We've Got a Nursery!

Yeah, we've finished our nursery, for the most part. Robert put together the crib and the changing table today. They were donated to us from Shelley's sister, Ellen and one of her coworkers. Ellen and her husband, Rick donated a bunch of other stuff to us, including the dresser that we have in the nursery. We are very grateful for all the donations and gifts that we have received from everyone. We have been very blessed to have such great family and friends.

We are posting 5 pictures of our nursery. The first one is actually the east side of the room which we are using for storage. You may see that we have specifically set up the shelves there to allow us to put a gate up to keep the baby out of the storage.

The other 4 pictures show a full view, the crib, changing table, and rug respectively. Of course we will probably put more stuff in there, but it is pretty much complete now.







It's hard to believe that we only have a month and a half left now. We have been very lucky with the health of Shelley and Tiger. Tiger is the nick name we have given our baby now. We don't want to give him his real name until he is born.

Many people have asked if we have any names in mind. We have a few, but are not discussing them with anyone because we don't want anyone calling him by any specific name (except for Tiger, of course) in case we choose a different one. To dispel any rumors, the name Tiger will not be on his birth certificate. We really don't want him to be a golfer.

Fondue Recipes

Shelley had a good time at the baby shower last Saturday. She doesn't like to be the center of attention, but she did it for Tiger.

We had another ultrasound appointment today. Tiger was little too shy and wouldn't show his face, so we don't have any really good pictures. However, his weight is 5 lbs 11 oz which is pretty big for his age.

Shelley's sister, Ellen, gave us a couple of fondue recipes that many people have asked for. We have posted them here:


• If you don’t have a fondue pot, you can also use a double broiler placed over a pot of simmering water.



SPINACH & ARTICHOKE CHEESE FONDUE
1/2 c chicken broth
2 T lemon juice
2 T white cooking wine (optional)
1 – 2 t minced garlic
3 oz frozen chopped spinach, thaw rinse well & squeeze out water
3 oz chopped marinated artichoke hearts
8 oz mozzarella cheese blend – ex: romano, parmesan, fontina, asiago…
3 – 5 turns of black pepper
1 T butter

Put the broth, lemon juice cooking wine and garlic in your pot on medium heat until it stars to simmer. Add the spinach and artichoke and mix well. Add cheese a little at a time and mix until melted. Add the pepper and butter and mix until everything is well blended. To thicken, add more cheese. To thin, add more broth. Can be served with breads, crackers, corn chips, bagel chips, pita chips, pretzels, vegetables, apple slices, etc.


CHOCO-SCOTCH FONDUE
¼ c milk
6 oz butterscotch chips
6 oz semisweet chocolate chips
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 t vanilla

Mix milk and chips in your pot on low heat until melted. Add condensed milk and vanilla and mix. Can be served with fruit, marshmallows, cookies, pound cake, angel food cake, cheese cake, pretzels, etc.

Another Ultrasound Picture

OK, so we don't have as creative of a title on this post. We just started on our trip again to the edge of the earth and decided we needed to turn around.

No, we don't have any new pictures of our nursery. We want to wait for the rest of the furniture we are putting in before we take more pictures. We do have an ultrasound picture to post, so we'll go ahead and do that. This ultrasound was done on Tuesday, 1/27. Tiger was up to 3 lbs 8 oz by then



Shelley went to the Dr. today, but didn't have an ultrasound done. She will have another one done in 2 weeks, however. We'll post another picture then.

Robert has been very busy with Cub Scouts. He has been the Cub Master in our ward for a month now. He has been to a lot of training, including a Pow Wow, New Beginnings training, and Leader Specific training, all within a 7-day period. Robert has gone a few days now without having to think much about Cub Scouts and is starting to feel a little relief.

We will hopefully get the rest of the furniture for our nursery this week. We will post more pictures then

Home Project Continues

Well, as promised, we said we would post some picture of the progress we made this week on our converted nursery.

Here is the East half of the room before we moved all of our stuff:



Here is Robert Painting the Ceiling:



Here is the room with the walls and ceiling painted, but not the floor yet:



Here is Robert painting the floor:



And here is the east side fully painted:



We'll post more photos next week (hopefully), when we have the storage back on the east side and the west side looking more like a nursery.

The edge of the Earth is pretty far down

Yeh, yeh, we know.  It's been almost a month since we have added a new post to our blog.  I'm sure you were all wondering if we had fallen off the edge of the Earth.  You're all probably right, but we're back now.  I'm sure it won't be long before we return, however.  We just love visiting there so much.

We have been keeping ourselves quite busy.  Christmas was really fun.  Robert bought tickets to the Lion King musical and wrapped them for Shelley for Christmas.  He purchaces e-tickets that can be printed on a printer.  Since he had a soft copy, he printed both ticket portions on the same page and blew them up 4 times at kinkos.  He then rolled the big page up and put it in a poster tube and wrapped it.  It got Shelley very curious when she saw the package.  When she opened it up on Christmas, she wasn't disapointed.  We went to see it last Saturday, Jan. 10.  It was very enjoyable.

We also stayed pretty busy over New Year's.  Shelley's brother Nathan got married on Tuesday, Dec. 30.  Below is a picture taken of us at Nate and Jenny's reception:

Here is a picture of Nate & Jenny with Nate's (Shelley's) whole family:

With the wedding, luncheon and reception, it was a very full day.

Well, we are getting more & more prepared to add a new little boy to our family.  We have started painting our nursery.  It is going to have light green walls and a dark green floor.  We did half the room today and we will do the other half next Saturday.  Here are a couple of pictures of the work in progress:

Before

Walls and ceiling painted (Still wet)

We will take pictures of the room when it is complete and post them up here.

Media Heaven

Robert wants to leave a personal post, but before that, we have gotten complaints about our blog title and description. People are saying it's BORING. Well, we are welcome to any suggestions. Anyone that has a Google account can leave us a comment to give us any suggestions. It could be themed around our being Disney freaks or that we are expecting our first child. Let us know.

Robert -

OK, so I couldn't help myself. I've got to show off our TV/Satellite environment. As we mentioned in an earlier post, we (OK, I) ordered Dish Network satellite 2 weeks ago. We got Turbo HD which has most of the channels we were watching all of the time with cable, but they are now in HD. It would have cost us another $50 a month to have any cable channels in HD with cable, but Dish Network has given us quite a few HD channels for only $5 a month more that what we were paying. There were a few more channels that we regularly watched with cable that we don't have now, but it really isn't worth the price to go to the higher package of Dish Network.

Also, we bought a projector as an early Christmas present that gives us 1080i HD resolution. We had a projector before, but it has started to get a little hazy. This new projector has given us, well me, all we want for a picture. We have it shine on a white wall, and we can still see it in a lit room.

I couldn't help but mesure how many inches we have. Wtih 16:9 aspect reatio, we have 76" and with 4:3 aspect reatio, we have 83". If you don't know the difference between 16:9 and 4:3, than you probably don't care how big our screen is.

To give you a different perspective, I took a picture of it with a dollar bill on the bottom left to compare the size. I have included it in this post. Here is the picture.



You should be able to click on the picture to make it bigger.

Isn't that just sweeeeeeet.

Here's a picture

We didn't have time last post to add one of our ultrasound pictures. Robert was caught up in getting his new beloved satellite dish working. Well, in his defense, we now have HD on our wall, even the Food Network.

Well, anyway, here is our favorite ultrasound picture.