A gift from my sister...

So I must admit that I have the best sister in the world. She told me about a month ago that she wanted to make Baby Feil a baby quilt and that I needed to come down to Bakersfield and pick out some fabric with her. Well, that sounded like a great idea to me. After spending the day at my grandma Net's house on Saturday Katie and I went to Strawberry Patches and found some super cute fabric that will be turned into a quilt. I can't wait to see how it turns out. All of this planning stuff makes me being pregnant all the more real. Sometime you forget that at the end of this I am going to have a child...

Here is the fabric that we picked out (all but the fabrics with pink in it since we are not finding out if it will be a girl or boy)

18 Weeks

Henry came to visit..

A few weekends ago Katie and John went to see "Wicked" here in Fresno with the Wiebe family. When she called to see if we would baby sit Henry while they went to the show I couldn't think of anything else I would rather do. Not living in the same town, I miss out on all of the everyday things with my nephew... like babysitting. So Andrew and I were totally excited to spend the day with Henry. Here are a few highlights from our time. (All of the pictures are taken outside because that is all Henry wanted to do... play outside)

He was very intrigued by Olive's dog house...

...also with the helmets that were in our garage.

Yes, maybe a little biased, but I have the cutest nephew in the world!!!

On a very exciting and life changing note...

It has been out there for awhile but as I can see from others, this is a great place to document and keep track of the process and excitement of life...

17 Weeks

16 Weeks

My Due date is September 20th.

A New Adventure

As some of you know, our church has picked an area of downtown Fresno to love on and create community development within the neighborhood. It is silly to think that we can build trust and truly make a difference for Christ if we come in once a week and do some sort of project. For us and a number of other families at our church, we have a heart to not want "their" schools and "their" neighborhood to improve but to come together and help "our" neighborhood come alive. About 6 months ago we bought a house in the neighborhood and put our house up for sale. We rented out the house until our house sold. We didn't know how long that would be but sure enough, last week we got the news that an offer was accepted and that we are officially in escrow. We will be moving in the middle of May.


Especially for me, this is not an easy move. It's so easy for me to want all of the safety and comfort of how I grew up and living in a "nice" neighborhood. I have never had to put ALL of my trust in God like I have the past few months. And will continue to do as we move forward. Maybe that is why God calls us to follow him and put our own comforts aside, so that we truly learn how to TRUST in him and not ourselves. Pray for us as we start this journey!

Taking a little nap...

Look at my cute family (Andrew and Olive) taking a nap together on the couch. I had to capture the moment=)

A New Granola Bar Recipe

I made granola bars about 6 months ago and didn't like them at all. I have finally decided to try my go at them again, this time with a different recipe.... Can I say SUCCESS!!! I didn't use protein power and my additives were craisins, almonds, and flax seed. This is a must try.

Peanut Butter and Honey Granola Bars

Ingredients:

• 2 cups Old Fashioned Oats
• 2 tbsp of your favorite “chaser”: such as millet (shown), flax seed, flax seed meal, wheat germ, etc. (optional)
• 1/4 cup of Soy Protein powder (optional, but gives nutritional boost)
• 1/2 cup Smooth Peanut Butter (I use natural/organic)
• 1/2 cup Honey
• 1 tbsp Brown Sugar (optional, I don’t need it, but my husband prefers it)
• 1/2 cup of your favorite “additives”: sunflower seeds, raisins, cranberries, dried blueberries, figs, almonds, pecans, whatever your heart contents
• 1 tsp salt (optional, don’t use if you are using salted butter or salted nuts already)

Preheat your oven to 400F. Prepare a small saucepan with the honey, peanut butter, and brown sugar (if using)

Take this time to get out a 9×9 baking dish and line with parchment paper. Also set out a cooling rack.

Spread the oats (and chaser if needing toasting, such as millet or almonds) onto a deep dish baking pan. Place pan into oven. Turn the saucepan onto low to med-low heat. You want the mixture to get warm and combine smoothly, but be careful not to burn or simmer. You know your stovetop best to know what setting will work to accomplish this.

While the oats are toasting, prepare the additives into a medium sized mixing bowl and coat with protein powder (if using). Be sure to watch the oats carefully, they don’t taste good when they get burnt. Take out of oven when they are a golden brown. This takes about 5-10 minutes for me, usually around 7 minutes.

When oats are done, carefully add to the medium bowl with the additives. On top of this, add the peanut honey mixture. Mix well with a wooden spoon. This will take a bit of muscle work, but it is possible to combine it all together.

Plop the mixture into the baking dish lined with parchment paper and spread evenly into baking dish. The bars are ~1/4″ in depth when spread correctly. Carefully lift out parchment paper from baking dish and let cool on baking rack. After about 30 minutes (or cool to touch, I like to flip the block over to cool more evenly.

Our new house: Project #1

About 4 months ago, Andrew and I bought a new house in a more urban neighborhood that we eventually want to live in and invest our time in. We are not living in it yet due to the fact that our current house has not sold. We have a few of Andrew's friends renting it from us right now which has worked out perfectly.

We are about to undergo the 1st project of many on this house. When we bought the house, it had a crazy "garage/apartment/bbq brick room" in the backyard which was definitely not built up to code and left us with no backyard. Andrew and the guys at the house tore everything down except for the original garage. Now we are going to hire someone to rebuild it back into a garage. Here are the before pictures with most everything already torn out. We are getting bids so the final product will be coming in a few weeks.

This was during the demolition time

Now with everything tore out

We adopted a puppy

Ok, so Andrew and I have been throwing around the idea of getting a dog for awhile but with no kids, we travel and go places a lot so we didn't want to have to figure out what to do with a dog during those times. Well, we put our big boy pants on last week and went down to the SPCA and looked at the dogs they had there. Now, it was time to decide what kind of dog we wanted. Both of us are not tiny, little yippy dog people and because of where we live and the fact that we both work all day we didn't want to get a big dog (even though we really like bigger dogs) so we dicided to go for a small to medium dog. As we walked through the SPCA, there was this little red and white dog that had the cutest little eyes. I must say that I think it was love at first sight.

We brought home our new dog, Olive, on Tuesday (my mom's birthday). She is about 9 weeks old so definitely still a puppy. She is pretty scared but has made definite improvments from the first day that we brought her home. She is a cuddler and could lay next to you all day.

Olive

These pictures were taken the day we brought her home so she was very scared.

Give a day, get a day...

Last year Disneyland provided an opportunity that if you volunteered your time at a participating nonprofit you would get a free ticket to Disneyland. Well who doesn't love to spend time at Neighborhood Thrift?!?!? Andrew, Bryan, Kim, Christian, Lacy and I all received tickets to Disneyland so we planned a trip. Last weekend we spent the day in the happiest place on Earth. A little rain wouldn't slow us down.

The return of Captain E.O. in 3D