A little bump and how much Adam loves sports

That cute baby in my tummy (well, I haven't actually seen him yet, but I'm assuming he's downright adorable, obviously!) went through a growth spurt these past two weeks. I think my tummy is finally leaning towards being more of a baby-bump rather than a large Thanksgiving meal that I just ate. No, we don't know the gender yet but it's easier to call the baby a "him" rather than an "it," plus the poll says I'm going to have a boy so it must be right. I can't feel him move yet but sometimes I can feel internal organs around him protesting at being squished when he starts dancing around. 

Here is the sorta-bump:

And here it is when I have terrible posture, which is probably most of the time anyway:

Yes, a definite bump, I think.

Adam recently finished coaching a middle-school soccer team in Spanish Fork. He LOVED coaching these boys and would come home from their games telling me all about how proud he was of his boys! 

And this week, Adam got second place in the Wiffleball Home-run Derby at BYU and first place for the farthest home-run hit. He was stoked! Wiffleball is one of his all-time favorite games. Our child will be kicking soccer balls and hitting wiffleballs long before he can even talk and I'm positive his first word will be "ball," thanks to his athletic dad. Even if it's a girl I'm sure it won't be any different.

Some of the latest drawings for Laura:

"The Greatest Thing Ever Invented"

I don't know if this is something that lots of people have already heard about or not, I just heard about it at work last Friday. It's called StumbleUpon.com. It's kind of ridiculously awesome. According to Oprah it is "the greatest thing ever invented." I don't know about that, but it is definitely worth checking out if you never have before. So, what you do is go to stumbleupon.com and they will give you a list of topics and you select the ones that you are interested in, such as: dance, baseball, Brazil, cooking, fashion, quizzes, science, etc. Then you click the button "Stumble" and it will start taking you through some of the coolest websites related to any and all of the topics you chose. So after you are finished with one website you click "stumble" and it will take you to a new website, maybe with a movie  of some funny thing related to one of your topics, or to a website that has awesome selections of music that are similar to types of music you mentioned liking in your interests. Every page is completely different. Some are awesome and some you barely skim over before moving on. It's kind of hard to explain, you sort of need to just try it out. It's definitely worth the time. And very addictive.  It's kind of like Pandora but with EVERYTHING on the internet. Here are some examples of web pages we've stumbled across:

Glow in the dark dancers

Genius Test

10 Best Ad Campaigns

Awesome Milk Trick

Tastespotting.com

Street Art

Logic Test

Nigel the Fish Turns One!

Last night we celebrated Nigel's first birthday! He's probably about 27 in fish years. Nigel, obviously, loved the party, his favorite part was watching the flame on the candle that I stuck into his lemon pudding cake. And his favorite gift was the water purifying solution I got him!

Yes, there is candy surrounding his bowl, he likes looking at colors (trust me, he really does).

Happy birthday, Cute fish!

This blog is a little messed up

Oh dear, this blog went a little crazy with blogger going down today. Hopefully I'll figure out how to fix it and get the poll up again (heaven forbid the poll not be up!). If you know any tricks on how to fix blogs, I would appreciate any suggestions!

Boy or Girl?

When we first found out that we were pregnant, one of the very first things Adam asked me was, "Can I make the poll on our blog for people to vote on the baby's gender?" He has been asking me every single week if he could put the poll up, and finally I gave in. There's about five weeks left until we go in for the ultrasound to find out the gender. Originally I wanted a boy and Adam wanted a girl, but we keep switching back and forth all the time, and really, we can't lose either way. So now the poll is up and Adam will probably be checking it every day to see if at least one more person has cast in their vote, so if you feel so inclined to contribute your opinion, please do!

Yummy food

Most of you probably don't care at all about what I had for dinner recently, but just in case you are like me and always on the hunt for good dinner recipes, I thought I'd share a few yummy things we had this week and where I found the recipes.

Shrimp Fried Rice

I got this recipe from Joylicious. To be perfectly honest, I adjusted this recipe quite a bit, but I used this as a guide to get to there, and it was definitely the yummiest shrimp fried rice I've ever had!

Cheesy Stuffed Baked Ziti

This came from Picky Palate. I followed this recipe pretty closely and it was very yummy! 

Chocolate Fondue 

(picture from smittenkitchen.com)

Lately my pregnant tummy has been able to handle desserts with fruit in it, so Adam got me the most wonderful Oregon Strawberry Tillamook ice cream (from WinCo) and I made some hot fudge sauce to go on top. Adam's mom gave me this recipe, she uses it for their annual fondue party each New Years, but I like to just use it as hot fudge sauce on ice cream. You know Mrs. Richardson's hot fudge sauce that you can buy at the store? The one that comes in a jar and is super thick and delicious? This sauce is like that.

Baked Spinach dip mini bread bowls

And these I haven't made yet (they are on the menu for later this week), but don't they look like they could be yummy? They are also from Picky Palate.

Meyer Lemon Pudding Cakes

These are also on the menu for this week. The recipe is from Formerchef.com.

A post for Thursday

Looking at so many cute blogs has made me realize how terribly designed my blog is, so I attempted to fix it. But blogger is sometimes tricky to work and find just what you want (or more likely, it's just my own incompetence at using the blog designing features, but I'd much rather blame it on the blog). Oh well, at least the fuzzy picture at the top is gone. One thing that many cute blogs seem to have is a custom-made blog title at the top. I'll start working on making one...maybe (after I've made the baby sling, doll, bow ties, nursing cover and pictures for the baby's wall, of course). 

I made grilled balsamic bruschetta chicken sandwiches for dinner tonight (from Picky Palate). They were pretty much amazing. I think Adam fell even more in love with me when he took his first bite.

Why are blogs so fun to look at? I love reading about the lives of people I don't even know, how weird is that? And looking at the pictures on blogs is like eye-candy. And why is it so interesting to see photos of what people wore that day? I really don't know. 

From Coco & Kelley.

I love the arrow on the right, pointing down to the baby. I certainly wouldn't have noticed the baby without that arrow.

From Bleubird Vintage

Is it bad that I kind of like messes like this? I call them organized messes because everything is supposed to be that disorganized, that's how it looks best, so it's intentional, but it's still a mess. Kind of like the Bennett's home in the Kiera Knightly version of Pride and Prejudice, they have lots of organized messes in their home. I'm not sure quite Adam likes these organized messes very much.

From Design is Mine.

Just a cute skirt:

From Bleubird Vintage

From A Beautiful Mess.

Blogs galore!

A while ago I found this list for the top 150 most popular blogs. I've been going through the blogs on the list, and so many of them are amazing! And a lot of them have links to even more blogs that are amazing! It's like wandering through this endless, wonderful blog world. You could spend endless hours looking at all the beautiful pictures and stories and ideas and tutorials found in these blogs. I haven't even made it 1/3 of the way through the list, but I already have some particular favorites. 

The author of A Beautiful Mess is a dress designer (I'm pretty sure) and she occasionally posts pictures of what she is wearing, and it's always these adorable vintage dresses.

And I love the "Images of Inspiration" that Design is Mine puts up.

And the blog Oh Joy led me to the blog Picky Palate and this recipe for mozzarella stuffed meatballs. Now, I'm not really a good judge of what sounds yummy to eat these days, because my pregnant tummy has very strange ideas about what sounds good, but I think these meatballs look heavenly!

Have fun blog browsing!

Winter time and future children

So, we woke up to snow on the ground again yesterday morning. Awesome. It's cold here. We rode the scoot to church today because it was at the Marriot center and we were afraid it would be hard to find a good place to park with a car. After church we hurried home so that we could get into our warm house faster. Adam said, "we should sit by the fireplace." So we did! We put in the DVD ("Cozy by the Fire") that my parents made for us for christmas (on our new enormous t.v. that our ridiculously nice neighbors gave us) and Adam warmed up his hands. And we ate yummy spiced pumpkin bread that I made yesterday. I think we somehow skipped over summer and are back at fall time again. I'm ready to turn the Christmas music on. 

In church I drew pictures of our future children (I know, I'm a little bit kid/baby crazy right now, I'm sorry!). Adam is a little obsessed with the picture. He kept looking over my shoulder at the drawing with this huge-o grin on his face. He especially likes the drawing of little Ella (second from the right), she already has Adam wrapped around her little pinky. I had names written under each of them but the names are currently under controversy. And please note that each of the boys has a bow tie, that's important.