Trip to the zoo (Scrapbook Pages)

Our Garden

Kettle Corn

Yesterday, Ammon was in charge of a youth fireside for our ward. He decided to have the kids watch the movie To This End Was I Born, a wonderful movie about the last days of Christ's life & His ministry on Earth & in the Spirit World. It is very moving & wonderfully done! He also wanted to have popcorn for the movie, so I ended up making 7 batches of popcorn in our stove-top popper. Ammon had the idea to try making some kettle corn, which we've never tried before. He thought I'd made it, but I've definitely never put sugar in my popcorn popper. So, what to do? Go online of course. I looked at a few recipes for Kettlecorn & they all seemed fairly similar, so I finally settled on this one. It's pretty much exactly how I make our regular popcorn, plus some sugar. And let me tell you, it was wonderful! It's not too sweet, & after the popcorn has cooled a bit you can break it all apart so it's back to individual kernels, rather than a giant glob of sticky popcorn. It really isn't sticky at all & oh so fun to eat! So, here's the recipe:
Ingredients

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup popcorn kernels
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon coarse salt

Directions:

In a large pot with a tight-fitting lid (or a whirly popper like mine), heat the oil over medium-high heat. add the popcorn. When the oils sizzles, sprinkle the sugar over the kernels. Cover and shake the pan until the popping slows down, about 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and toss with the salt.

Oh, & just so you know, 4 batches of regular popcorn & 3 of kettlecorn makes way too much popcorn for 15 people to eat. Leftovers!

Ultrasound news

I had an ultrasound on Wednesday and everything went well. The nurse said the baby is measuring perfectly for 20 weeks and is right on schedule. With our first daughter, she measured a little small at the same ultrasound, so I'm hoping things continue to go well.
Now, on to what you've all been waiting for; Baby Wilhelm's gender. We are having another GIRL! We are so excited! I'm pretty sure we would have been excited either way, but since we already have so many girl things we won't have to buy as much.

A quick catch-up

Wow! I know, I've been neglecting my blog. I've just been busy with other things, so that blogging kind of fell to the bottom of the list. So, you ask, what have I been up to? Well, aside from being pregnant and having limited amounts of energy for the day, we went camping over the 4th of July weekend with my parents & sister, I've been dehydrating food, caring for our garden, we planted grass and are busy trying to get it to grow (we have sprouts), I got released from my presidency calling in our Ward Relief Society, I've started getting my weekly progesterone shots (which are a pain in the butt, literally), we transitioned Sharon to her toddler bed & it's been fairly successful, Ammon's been busy with late night bat surveys and early morning bird surveys for work, I've done a little bit of canning, and now I'm working on cleaning out my craft room to make some space for Baby Wilhelm. I took a picture yesterday so I can show you my growing belly. It's not huge but pretty much none of my pants fit. I finally broke down & cut off a pair of my maternity pants so I can have some shorts to wear this summer.
I know I haven't given many updates on my blog, mainly because it's so much faster & easier on facebook, but I do want to give a few updates. I am now about 19 1/2 weeks and when I was about 11 weeks my doctor put in a cerclage as a precautionary measure to help keep this baby in longer. At 17 weeks I started getting weekly progesterone shots. Those are definitely going to be super fun & I think my butt already hates me. I've been able to feel the baby moving a lot more lately & I love it because it's so reassuring! I am feeling well & never really had any morning sickness. After the surgery I did notice that if I over did things even a little bit I would get really tired and sore, & get a major headache. I just make sure to rest for a little while after doing something a bit strenuous, which has made things better. We find out the gender of the baby next week & we are pretty excited to find out. All along I've thought it is another girl, but now I'm not so sure. I can't wait to find out because then I'll be able to start debating names with a little more certainty. I told Ammon a couple days ago that we should have a name picked out by 6 months, just in case, & so we don't have to make such a big decision with all that extra stress that we had with Sharon.
   Well, I'll get around to scrapbooking our latest pictures sometime, but I really want to take advantage of the time I have this summer to get things ready for baby & to do all the things I won't be able to do if I end up on bedrest. If it comes to bedrest, you can be sure you'll be seeing a ton of scrapbooking catch-up!