Cooking.

So yeah, I am pregnant and cooking has been my obsession lately. I always love to cook. I especially love Occasions to cook. Like birthdays or the cooking club thing. So here are a few pictures of what we been doing with the cooking lately. Pizza Pockets and the Birthday Cake torte. Let me just say again that the birthday cake turned out F-A-B-U-LOUS! The best cake I ever made hands down. It is flourless (almost) chocolate on the bottom, mousse layer (like cheesecake) on the top, homemade whipped cream and raspberries. Its that orgasmic kind of good.

Happy Birthday Dominic! 3!

My little man is 3 today! Doesn't seem possible! I remember the day I had him. I was just re-reading the birth story I wrote about him. It really was a wonderful birth. My husband and sister were there. We had some fun too that day. My mom stayed with Gioia and they had a good time just the 2 of them for a couple days. She could have cared less that mom and dad were gone because Grandma was here. :)

He has already opened his gifts. He got new animals, new trains, baseball bat, ball and glove. Gioia also got a glove so we can all play together. Tonight we are going to Chuck E Cheese with some friends. I also made this cake. It is actually a Double Chocolate Torte. http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/08/never-too-much/

Last night when I was making it the eggs wouldn't get fluffy. You know when you are making the meringue part for the mousse? DH and I had an argument earlier in the evening so this was the last straw. I started crying. He was able to fix my egg whites for me and we finished the cake together.

So now I guess I will post a baby picture of my big guy.

More freezer food.

Now I have Taco Meat, BBQ Brisket and All Beef hot dogs/sausages in my freezer. YIPPEE. A few friends and I are doing a cooking club swap. I will get 3 freezer meals out of that. SO yeah! Also my parenting group always does a sign up and we bring meals to the new mom. So I will get some meals then as well. I am planning to save my freezer meals for the time after the baby gets here. Like that next month when DH goes back to work and I am up all night with the baby. Those DAYS! ;) Also i will probably hit Costco up for some frozen ravioli and things like that. They have the best all natural whole ingredient Ravioli. The spinach and cheese ones are my favorite. We just had the Brie Cheese and Roasted Garlic ones, they were good too!

My other goal, besides making my life easier, is to avoid spending all the money of eating out. I love to eat out, but I always feel sick when I get the bill of $50 or whatever it is for most families of 4. We don't even go to fancy places, but still 10 a person at Olive Garden, then tip maybe a glass of wine. Bang! 50 bucks. Well the wine is for DH, I am the dessert person. Everyone knows I have a giant sweet tooth. LOL!!

And now its countdown to baby!

WHEE! I can't believe the summer has zoomed by so fast! I am going to turn around twice and it will be Christmas. Geez. HA HA! Now that the family has come and gone it is the countdown to baby. 3 weeks people! This week my midwife comes for our home visit. It will be two hours and we will talk about all the birth plans, show her around the house and just get a feel for how and where we will do this thing. :) I AM SO EXCITED! Our friends came for dinner last night and brought us the big birth pool. There have been 8 babies born in that pool. That is so neat! One of them was a mom having a VBAC (vaginal birth after a c-section). One was an 11 lb baby. So there is some pretty good Karma around this pool. We plan on inflating it and doing a test run of our hose and the whole system before.

I got out my itty bitty diapers this weekend. Now I need to get out some gender neutral baby clothes, since this baby is surprise. Then we can easily grab either the boy or girl bucket of clothes in the days after he/she is born.

I made a pouch sling for baby today. I had made one previously and I sold it. So I made a second one. :)

Whirlwind week.

I have a lot of catching up to do. But I will start with a run down of our week.

The family arrived on Sunday night. They didn't get here until late so we chilled. Massimo made burgers and hotdogs (their request), veggies on the grill and salad. It was a hit! Then we drank wine and beer and talked. Monday morning we went to the Arboretum and walked the trails. They thought that was beautiful. Tuesday we went to Oceans of FUn. IT was great! The kids had a wonderful time. We stayed until they closed. Rita (Massimos aunt) said that she smiled so much she probably has new wrinkles! Wednesday we went to the plaza, did some shopping and got cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory. We also ate lunch at O'Dowds Irish Pub. It was AWESOME food. They liked the beer there too.

For food I served: Tacos one night. We had to show them how to make/eat them. They had never done it before. I made my famous chocolate cupcakes on night. Tuesday night we also had Homemade chocolate ice cream. I had farm fresh eggs, milk and butter. They loved all of it. Massimo made Brisket and beans. Then the last night I made Thai food. They loved it all. They said i should open a restaurant. That made me feel good.

When it was time to leave Federico cried and cried. He is 5 and didn't want to leave. He was having so much fun with all the cousins and toys. They are here in the USA for 4 more days then they go home. They went back to Iowa for the weekend.

I will post some pictures later. CIAO!

CH-Ch-changes.

Sing it with me. TURN AND FACE THE STRAIN. CH CH CHANGES. Ah. David Bowie. He is a special kind of weird.

Well we have lots of changes in our house coming up. My sister is moving out this weekend. She has lived with us for a year and it has actually been quite pleasant. She helps clean the house, is in class most of the time and is usually gone on the weekends. Most of the time it didn't even feel like she really lived here. She is ready to move on and get her own place again. I am glad to have been able to help her out this past year. We lived with her for 3 months when we moved back from texas. So it all comes back around.

We will have our Italian family here for 4 days. I am excited. They are in Italy and having lots of fun with everyone so far. I am glad for that.

My friend had her baby last night. I am the next one on the list! Actually another lady is overdue, so she gets to go first. Then it is me! Yippee! Gioia is REALLY hoping for a sister, but she will be happy with a boy too. It would be nice if it was a girl. I have NO problem getting all the sweet girl stuff out again. What is really cool is that I know two other families that are using the same midwife as us. We are due first so I look forward to sharing the details of how wonderful Cheryl is at our birth. I think it is going to be awesome! Our friends are coming next weekend to bring the birth pool and have dinner with us. It is a lucky pool. 7 babies have been born in it. Happy and Healthy! That is some good Karma. Oh and 1 of them was 11 lbs even. DANG!! I want nothing to do with that record. A nice 8 lbs is good with me. That is what the other two were.

Getting things ready.

The carpet cleaners are coming today to clean our gross living room carpet. I try to keep all the food in the kitchen but the kids are bad about taking things in the living room. Juice and food. Then there is the blood spot that I cleaned but didn't get it all out from Dominic's head. We sorted toys out and are giving away a sack of toys and a sack of stuffed animals.

I made a grocery list for all the food I need for our Italian guests. I have a bunch of shopping to do. We have already made the brisket, taco meat and I am going to make up some desserts when they get here. I will probably make some of my specialties like Chocolate Cream Cheese Cupcakes (with choc. chips). Also DH has ORDERED me to make homemade ice cream. I think it will be really fun and I look forward to everyone being at our house. I am gonna make DH cram Italian with me this week and start speaking it to each other at night and the kids. I think the kids will pick up so much more this time since they are home and more comfortable to listen and learn.

Pictures! I have lots of new pictures but instead of taking forever to load them on here they are on my Flickr Account. So Click here to see them. http://www.flickr.com/photos/24599218@N06/

And if you want to see the website of the lady who took the new pictures of us click here.
http://www.blessedlifephotography.com/
Click on the picture to see a slide show. We are in the slide show.

Dancing girls, Deer and other fun

Thursday we headed to my moms for the Jameson Picnic. My hometown Jameson has a small fair every year. It used to be really big with a small carnival, kids rides and all that. Now it has been reduced to a group that brings all the Moonbounces for the kids to jump in. The kids still had a great time. They have a talent show. Last year Gioia and I both sang and both won 2nd. This year Gioia danced. She did Walk the Dinosaur. She won second again and $15 prize. She was really excited. It was pretty cute because she lost a shoe during her routine, she put it back on and kept dancing! I was really proud of her. She didn't get flustered. After the shows were over they had a free drawing. Gioia won the hat in the picture. It is camo with Terry Implement (tractor store) on it, but she loves the darn thing and wears it ever waking minute.

We had a good time. Played with the new kittens. We took a ride on the Ranger. The kids got to go swimming with their cousins. I also included a picture of my moms flowers. They are really pretty. The pink ones are Mandavilla.





Friday on my way home I hit a deer. The actual situation went like this. NICE 8-10 point deer runs out in front of our car, but a little ways up. I said "WHOA. Dominic look at that Deer!" BAM! I hit the second deer and never even saw him coming. All I saw was antlers and the deer sliding across the pavement and off into the ditch. It took me a second to realize I hit it. I never slammed on my brakes and my seatbelt didn't even lock up. All this is probably pretty lucky since I am hugely pregnant. My airbag didn't come out either. I am SOO glad. Anyway, I called my mom since I was only about 20 minutes from her house. She came, called the tow truck and thanks to AAA they hauled us and our broken car all the way back to Gardner. The kids were upset because they thought the broken car meant we were staying at Grandmas house. They slept in the tow truck all the way home. The car doesn't have a lot of damage but the radiator is busted and dumped out all the fluid. So the car runs, but is not driveable until we fix that. This is what insurance is for. Crazy Deer! Scott (my sisters boyfriend) went over too look for the deer. He was right there in the grass dead. I must have killed him on impact because he was right in the ditch where he slide off the road. I am glad I killed him and didn't just hurt him really bad. If you look at the picture close he still has all the velvet on his antlers.

August already

Wow its August already. I can't believe it. In 3 weeks our family from Italy will be here. I am excited for that. The public school kids start school in two weeks. Weird. It feels like summer just started. It is hotter than heck outside. There is a heat warning, it is in the 90's but feels like 105. The humidity is smothering as well.

Tonight is Bunco here at my house. I am looking forward to that. 12 ladies, playing dice game, eating fun snacks and chatting. FUN! My friend had her birthday yesterday and she bought herself a motorcycle. I hope it cools off a bit so she can ride it a lot.

Not much else to say. I am supposed to be receiving my CD with photos on it this week. I have been looking forward to that for a while as well. SO I will post some awesome pictures of us on here soon. If there are a lot of them, I might just make a slide show for everyone to look at.