When hubby bought his truck, it’s a 3/4 ton Ford without gooseneck trailer hauling abilities. That seemed extremely crazy to me. Normally a bigger truck has the set up to haul a gooseneck trailer and when most of your trailers are gooseneck’s… you kind of need that ability. We did our research and we were able to purchase a B&W Turnover ball to place in the bed, all we had to do was drive out to Humboldt Kansas to the factory to have it put in.
I woke up earlier than normal today. In fact, I was up at 5:45ish. Did you even know that hour existed? Well I’m here to tell you it does. So then I thought, I’ll go back to sleep for an hour, which truth be told is still earlier than I would normally get up but… I have to be at school earlier today than normal. Then… I couldn’t go back to sleep. So now I’m blogging.
I’ve also noticed that I start a lot of sentences with so. Just a side note.
The other day I was working on making a shopping list. And if there is something to be known about me, I suck at making lists. I think I get side tracked and generally don’t do them. It’s a long running joke here at my house. One Christmas the hubs asked me to make a list of something. I told him I would when I finished doing what I was doing. 10 minutes later he asked me if I made that list… I looked at him all confused. He explained and my response, “Oh, I forgot.” Now any time he asks me to make a list, that’s my first response.
Anyway I was actually making a shopping list, which he said we needed to do and it hadn’t been done. I took it upon myself to complete this task. So (there’s that so again) I stumbled across a few different recipes that sounded AWESOME! This was one of them. I think I might have been on pinterest, which all in itself is weird because I don’t typically just hang out there searching things. I pin things I want to find for later and I’m out. But apparently this day I forgot I was looking for something and started perusing? I can’t really explain it.
Hubs really likes French dips and truth be told, so do I. Now our biggest critic… she enjoyed this one. It is friggin awesome. Then we had a side of Garlic Mashed potatoes and ended with homemade oreo’s. We’ve had garlic/cheesy mashed potatoes a lot here lately, but I didn’t want the bag to go to waste! Sometimes I forget we have potatoes and they rot. ewwwww!
Now… on with pictures and a recipe!
Crockpot French Dip Sandwiches adapted from Carlsbad Cravings
Ingredients:
1 3lb Beef Chuck roast, trimmed of excess fat*
1 tbsp EVOO (extra virgin olive oil!!)
6 hoagie buns
12 slices provolone cheese
2. While you’re meat is browning, get the crock pot ready. Turn it on high to get the liquids to heat up, then once you add the meat reduce back to low. Add the crockpot ingredients to the crock pot. whisk together, then add the meat into the crock pot. Remember to back your heat off to low. (speaking of that, I need to go check mine!)
So I made the comment that hubby was out of town last week and I gained new respect for single parents. Boy oh boy did I! Anyway, what was hubby up to you might ask? And maybe you didn’t, but I’m sharing anyway because I get to brag on my husband!
Hubby got the opportunity to take classes to become a certified ScubaPro Technician to work on first and second stage regulators. When it was offered to him, he jumped at the opportunity!
He and our friend Rachele made the trek to Kansas City Monday night for a product line demonstration, then stayed for Tuesday and Wednesday for the seminar classes. Rachele had to leave early though because she’s graduating nursing school (Go Rachele!!!) and won a prestigious award that was being presented to her at a banquet on Wednesday evening.
René Dupré and Scott Dawson came in to do the seminar.
And you know, if there’s food they will come.
Tuesday’s meal consisted of Lasagna, Baked Chicken, Salad & Cheesecake for dessert.
Husband: What time is it?
Me: I don’t know, I don’t have my glasses on and I can’t see the clock
Baby: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh
M: Hold on let me find my glasses.
H: It’s 12 something (no idea what he said)
B: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh
H: I think she’s hot.
M: Hold on, I’ll go get her a onesie to change into out of those jammies. What if she gets cold?
H: She’ll snuggle up against me, she won’t get cold.
M: Okay.
**I stumble into the other room, grab her a onesie and come back. We change her clothes.**
B: Waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh
M: Come to momma
**Place her on my chest digging her elbow out of my boob. OUCH!
H: Here, let me take her
**Place her on his chest. She picks up her head and blech… Throw up everywhere.
**Deer in the headlights look on my face.
H: Get a big towel, quickly.
And that my friends is how you take a shower at 12 something a.m.
One thing you may or may not know is hubby and I have our own KitchenAid mixers. Mine is an Artisan and it’s Yellow (the head tilts). His is the Pro series and it’s gunmetal gray (the bowl moves). Yup, long story how we wound up with 2 but whatever… mine has been placed in storage for the time being so we were using his to make bread for Thanksgiving. I mean really… his is better for making bread anyway.
So hubby started adding the ingredients for his rolls to the mixer.
One trick my grandma always said was once you start kneading bread, let the mixer run for 10 minutes so hubby went on with some other things he was doing and asked me to keep an eye on his mixer so it didn’t walk off the counter. If you don’t know mixers, if they’re going, they do shimmy and shake.
Eventually he walked back over to the mixer and was doing something with it and about that time baby girl started screaming at me so I walked away from my perch on the bar stool and went over to where she was sitting at the table to check on her. (she got this fun new jiggler thing to sit in).
About the time I turned my back on the mixer, hubby walked away and guess what happened… the mixer walked itself off the counter and went crashing to the floor. Yanked the power cord out of the wall and made a HUGE crashing sound.
It messed up the arms of the mixer a little bit so you have to push a smidge harder to get the bowl hooked in and the top attachment where all the extras attach, but otherwise the mixer works GREAT.
We wound up losing half the dough on the floor, but whatever… What was there still tasted GREAT!
Here’s the recipe hubby used:
(adapted from Simply Scratch)
In the bowl of your mixer; sprinkle yeast over the cup of warm {110-115 degrees} water. Let the yeast proof for 5-8 minutes.
Meanwhile combine the bread flour, whole wheat flour and salt.
With the mixer on low, pour in the honey and butter.
Once the honey and butter are mixed in to the yeast, add {by spoonfuls} the dry ingredients. Increase the speed, stopping to scrape the flour/dough from the sides of the bowl. Continue to mix on medium until the dough comes together and pulls away from the sides of the bowl and starts creeping up the dough hook. At this point you’ll
Lightly grease a bowl with olive oil. Form the dough into a ball and place it into the lightly oiled bowl. Cover and let rise in a warm, dry spot for an hour. Remove and press out the air. Divide the dough into twelve equal pieces and then divide the twelve pieces into thirds.
Lightly spray a muffin tin and roll the dough into balls. Place three dough balls into each spot in the muffin tin and cover again to rise for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Once the rolls have risen for the second time, slide the muffin tin into your preheated oven and bake for 10-12 minutes.
Remove and let rest for 5 minutes before carefully removing them from the pan.
Enjoy!
p.s. Don’t forget to link up Monday to the Review Extravaganza!! Details found here!!
Hubby and I were finally able to carve our pumpkins on Friday night. Now Thursday night I started carving on hubby’s, I gutted it so that it would have time to dry up a bit since we were also going to use it for Baby Girl’s photo shoot. Friday night he was able to cut some leg holes for her.
And then baby girl screamed. I wasn’t able to get a smile, but I at least lucked out and got one where she wasn’t screaming. Note to self: warm pumpkin up next time!
Then we went back in the house, put her onesie back on her and she sat in the Bumbo on the table with us while mommy and daddy carved pumpkins.
We chose to use patterns out of a book. Poor Tbug didn’t have that option because we had to buy a new book, we lost the other one :(.
This one cracked me up. It was either a level 3 or 4 and I must admit that the first time I remember carving pumpkins was when I was a senior in high school. I might have with my parents when I was a little kid, I’m not sure. I should ask sometime. But the first time I remember, I was a senior in high school.
Someone decided that they were tired and it was nap time…
Hubby’s is the one on the left, mine is the one on the right.
We’ve tried to keep it a tradition since we’ve been married to carve pumpkins. So how did we do?
Past Pumpkin Carvings: 2014 – Tbug, 2014 – Underwater, 2013 – Family, 2013 – Underwater, 2012 – Family, 2011 – Hubby & me, 2010 – Family,
So when I started talking to my husband and invited him out to dinner all those years ago (wow I make that sound like it was a really long time ago… only 5 years…). I told him that we had to dress up at least like business casual. He said, I should tell you something about myself. Um… okay?? He said, I wear this bracelet and I refuse to take it off.
A bracelet? That’s all that you’re worried about? I don’t care. But I am curious… what is it? Why is it so important? Again I didn’t care, I was just curious.
Tuesday was a rough day at our house. Poor baby girl didn’t feel good. On a good, normal day we might wake up at 2am, definitely 4am and sometimes 6am… but Tuesday morning was different. If you’d like to check out 2 of my other days go here (January 8, 2013 and May 12, 2013)
2am. We woke up at our 2am hour, the difference was, she didn’t want to eat. Like at all. And she wouldn’t quit crying. I tried and tried to comfort her but there was no comforting her.
3am. By 3am I was tired and cranky myself. Hubby woke up and said let him try to comfort her. He tried to feed her and again, she wanted nothing to do with eating.
4am. I knew hubby needed to get sleep so I took her out of the bedroom into the living room. I tried holding her, rocking her, putting her in her swing… nothing seemed to work, at all! Hubby came out of the bedroom and said to let him try. She stopped crying for a few minutes but then started right back up. Still nothing seemed to work, so I took her back and told him to go back to bed.
5am. I turned on the tv and camped out in the chair hoping that I could get her to settle down. Finally hubby said to bring her to bed, he’d try to get her to sleep again. I laid her down in bed with him and she immediately stopped, closed her eyes and went to sleep. I just about broke down and cried. Hubby told me to go take a shower. I was swearing at 5am that baby girl didn’t like me, in fact she hated my guts at this point :(. It made me sad!
6am-9am baby girl and I snoozed.
10am. We finally woke up and had a break down again. I figured she would be hungry at this point. She still wanted NOTHING to do with eating. It was the weirdest thing. So I picked baby girl up and rocked her and sang to her and finally got her to burp and that put her back to sleep.
11am. Baby girl just slept and slept. Every now and again she’d wake up, I’d burp her and she’d go back to sleep. I just stayed in bed with her. It was obvious she didn’t feel good at all.
12pm. I settled in and watched tv. Baby girl just needed mommy time I guess. Maybe she does like me… that or I was her only option… lol.
1pm. I was able to lay her down and get myself lunch finally. I noticed she has her mommy’s thumb. Some people have what is known as a hitchhiker thumb. You know, their thumb is like double jointed or something and bends back like that. Mine does, daddy’s doesn’t.
2pm. We were still in bed. Baby girl didn’t feel good at all, poor baby but I took advantage of the baby snuggles.
3pm. I finally was able to start blogging. At least reading blogs that is.
4pm. Around 4pm she finally decided to wake up so I took advantage of this time and we went to the kitchen. I decided that I had cherries in the fridge and a pie crust ready to go so we made our first (we, she… I’ve done this before) Cherry Pie.
5pm. We went on watching tv to kill time and you know, more baby snuggles. Once we started watching Family Fued the timer went off on the pie.
6pm. Hubby ran to my parents house to do chores to help mom and dad out and when he got home we headed over to the poles to go vote.
7pm. On Sunday my grandma made hubby and me this awesome meatloaf. When we got home from the voting poles we asked what we were going to have for dinner. (we asked as in we asked each other…) I told hubby that the meatloaf we had was awesome. He said we had hamburger so I called my grandma to ask her how to make the meatloaf. Again, yum but Grandma’s was better.
8pm. After dinner we had dessert… The awesome cherry pie. YUM! Baby girl slept through that part… One of these days she’ll have to try a pie she makes, just not today I guess… 🙂
9pm. I really needed to wake her up and start getting ready for bed, but the poor thing still didn’t feel good. Her belly gurgled and churned all day long. She farted and burped. So we just let her sleep. Sometimes sleep is the best remedy.
10pm. With the help of hubby we finally got her ready for bed. It was easier to just give her a shower with one of us in the shower and the other washing her so she got a shower. She loves those showers, way better than her bathtub. That’s okay baby girl, mommy and daddy like showers too! She gets so relaxed in our arms in the shower.
11pm. We got her out of the shower, dressed, wrapped up and fed and she was out like a light, that is until 2am the next morning but the next day was a much better day. And she woke up hungry almost every hour…
This was quite an interesting day for sure but we made it through with lots of baby snuggles. I definitely wouldn’t change that for the world but I sure would change it and make baby girl feel better.
**Part 1**
**Part 2**
**Part 3**
**Part 4**
Since the nurse came in and said that we needed to get breakfast ordered by a certain time I woke hubby up and asked him to call in our order. We both looked at the menu. I ordered Biscuits and Gravy with a side of bacon and peaches with orange juice to drink, he ordered a ham omlet with bacon with orange juice to drink. Our hospital is awesome because they make it so the father’s (and kids) can order off the same menu and it’s one flat price.
Once they brought breakfast and hubby and I ate, the nurse came in to check on baby girl and me and to bring me pain meds and a prenatal vitamin. After that they let us be. Hubby and I started watching Friends and I had baby girl in the bed with me. After my nap with her, hubby took her so I could get up and go to the bathroom and they took a nap together.
At one point that morning a social worker came in to visit with us. Apparently that’s the new common standard, everyone has to talk to a social worker, that’s what she told us anyway. It seems strange to me because none of my friends have experienced this. Anyway she asked us questions and I upset her… note to self, never tell a social worker the carseat is in the trunk. I must clarify that we packed everything for the hospital 2 weeks prior to needing it, just in case so I put it there so I had use of my back seat. She asked if we had a carseat for baby and I said, yes it’s in the trunk. She got on to me for that. I clarified for her that the carseat base was in the back seat, but I carried the carseat in the trunk until it was needed. She yelled at me prior to my clarification and told me Babies NEVER ride in the trunk and I should never tell a social worker that.
Between naps we had visitors come to see us. We had the preacher, Deb, Michelle & Shaye (they brought cupcakes!!),
my mom and Tbug, my MIL, my FIL and so many more I kind of lost track. It was fun because they came between naps so we got to nap on Friday. Around 4pm just before Doug and Rachele got there to see her the nurse came to take her away and do some testing as well as the hospital photos of her.
We had exceptional nurses our whole stay at the hospital. The last night there though (Friday night) we had nurse Nazi as we affectionately referred to her. There was a standing rule that we were only allowed 5 people in the room, including hubby (guests, not Peanut or me in that 5). All during our stay there were a few times we had a few more but people came and left so it wasn’t like I was over the limit long. That night though Earl and her mom walked in on 5 people already in the room and nurse Nazi kicked them out. Told them they were not allowed in until 2 people left.
Okay that was the rules but dang, the director of obstetrics never got on to us about that… but okay. Then that night she yelled at hubby for dozing off with baby girl in his arms. If he was going to sleep, she had to be in the bassinet. Again, we’d taken naps with her all day but okay. I was in the shower when that happened. Then later in the night hubby was asking the nurse about feedings and it took forever to get an answer out of her. Oy! Luckily that was the only night we had to deal with nurse Nazi.
So there is no nursery. The babies stay in the room with the parents at all times unless the nurses take the baby out to the nurses station. They offered that night to take her but I figured she’d be okay with us. Then around 2am when she wouldn’t quit crying and hubby and I were exhausted, we asked the nurses if they’d be able to watch her for a couple hours so we could get some sleep. They came in and took her so they could give her a bath and kept her until around 5am when they brought her back in the room. They took my vitals and we all went back to sleep.
**Part 1**
**Part 2**
**Part 3**
After they had her all cleaned up and gave her to hubby and me, they asked if we planned on bottle feeding or breast feeding. Said that if we planned on breast feeding we needed to try within 1 hour after birth. Finally once the nurse had all of her information/procedure done including removing the IV’s and the catheter from my epidural, she said we were allowed to have 5 (including hubby) visitors in the room. I honestly can’t tell you the order anyone came in. And I was having a hay day because I still couldn’t feel my legs.
They told us that they had a bet going on in the waiting room on how much she would weigh. Tbug came in with the most accurate at 7lb 9oz. Then Memaw, Grandma J and Earl guessed 8lb 2oz. Mom guessed 8lb 1oz, my FIL guessed 8lb 6oz and my dad guessed 11lb 2oz so that when she came out at 6lb 9oz we could laugh.
Earlier that morning I woke up sooooo thirsty but watching all the tv shows where people have babies, you’re not supposed to drink anything so when this was all said and done the first thing I requested was water. Yup, water. I could have had anything I wanted to drink (obviously within reason… lol), the nurse offered and all I wanted was water. Then we also ordered suckers that said It’s a Girl for everyone since it’s no longer cool to give out cigars… lol :).
We chose to use the pediatrician that Earl uses for her kids which just so happens to be one of the two who comes into the hospital and also happened to be the on call pediatrician this week. She came in to check on Peanut and said all looked well. Yey :).
We had lots of visitors. In fact later on the next couple of days I started listing the visitors and can’t remember them all I’m afraid. I have a huge list though!
Then our nurse came back in to give Peanut her bath. She wasn’t so crazy about the sponge bath.
Finally they released me to eat. Thank goodness! I was hungry. I ordered a cheeseburger and fries. YUM! I woofed my food down. Mom and dad went home to do chores and eat dinner and then came back to pick up Tbug since she wanted to eat dinner with us.
The nurse got tickled at me because as my legs were waking up I kept commenting on how they felt. For the most part my right leg was completely back awake other than a few spots here and there still felt asleep but my left leg… that was another story. I could feel from my knee down but from my knee to my hip still was out of it come around 7-8pm. I had asked at 4 how long it would take to come back and they said about an hour. By the 7-8 time I really needed to go to the bathroom. The nurse was afraid to let me walk to the bathroom though because she figured since my leg was still like it was I would wind up on the floor.
She wound up changing the bedding so she agreed to let me move from the bed to a chair she sat next to the bed. Since I did so well moving there she grabbed my left side and made hubby grab my right side and they walked me to the bathroom in case my leg gave out. I had no problems though :).
Earl had gone home earlier that evening but somehow (whether she offered or hubby asked) she went to our house to pick up some things we left earlier that morning. One of the things hubby had her pick up for us were seasons of Friends since that’s what we normally go to sleep watching anyway. We were trying to create a sense of normalcy in all this chaoticness.
Everyone left us around 11pm that night. Hubby and I were exhausted.
The nurses came in around 2am (Friday morning) or so and took the Peanut off for a bath and to run the hearing test on her which she passed with flying colors. Then when they brought her back, they took my vitals and asked when the last time she had been fed was. The funny thing about these nurses were they were the same ones that checked me in at 2am (Thursday morning). I told them we’d tried feeding her but I was afraid that she wasn’t getting anything so we decided to give her a bottle to make sure she was at least getting something in her tummy. So we had our first of many of 3am feedings.
Then we went back to sleep. Hubby kept the bassinet next to him since he was able to get up easier than I was. She would make noises in her sleep so I’d wake him up, he’d check on her and we’d go back to sleep. Around 7am Becca came in to check on us and take my vitals. She asked how I was feeling and I replied, Exhausted. She said, okay well I’ll come back later to do more. Just to let you know it’s almost 7 and if you want breakfast you need to order it by 8am or so to get it down here.