Christmastime

RAOK # 4-9

RAOK #4
A girl from church's husband is deployed, so I offered to babysit her kids so she could get some kid-free shopping done. Her boys are so sweet, but another crawler in the house is crazy! I couldn't handle crawling twins. ;)

RAOK #5
I took out the recycling for my husband. All I can say is YUCK! Thank you, honey, for making that your responsibility every week!

RAOK #6
I asked the person in charge of costumes for our Christmas Cantata at church if she needed any help. She asked me to make the pregnant belly for Mary, so I'm in charge of that. Blog post coming soon on how to make a fake pregnant belly!

RAOK #7
While at the mall today, I went into Hallmark with a coupon for $5 off a $10 purchase. I saw a middle-aged man looking very out of place as he shopped the figurines. I asked if he could use the coupon, and he, of course, said yes. Hopefully I helped him save some money for buying a gift for a special lady.

RAOK #8
Target has had a coupon for a $10 gift card when you spend $50. I was in the infant's section and saw a couple about my age buying a stroller/car seat system, so I asked them if they could use it.

RAOK #9
I mailed my friend a pack of Kroger coupons, some of which included free items.

These random acts of kindness are so much fun! It's awesome to see a smile on people's faces!

BBQ Chicken Pizza

So I made BBQ Chicken Pizza tonight, totally homemade!

Since one of my goals this month is to make all of our breads homemade, I even made my own pizza dough.

I started with this recipe.

The rest of my ingredients were:
Cooked, diced chicken, about 1-1/2 cups
BBQ sauce
Mozzarella cheese
Parmesan cheese
Colby/Monterey jack blended cheese
Diced onion

Once the dough had doubled in size, I just sprinkled a pan with corn meal, and stretched it to fit my pan. (The pan I used it 14x10 inches.)

Like this...


Then I brushed my dough with BBQ sauce. I tossed the chicken in some BBQ sauce to coat it and then put it on top. Next, I added all my cheeses. I know I don't have amounts on here becuase it's totally up to you and how much you love cheese. If you want a ballpark figure though, I'd say around 1 cup per kind of cheese. After the cheese, I just sprinkled the onions on top and a tiny bit more BBQ sauce to make it look pretty and popped it in a 400 degree oven for about 20-25 minutes, when my crust was golden and my cheese was bubbly and slightly browned.

Here's the finished product. YUM!

22 Weeks

I had a regular appointment today. Everything looks great. I have another appointment in 4 weeks, and then I'll be going every 2 weeks already. This pregnancy is flying by! They said at my ultrasound last week, baby boy was 12 oz. How sweet is that??? He's currently in the 22nd percentile for size. But, she said the later on in pregnancy is when babies differentiate more in size, so at my ultrasound in February, we can look at his size and get a better idea to how he compares with other babies. I'm fine if he wants to stay little while he's in there though!!

He constantly let's me know he's doing well with kicks and turns. He was a stinker for the dr though while she was trying to get his heartbeat. He kept moving and kicking her! Do we have another feisty child on the way? We already have two; isn't that enough?!

All of the sudden this week, I have been getting terrible lower back pain if I'm doing any kind of activity that could be possibly marked as lightly physical. Even doing laundry and picking up the baskets will make my back hurt for the rest of the day. They gave me some exercises I could do so hopefully that will help alleviate some of it. 

I gained 6 pounds since my last month's appointment. I was trying to stick to the "1 pound per week" rule, but that apparently didn't happen. They aren't worried about it though because even with the 6 pound gain, I'm only at 1 pound over my pre-pregnancy weight. I guess that explains why I still fit in my pre-pregnancy jeans with the button rubber banded closed!

RAOK #1, 2 and 3

ROAK #1
My first RAOK took place on Thanksgiving. I decided I wanted to show the local fire station how much we appreciate them, especially because of the fact that someone always has to man the station. They don't always get Thanksgiving off to spend with their family because they have to be at work to keep us all safe.

So I baked a pumpkin pie, and after dinner we all went up there to give it to them and say 'thank you.'

We didn't expect it, but the firefighter who answered the door when we showed up blessed us too! He let us come inside and showed Hunter the fire truck and let him sit in it.

He loved it!! We were very appreciative.

I hope the pie we brought let the firemen know we really appreciate them.



I hope the pie we brought let the firemen know we really appreciate them.

ROAK #2
While grocery shopping at Harris Teeter last night, I discovered that someone (or some people) decided to leave their expired coupons on the shelves throughout the store instead of throwing them away. Whenever I saw some, I picked them up and disposed of them myself.

ROAK #3
It was after 10pm when we finished, and the majority of the grocery carts were already collected and in the front of the store, so I took ours back up with the rest of them.

November Goals Recap and December Goals

Well, to recap November, I basically was a big fat failure...

*Study 5 days a week in 1 Corinthians. I studied...but not 5 days a week.
*See a movie with Gregory. Wow, I totally forgot this one was even on here...we just didn't have the money though.
*Continue making bed. I did do this, but not as well as I would like.
*Stick to our budget again. It's pretty easy to do when there isn't too much money to budget with! ;)
*Clean at least 15 minutes per day, excluding Sundays. I discovered the FlyLady in October, and I'm trying to implement her suggestions to get in a good cleaning routine before I have three little munchkins. Total fail...I didn't keep up with cleaning like I'd like. Boo.
*Do (at least) one load of laundry per day, excluding Sundays. It stresses me out when I let it pile up and I have a ton to do at one time. Fail...didn't do it every day. I did do it majority of days though!
*Memorize (really memorize) at least 4 Bible verses. SUCCESS! I am very proud that I did this one. I memorized
Philippians 4:6-7
Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, present your requests unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

1 Timothy 2:11
Let the woman learn by silence with all subjection.

Ephesians 4:29
Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.

God definitely used one of the verses to convict me too...so they're doing their job!

So...I definitely get an F for my November goals...I think part of my problem is that a lot of my goals are daily ones...and if I miss one day out of the whole month simply because it was an off day, I failed...and then I get mad at myself and don't even want to continue.

I need a solution to this. I think I'm going to give myself weekends off, and hopefully that will help me be much better.

So here goes...
December Goals
*Complete all of my 25 Random Acts of Kindness.
*Study 5 days a week in 1 Corinthians.
*Make a weekly to-do list, and complete it! I learned a while ago that a weekly list is way better than a daily one. I'm much more successful with this.
*Do at least one load of laundry 5 days out of the week.
*Memorize at least 2 more verses, and still remember the last 4.
*Homemake any bread-like side (sandwich bread not included) that I serve to my family. I really want to weed out trans fat from our diet, and store bought bread, cinnamon rolls, etc. really have so much of it. So I will homemake all that stuff. I do have one more package of store-bought cinnamon rolls that I'll serve, but after that, it'll all be homemade. I made homemade dinner rolls last night so we're off to a good start!

21 Weeks

I'm tired. I'm so tired. (And I think this week's picture shows it.) And this might have a little bit to do with staying up too late at night (which will probably result in a new December goal) but I have to think the pregnancy plays at least a little part in it!With the extreme fatigue has come my pregnancy RLS. This is very discouraging since it wasn't until months from now that I got it with Kylee! I need to try to get to bed at a decent hour to see if it helps it because I just want to cry when it sets in as I am trying to sleep.

In other news, I had a stranger comment about the pregnancy this week...I think that may have been the first one. We were all checking out at Target and the cashier asked Hunter if mom and dad went on vacation. I was actually surprised it didn't make me mad since my sister tells me I overreact when I'm pregnant. But I just thought it was funny!

I have officially lost my feet if I look down. I even had pointy heels on last night and couldn't see the ends of those either.

Gregory got to feel the baby kick this week for the first time! That's always exciting. :)

Baby *boy* has me craving anything sweet...this is not good during Christmastime! I'm trying to fight it and remember I want a small baby! I have been wanting to bake cookies galore but don't want to eat them all myself!

My next appointment is Wednesday so we'll see if I've been doing well with saying no to sweets and have steady weight gain...