A place where you can get a decent plate of food
in the midst of unique surroundings 
that will be sure to terrify your children.
Ingrid happens to possess these qualities, and so she was an excellent candidate for a free birthday party this year. We knew that we weren't going to invite people over for her birthday, so we went to Downtown Disney for a family day last weekend instead. On her actual birthday, after a lunch of homemade macaroni and cheese (a favorite with Ingrid) and green beans, we took about 45 minutes (all this was accomplished on Jessie's lunch break) to have a little cake and presents celebration.
with homemade peanut butter icing.Then we progressed to the gifts, most of which had been handed down to us from friends a few months ago, and had been stored in the garage in anticipation of this day.
Some were pulled out of a large Williams Sonoma bag
some were wrapped in pink paper
and the last one was covered with a sheet
All have been thoroughly enjoyed ever since.
so we waited another day to take pictures
and it rained again.
I have definitely grown since 20 weeks.
Although I have a few inconvenient and uncomfortable pregnancy complaints, I think as a whole I am enjoying this pregnancy more than any of my previous pregnancies. The baby's movements are a constant reminder of the life growing inside me - that little person that I am so anxious to meet. I love the added anticipation of not knowing the baby's gender. I know some people really enjoy finding out early on, and calling their child by name throughout their pregnancy, and I can see how that would be great. But for me, I love the mystery surrounding this little person. The absolute knowledge that I will love whoever it is wholly and completely at first sight, regardless of gender.
Although I feel a sense of inevitability that this will be another girl (and I welcome that!), it is exciting to think about the what-ifs of it being a boy. I can't imagine adding a boy to this familly right now. We have such a great girl groove going on. There are a lot of side benefits of having children all of the same gender. I think about it a lot lately. They can always share bedrooms. They can be thrown into the tub together for baths indefinitely. When we went to the disney store on Saturday, we spent the entire time in the princess section, and no one complained. But I know if we have a boy we will embrace all the new experiences that come with it, and marvel at all we were missing out on.
However, for some unkown reason, I was feeling remarkably mellow as I began breakfast preparations yesterday morning, so as a result you are treated to the first (and quite likely also the last) edition of "Pimp my Pancakes".
I have a basic pancake recipe, and it should be noted that it is a quite good, decent little pancake recipe in and of itself. But somewhere in the course of things, this recipe ceased to be viewed as a recipe, and came to be viewed as more of a framework for bigger and {arguably} better things.
The most recent flavor of the week is "Banana Peanut-Butter Pancakes". They came about one morning when I had a couple of mushy bananas on my counter which needed to be used poste haste. They were an immediate hit, and since over-ripe bananas are hardly a thing that is in short supply around here, they have been made several times since, with further variations.
My basic no-fail dry ingredients for pancakes are these:
2 cups all purpose flour (or whole grain, or what have you) 2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt
On this occasion I added to the dry ingredients: 2 Tbs brown sugar, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, and roughly 3Tbs flaxseed meal just to make us feel good about ourselves (if you do not require flaxseed meal to make you feel good about yourself, than by all means, skip it).
I then mashed up one banana (although I sometimes use two, only one was to be had on this particular morning) and mixed in 1 tsp vanilla and 2 generous spoonfulls of organic peanut butter.
The other staple wet ingredients are 2 cups milk (feel free to substitute almond milk, or whatever) and two lightly beaten eggs. My original recipe calls for 1/4 cup of oil, but I do not use this, since the banana and peanut butter lend plenty of moisture to this version.
Throw the wet ingredients in with the dry and mix them up, and cook them up. Then slather with more peanut butter and drizzle with syrup or honey.
clear limeade/sprite based punch,
nautical themed cut-out cookies:
crackers with salmon salad garnish
"blessing book"
with little pockets on each page
into which we slipped cards with favorite bible verses
or blessings for the mother and new baby
our resident banner queen
made this awesome banner,
great for hanging in little James' nursery too.
this cake blew us all away with its cuteness,
and it was delicious too! we rounded out the theme with lots of nautical decor borrowed from different ladies' homes (not too hard to find in the state of florida)
lifesavers mints
bowls of goldfish were a last minute addition
(they come in multicolored,chocolate, honey graham, and pretzel varieties!)
Isabel arrives
i'm glad Agnieszka was brave enough
to cut that cake.
i certainly didn't want the job!
Isabel and one of her daughters
- four girls in this family-
first boy makes for a lot of excitement!
many thanks to all the ladies
who were a blessing on that day! I haven't posted much lately because as Jessie's editor-in-chief, I've been spending every spare computer-allocated minute editing wedding photos over the last few weeks. Jessie shot my brother's wedding in Washington state last month. What a beautiful state, and what a joy to witness two people who have sacrificed so much for each other finally see the fruition of all their work and waiting. After finishing the editing, I decided to go ahead and make his blog public (we created it a while ago, but hadn't spent enough time formatting it and uploading pictures to share it yet).
