It's a bird... it's a plane....

IT'S A BABY!!!

We are pregnant! Sean and I are so excited. :) We both want lots of kids, if the Lord wills. We can't wait to see what our baby will look like... or rather, WHOM our baby will look like. It's such a privilege and blessing, and we are already blown away at how much we love our baby!

This is our little guy at approximately 10 weeks. He/she already has little fingers and toes, a beating heart (which started around 20 days), organs, teeth buds, circulatory system, developing brain, mouth and tongue, own blood type, eyes and nose, arteries and veins. He/she can wiggle, hiccup, squint, open his jaw, move his tongue, and flex his toes.

What a miracle! We are so thrilled to be able to participate in this act of creation with God, who orchestrates our days! We are trying to remember each day that God has given us this gift, and He is in control. I am doing my best to eat well and take care of my body. That means no more raw cookie dough.... lots of fruits and veggies.... lots of water... no high-risk activities like skiing or high-altitude hiking... and lots of vitamins. We know that no matter what happens, whether our baby is perfectly healthy, or has life-threatening struggles; whether this baby even makes it to full-term and life outside the womb; we know that God is good and sovereign and loves us so much.

Stay tuned for more photos and updates!

Homemade Peanut Butter Cups!

These delectable treats were fairly easy to make! Melt some semisweet chocolate chips, milk chocolate bar, and peanut butter for the outer layer... cream together peanut butter, a couple smidges of butter, and confectioner's sugar for the filling... spoon a teaspoon of chocolate into mini muffin papers, add a scant teaspoon of PB mixture, and top with another teaspoon of chocolate. Cool in fridge until set (doesn't take long). How hard can it be?! This recipe is definitely a keeper! Sean loved them, and ate each one in one big gulp.

At bottom left are completed cups; middle/right is the halfway point, and the top left/far right column cups have just the initial dollop of chocolate. Now, they may not be as uniform-looking as Reese's cups... but they definitely taste just as good, if not better! And the recipe made 3 dozen, so we are set for awhile. I asked Sean if he wanted to take some to work, and he replied with an emphatic no. :)

Yummmmmm! Happy Valentine's Day, baby! I love you.

Shepherd Pie

I was in the mood for some shepherd pie a few days ago (so much for making a menu ahead of time), and after looking at a few recipes on allrecipes.com, decided to wing it. Most recipes had similar ingredients, and there seemed to be two main variations: chicken with cream of chicken soup as a base, or beef with tomato sauce and worcestershire sauce. I will have to try the beef/tomato kind next time! This time, however, we went with chicken, since we had more of that in the freezer.

It would have been nice to have some already-cooked and cubed chicken on hand, but all I had was raw, frozen chicken (someday I will be uber efficient and cook up a huge batch after we have our big stock-up grocery trips-- it would be great for ground beef, too!). Sean was very patient and waited the hour or so it took me to prepare this, with thawing, cooking, and cutting up the chicken; peeling, slicing, boiling, and mashing the potatoes; THEN cooking the entire ensemble for 30 minutes. Oy! It was well worth it! Absolutely heavenly, especially with the fresh garlic in the potatoes, and my secret ingredient (see below)!



the filling mixture

 

mashed potatoes on left (oh, how I will appreciate having a potato masher someday! Using a fork takes forever) and chicken/veggie mixture on right

pepper jack cheese, all cozy in a layer between the filling and the topping of potatoes! It was awesome!

Finished product: voila! Sean had seconds, and loved taking it to work for lunch. I loved eating it for lunch too! It made several servings for us.

Just another day in the life of the Allen family. :)

Then and now

Well, here I am blogging without a hint of a subject about which to write, and an as-yet blank title field. What have we been up to lately? Hmm... normal, everyday stuff, I suppose. Work for Sean; cooking, cleaning, and laundry for me. :)

For inspiration, I look to my 2009 calendar. I like to record things on my calendar, and have for several years, everything from haircuts to lunch dates to what I had for dinner that day (sometimes, if it was especially delicious).

On this day in 2009...

• ate lunch with Cam and Sean at Cocheo Park at Vandenberg
• went to PT in the afternoon with my squadron, where we had a pushup and situp clinic
• went to Greek class at Grace (a pretty short-lived endeavor, because I was overcommitted and that was something I could drop, so I eventually did)
• Berlin called-- always a nice occurrence. We still keep somewhat in touch, now that she is at Beale AFB in Nor Cal. We appreciate how good she is at calling us-- something I want to work on.
• went grocery shopping, but I assume Sean went with me because there is a smiley face next to it. I actually do not like going grocery shopping, so I was so thankful he went with me. Even now we like to go together!

It is a pretty normal-sounding day, yet it's incredible how much life has changed since then! At the time, I was an instructor in the Training Group at Vandenberg. I had a corner desk in a four-pack of cubicles and had to show up at 7:30 every morning. I packed my lunch the night before, I laid out my clothes for the next day each night, and I carted around binders of lesson plans. I wore slacks or skirts, blazers, and high heels. I wore makeup every day. People knew me as "Ms. Johnston" and I didn't tell them how young I was. I got hundreds of impersonal e-mails from base organizations. I was living in a cute apartment with my roommate Amy, and cooking lots of meals with beans in them until I found out she doesn't like beans. (I still sort of cooked with a lot of beans, and she had to pick them out, oops.) I was going to Bible study with an awesome group of people and we read through Knowing God by J I Packer-- a pretty deep and insightful book.

Now.... I can wear sweats all day if I want to (and sometimes do). I put on just a little makeup before Sean gets home (sometimes), but he calls me beautiful even when I'm not wearing any. I receive no paycheck. I know the blessedness of waking up without an alarm, at whatever time that happens to be each day. I check out books from the library, everything from yoga to nutrition. All my high heels are in storage, or in CA. I rarely plan my next-day wardrobe. My only computer is Sean's laptop, and I don't receive tons of wide-dissemination e-mails.

But before you think I have turned into a super-slob, these things are also true of my world now: my husband comes home to me every night and appreciates the tantalizing aromas filling the house. He puts zero pressure on me to get an outside job. He thanks me for the stacks of clean clothes that "magically" appear in the closet. I do dress up for church on Sundays. People call me "Mrs. Allen" instead of "Ms. Johnston." I feel rested and relaxed much of the time, because I am getting more sleep. I prepare some mean crock pot meals (and stovetop or oven stuff too, but I love my crock pot). I prepare menus and grocery lists. I make it my goal to have the laundry done by lunchtime Monday. I wear boots good for snow, which I encounter whenever I go out. I am learning to budget and be a good steward of our finances. I am learning what it means to be a wife! It's amazing and wonderful, and I am so thankful that is my "job" now. I am thankfu for where I've been, and where we are headed. It's an adventure!

Stuffed Bell Peppers

I attempted a new recipe last night! I'm always on the lookout for good crock pot recipes, because I looooove having dinner taken care of early in the day, and I loooove how it makes the house smell so tantalizing all day. I came across a recipe for stuffed bell peppers in my cooking magazine (Healthy Cooking by Taste of Home). Stuffed bell peppers, yum! That sounds good. Hmm... I've never tried those before, and I've only eaten them once before (at Ana Severance's house, years ago, incidentally). In a crock pot? I was a little doubtful, but it can in fact be accomplished! Quite tastily, in fact.

All my ingredients for stuffed bell peppers: Pepper Jack cheese, salsa, chili powder, rice, corn, black beans, chopped onion, and of course bell peppers.

Stuffed and ready to start cooking in the crockpot! The grated Pepper Jack cheese on top was my idea. :)

Finished product-- absolutely DELISH!-- with baked rosemary-garlic potatoes on the side.

We discovered it was even better with sour cream! Yumm! This recipe is definitely a keeper!

Chicken Enchilada Casserole!

He whistles while he works (helps me assemble casseroles), what a guy!

Middle layer in progress...

 

Sean humoring me as I take pictures of food (and him) yet again

Ta-da!! Two pans ready to go in the fridge overnight before baking!

Recent life

Our front-yard view on a nice, crisp morning

 

This was too cool-- my car was covered in frost one morning so I had to take a picture. Waking up to a sparkly frozen world is still a novelty for this CA girl! I am learning to leave the house five minutes earlier than normal so I can scrape the ice off my windows and still be on time. :)

Making spaghetti! I have a strange penchant for taking pictures of meals we make, dunno why. I am infatuated with cooking and love to share the everyday stuff that makes up our life.

The moon was huge the other night! That day it was supposedly the closest it will be to Earth in all of 2010, so it was amazing. Picture doesn't do it justice, of course. Sean called me on his way home from work and said, you have to go outside and look at the moon! At that moment I was boiling noodles, frying Italian sausages, and making a white sauce on the stove and didn't want to leave it as it was thickening, but I went outside anyway and took some photos. Since I turned the burners off, the sauce ended up being super thick (or maybe I added too much flour) but Sean still said it was really good. I am really critical of myself, and almost always think I should tweak the things I make, even just a little. But he's right: they are still edible, and still really good, even if they are not always out-of-this-world fantastic.

That's our little corner of the world this past week or so. Until next time!