's graduation, I was finally feeling more like myself again, but still hadn't lost any weight. Husband was still about the same size and weight, but had toned up considerably by running at least 3 miles a day. I went to the gym every day with him, but still stayed the same weight. Explain that to me?


This is us last summer about a month before we moved. We're both a little smaller, but I thought he looked tiny then.

Anyway, now that you've been brought up to speed. In the past month or two husband has lost about another 10 pounds. It's absolutely crazy! We've really been trying to figure out exactly how he's lost that much that quickly. He pretty much sleeps about 8-9 hours a day, gets up, showers, does his quiet time, checks his email and eats, leaves for work, works 12 hours in which he eats more than I eat in three days, comes home, showers, and goes to bed.

He's not running like he used to and hasn't been to the gym in over six months. We eat healthy meals for dinner, but in addition to his 'lunch' he eats around midnight, he also snacks all night long.

Not really my idea of a successful weight loss plan, that's for sure. I'm pretty sure if I did it I would probably gain 10 pounds a month instead of lose 10 pounds in a month!!

Well, a few weeks ago husband joined a walking group at work that the hospital is sponsoring. Pretty much they keep up with how much they walk and get incentives when they reach a certain levels of miles walked. Sounds easy enough. He joined because he doesn't have time to go to the gym or run anymore, and he felt like since we moved here, this job isn't as active as his last one and he felt like he was sitting around a lot all night at work.

As a part of the walking group they were issued pedometers that they could wear at work and keep up with exactly how far they walk every night. Last night was the first night that he actually programmed the thing correctly and wore it to work. He had a little busier than average night, and therefore didn't have time to walk laps with the walking group. He said it wasn't the slowest night he's ever had, but certainly wasn't the busiest.

So, would you like to venture a guess as to how much he walked last night?

FOUR AND-A-HALF MILES!!

Even he was shocked that it was that much! So, we figured if that's about an average for him, he's probably burning somewhere between 500 and 1,000 calories every night while he's at work. Therefore, the low calorie dinners we've been having probably don't last very long. I've been buying baked chips and crackers, cliff bars, granola, trail mix, and sugar free pudding and jell-o for his snacks, so he's not taking in too many calories that way either.

No wonder he's loosing weight!!

Mystery solved.

Don't you just hate how guys lose weight so easily?

Jennifer

My Daddy-O's the Big 5-0

Actually his birthday isn't for a couple weeks still, but we celebrated early. And yes, I realize my parent's are super young, (my mom's actually two years younger than my dad). But, hey they've been married for almost 30 years, so I guess there's something to be said for young love. Anyway...

Last weekend my parents were in the area for a bi-annual conference thing my dad has to go to for work twice a year. Well, my mom decided to tag along and they could stay with us for the whole weekend instead of rushing around for a day or two and staying in a hotel room.

My dad's kind of touchy about big birthdays so my mom and I concocted a little plan to have a small dinner party for him. I invited all our Dallas area family, which amounts to my aunt and uncle, my cousin Sarah her boyfriend Jason, and my brother James and Eddi to our house for dinner.

When my dad left to go to the conference-thing-y (I should probably pay attention a little more when he talks about his job), my mom and I got to work cooking. We made two big lasagnas, salad and a trifle with chocolate pound cake, pudding, whipped cream and chocolate sauce, (ok, so my mom really made that and I don't actually know what all was in it, but it sure was good!).

We told my dad we were having spaghetti for dinner, so when he got back to our house in the afternoon, it wouldn't be weird for us to be in the kitchen making a spaghetti-type sauce. Just as we suspected, he laid down to take a nap before dinner, and when he woke up dinner was ready and everyone was there! Surprise on him!

It was fun because he definitely didn't expect anything. The day before he had been bragging to us all day about how the people at work were thinking his birthday was a day after it actually was, and none of his kids were going to be in town to harass him and throw him a party on his actual birthday. haha

So, here are a very few pictures of that night. I really need to get better at taking pictures when people are over at our house, but I'm usually too busy trying to be a good hostess.


First, a weird picture of me cooking. The husband took this one, which is why he's generally not allowed to touch the camera. Not a great picture, but he thought it was cute, so I included it. Begrudgingly...



This is my aunt Nancy tying a set of balloons to a dining chair. Can you see how bad the other chair looks, I told you they were horrible, because I can't finish them until it gets warmer! I also picked the wrong time to take all the pictures off that dining room wall and move them around, it looks terrible all blank and white with one sad painting on it. :(

Oh, and I also forgot that Miss Kitty is TERRIFIED of balloons! She ran away hissing and hid under our bed all night long. She was still irritated by them the next morning, so I had Jonathan pop them so she would stop freaking out.



Dessert. I really wish I knew what all my momma put in this thing. I think it's just chocolate pound cake with a chocolate and some kind of liquor sauce poured over it, vanilla pudding, repeat, homemade whipped cream and chocolate shavings on top. Delish.


My Aunt Nancy got him a big bag of over the hill joke gifts. This was a cane that had dentures, a magnifying glass and other jokes all over it.



Using his joke hearing-aid.


I don't remember what the hat said and sorry these pictures are so dark, I can't read it. He's holding a cd that was full of 'old timer' songs, but I think that joke kind of back-fired on him, he actually liked most of them. Go figure. ;)

After my aunt and uncle left and the 'old man' went to bed, my mom, James, Jonathan and I stayed up playing Scrabble.

I don't remember how this started, but somehow we all ended up laughing so hard at them with their 'goggles' on. Weird, I know.

James made me take a picture of the Scrabble board. Oh, yeah, and I won. :)

A pretty low-key early surprise birthday dinner, but it was really nice. I really wish I would have actually taken more pictures of people though. :( Oh, well.

Jennifer

Change of Plans

Today I was going to go the gym,


go to the grocery store,

and the post office.


Instead, I think I'll stay in;

light a fire in the fireplace,


make beef stew, and read my library books.**

Maybe I should start taking the weatherman seriously


when he predicts snow.

Seeing as this is at least the 5th time it's snowed this winter.


Not looking forward to husband having to go to work tonight. Stupid hospitals that don't get snow days.

Jennifer

**Oh, and the table the library books are sitting on is my next project! We bought a coffee table off Craig's List for $5 last night! Since I can't paint because of the cold I'd planned on starting on the coffee table today, but I can't get out to get the stuff I need for it. So, go ahead and add it to my unfinished project file, and hopefully one of these days it'll warm up enough for me to finish them all!**

Where Did the Last Two Weeks Go?

I can't believe it's been so long since I posted last!!

If you can remember WA-AY back two weeks ago to my last post, I think we've come to our final conclusion on the bedroom furniture situation...

Thanks to everyone's advice we're definitely going to go with the king-size bed, and we're 99% sure we're going with the iron bed frame too.

P.S. Thank you all for siding with me! I was trying to make my post as impartial as I could so that I could get your real opinions, but I was definitely pulling for the iron bed!!

I talked to a salesperson at our Pottery Barn in town this weekend, to see if they had an iron bed on display at any of their stores, so we could see one in person before we ordered. Turns out, they don't have any of their iron beds in any store! I think that's kind of crazy, I guess we'll just take our chances and order one from the catalog and hope all turns out well!

And we found an unfinished furniture store in Plano that had some really great dressers, so we'll probably get our dressers from there and finish them ourselves.

Speaking of finishing furniture, the dining chairs STILL aren't finished!! It was tons of fun to have company this weekend and have unfinished chairs, let me tell you! If the freaking weather would cooperate, they would be done, but no! Did you know that you're not supposed to paint when the air temperature is below 50? Well, considering it hasn't gotten anywhere close to that in the past week and a half, and most of the days it's been raining too, the chairs are still unfinished. I'm not happy about it. I'm determined to not start on the table until I'm done with the chairs, so I'm just at a stand still.

Is anyone else ready for spring (or SUMMER?!)?

Jennifer