6 months / 27 weeks pregnant picture

This is me and Jerod. We're both growing. :-) I'm at 27 weeks, which is 6 months. In fact, I'm due three months from tomorrow, so I guess that means I'm entering the third trimester!

It's a little funny and sad to realize that when I was pregnant with Zarya, I always knew exactly how many weeks along I was, what fruit her size was comparable to, what developmental things were happening, etc. But for poor #2 kid, this is like the third time I've had to check my calendar just to remember how far along I am, and it wasn't until writing this that I realized I've now hit the third trimester.

We'll see how I do at remembering to take pictures of him, weigh and measure him, write every first in his baby book, and all of those things that I have done so faithfully with Zarya. I was a second child and never felt like my parents forgot me or thought I was any less amazing for not being the first, so hopefully I'll follow in their footsteps, and Jerod will grow up oblivious that I didn't keep exact track of him in utero. He moves around enough these days that I certainly don't forget he's there, at least!

Kids Bible memorization music

Back in the day when I was a sharp-minded youth, I was very good at memorizing Scripture. Really, anything I memorized before age 15 is in my mind to stay, especially if I learned it to a song. Anyone can learn a song, but sometimes memorizing a passage of Scripture seems like a lot of work. I can still sing verses I learned in some Sunday school class eons ago. They are stuck in my head forever, and that's a good thing!

Our family has a morning tradition of lolling around on our king bed after Zarya wakes up. Andrew has usually been up for over an hour by that point, but even he comes back to bed to hang out with a happy, wide-awake Zarya as she drinks her sippy cup of milk, and me as I gradually become coherent after being jumped on by a toddler. Thanks to Zarya's obsession with music, we always have a CD playing (we're a little old-fashioned on this - we have iPods and listen to Pandora and all, but the technology hasn't made it upstairs yet). We started out with a little kids' Bible-based songs CD, which Zarya loved, but it kind of drove us adults batty after a while. What I didn't like is that the songs were close to Scripture, but not quite. It was like memorizing it just a bit wrong for all the verses, and the tunes were catchy... obnoxiously catchy.

And so my great search for the perfect accompaniment for our mornings began! I wanted something that was straight Bible verses, quality music that adults can appreciate, and fun enough for toddlers. Here's what I found:

This was the winning one for us. Zarya LOVES that there are kids singing the songs and saying the verses (along with Steve Green), and the tunes are a nice mix of bouncy and serious. Andrew and I recognize a lot of the songs from our own childhoods, proof that these CDs aren't exactly brand-new! But they don't sound dated, and it's not like the Bible gets old. Great stuff for toddlers on up through elementary years, and the parents don't go crazy listening to it, either. You can have a listen at: http://www.christianbook.com/steve-green/hide-em-in-your-heart-2/5099921378522/pd/CD78592?event=ESRCG

Many friends have recommended Seeds Family Worship to me. I am really impressed with what they've produced - this picture is of their "Seeds of Courage" CD, but there are also many other albums with names like Seeds of Faith, Seeds of Praise, etc. I have friends with whom I was in a Bible study, and often when we came across a verse, they'd burst into song, thanks to having listened to Seeds music. I think these albums look pretty great for families with kids who are preschool age on up, and they are definitely on my wish list for the future, when Zarya is just a little bit older. You can listen here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_20?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=seeds%20family%20worship&sprefix=seeds+family+worship%2Caps%2C232

So if you're thinking that learning verses set to music appeals to you, that's what my research unveiled!

Side note:

Available for a mere cent here: http://www.amazon.com/Word-God-Speak-Shelter-Various/dp/B000JJS7JI/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=1-1&keywords=word+of+God+speak+Shelter

I have this album and like it, but it didn't quite fit into this blog post because it's for adults, not kids. The reviews are not amazing, but my personal opinion is that I enjoy it!

Garden Bread Recipe

It seems every time I make a Facebook post involving food, at least a few people request the recipe. And since I just wrote about baking in my new kitchen for the first time and included the detail that I made carrot/zucchini spice bread, I thought I'd better put the recipe here so I'm ready for those requests!

It's actually a recipe I call Garden Bread. As with everything I make, I use recipes as suggestions and vary them a bit every time. But this is what I generally start with as a base for my variations:

4 cups grated zucchini and carrots (whatever percentage of each you want)
2 1/2 cups sugar (sometimes I use part brown and part white, sometimes all white)
1 1/2 cups oil
4 eggs
1 Tbls vanilla
6 cups flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 Tbls cinnamon

Variations: Add 1/2 cup of cocoa, add chocolate chips, or add cloves/allspice/nutmeg (I just shake in a bit of each).

Mix wet ingredients and dry ingredients, then combine the two. Pour into three or four (depending on if you prefer bigger or smaller loaves) greased loaf pans or three dozen greased muffin tins or some combination thereof. Bake at 350 - generally it takes at least 50 minutes for loaves, and 20-something minutes for muffins.

And if you think it sounds ridiculous to make that much at once and your freezer doesn't have space for loaves to lounge around, just halve the recipe and you'll have a more reasonable amount.

New House

Making fried rice with the help of my sous chef

Not a great picture, but you can see the entire kitchen in it

Somebody got a brand-new zebra bean bag chair!

Sunset over the neighbor's backyard (and ours, up to the fence)

We have a house! We're moved in! It's a little exhausting and overwhelming, but also very exciting. We're still just kind of getting used to life in our new digs. I'm happy to report that we're almost entirely unpacked. We're down to the dregs, the "where on earth do we keep old college yearbooks/light bulbs/used batteries/etc." kind of stuff. You know, the stuff that eventually ends up in a box or closet somewhere, but we have to figure out exactly which closet and box!

We haven't quite gotten around to taking many pictures, but here are a few. We love the view out the back - the neighbor's former horse pasture (no horses anymore, just fences and grass). It's really quiet and private! After living in some pretty noisy places (Musoma, an apartment), we're thoroughly enjoying the peacefulness of our new setting.

The kitchen is a bit short on counter space, but it looks better now than it did in the pictures above, when I had just gotten home from a shopping trip and had stuff strewn all over. Then again, I suppose right now it has a breadmaker out on it and the dishes from lunch are drying on a towel on the counter, so it's still full, just with different things that don't seem quite as messy.

Zarya's favorite part of the house is her new zebra bean bag chair, particularly if Curious George is on TV. She and her rabbit (who used to be my rabbit) like to spend a little time there in the morning, if I'm feeling desperate/generous enough to let her watch a bit of Curious George. And these days, a little time to unpack without her help has been motivation enough!

Eight Twenty Eight - a biased book review

Yes, I took this picture straight off Amazon. How did you know?! But hey, now you know for sure that you can get it on Kindle, should you so desire.

I finished this book late at night a few days ago. Sometimes I wonder if I should just rate books according to what hour of the day/night I close the cover/turn off the Kindle for the final time. The later it is, almost without exception, the better the book. After all, could you really give four or five stars to a book that wasn't good enough to have kept you up the night before, but instead you waited until a normal hour of the following day to finish it?

I reviewed Eight Twenty Eight on www.goodreads.com earlier today, and gave it my honest opinion, critiquing the writing a bit and, while giving it a strong score of four stars, I wasn't raving. So if you want to read that, go here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20522291-eight-twenty-eight
And if you want to read what others say in Amazon reviews or to buy the book on Amazon, go here: http://www.amazon.com/Eight-Twenty-When-Love-Didnt-ebook/dp/B00MELILBS/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

But for the purpose of this blog, I want to be a bit more enthusiastic. For one thing, it's just plain fun to read about people you know and your own town! The authorial couple attend our church right here in Indiana, PA, and a lot of their friends, who are mentioned in the book, are people we've gotten to know. At one point Warren Road was referred to, and I looked out my bedroom window and saw Warren Road. How wild is that? I've sure never had that experience before when reading!

But of course, those points might not sell you on the book, since chances are you don't live in this town. What you might care about, though, is that it's a just plain stick-in-your mind book that you won't forget, and don't really want to forget, either. Brief summary: college kids meet, fall in love, and are thinking about marriage. Then the guy is in a serious car accident and has a major brain injury. The girl sticks with him, he starts to recover, and after like four years of very, very slow progress, they get married. He's still in a wheelchair and can barely talk, but they have remained in love and have a lot of faith in God. At the time the book was written (which was very recently), they'd been married for four years. How could you not be drawn into a story like that? If it were fiction, nobody would believe it. Try it, you'll like it. It's a story about love that didn't give up, faith that didn't give up, and two people who are still engrossed in the joy and struggle of their lives even now.

Indiana County Fair 2014

Andrew's office (Penn State Extension of Indiana County) does a lot with the county fair. One day he came home with his fair book, basically a big list of everything one could enter in the fair. He said, "Hey, why don't you enter something?"

I said, "What am I going to do, raise a lamb on our apartment porch in a mere four weeks?!"

To which he replied, "You can bake some cookies. You make great cookies."

And so my first-ever fair experience began! I made a lot of test batches, got friends from church to sample various options for me, and became rather excited about the whole thing. I read food blogs about cookies, experimented with recipes, and finally came up with what I thought was the perfect oatmeal raisin cookie. And when I baked them the day entries were due, they came out perfectly! And as a little side bonus, I made a cake, too, just for fun. These fine specimens got entered in the fair:

End result: Nothin' at all for the cookies, and the cake got second place. That was exciting at first, but then I realized that there were only two entries in that particular cake category! Oh well - maybe next year!

And I wasn't the only one who got into the fair - Zarya thought it was a pretty amazing place. She toured all of the animal barns admiring pigs, cattle, horses, and chickens. The poultry barn was the surprise hit - she thought they were pretty fun, with all of that squawking:

I thought the entire fair experience was really fun. Everything seemed pretty clean and well-maintained, and although there were a lot of people there, it didn't feel crowded. We went to a rabbit show, horse show, swine show, dairy show, photography exhibit, home economics exhibition, Christmas tree display, and harness racing. It was just plain fun! Oh, and they even had a kiddie barn, which Zarya loved. Her favorite activity there was digging around in corn with toy tractors and shovels:

We're all looking forward to the fair next year!

Soccer girl

Soccer skills don't really run in either side of the family, but maybe Zarya will be the notable exception in the Smith and Sandeen clans. She spends a lot of time playing outside, and sometimes as a special treat we let her take her big orange ball along.