23 weeks

It's been 4 weeks since my last pregnancy update...oops!!

That went by FAST!

Weight gain: I think I'm up to 10 lbs now...I have an appointment next week, and I've been going off of their scale, so we'll see if I'm right.

Cravings: Not really...

Discomfort? I've noticed when I sit on the couch in the evenings my lower back starts to feel uncomfortable, so I have to move around a little more often.
Stretch marks? Nope!

Maternity clothes? Nope! I'm still hanging in there with all of my same shirts and jeans I was wearing before I got pregnant. My shirts are just starting to feel a little shorter now, like they won't be able to cover the belly much longer!

Events: The baby moves SO much! He is active! This last Sunday I was sitting in church and I could just see my belly moving. I swear he doesn't kick, he is just rolling his whole body around in there.

Birthday Cupcakes

Hello everyone!

So my husband's family came to visit us here in sunny California about 2 weeks ago, and we were so excited to see them and have all of the kids run around and get to spend time with each other.

On that side of the family we have 5 nieces, and during the week while they were here we had 3 of their birthdays to celebrate!

Needless to say, they all have different tastes and likes.

One niece is into princesses, one is into Star Wars, and the other likes animals.

I offered to make cupcakes, and I wanted to make them each something to make the celebration feel special and individualized.

My most popular post EVER on this blog is the Avengers birthday cake I made for my son's birthday.
(If you haven't had a chance to check that out yet, you can find it here).
To decorate the cake I printed out a coloring book page and traced it with frosting, check it out, it's awesome :)
Well, I decided to use the same decorating technique for these cupcakes.
That's right folks, I traced pictures with frosting again!
I started out by finding color book pages on the internet and re-sizing them to what I thought would be the right size for a cupcake.
I then taped the pictures under a piece of glass, and taped wax paper on top of the glass.

 I tinted my frosting black and did all of the outlines first.

Creamy Sun-dried Tomato and Chicken Pasta

So the blog has been quiet for a while, we had an awesome vacation with my husband's family, and it was nice to unplug and just enjoy spending time together.

I haven't done a recipe post in a while, so when I came up with this yummy-ness a couple of weeks ago I just had to share it with all of you!

The orginal recipe I found is just the chicken with the sauce, but I decided to change up how it's made and add the noodles.
I LOVE how this dish turned out.
It's so good :)

A little spelling, reading, and math

Not too long ago my son really, really wanted this game one of his friends had.

We told him if he wanted it, he had to save up enough money to cover half of the cost, and we would cover the rest.

(I'm sure most of you have heard of it, it's an X-box game called Skylanders).

Long story short, he did what was asked, and we held up our end of the deal.

There is a rule though, he can only play on the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and only for 30 minutes each day.

For a while we had been doing 'learning activities', but those somehow slipped through the cracks as we've gotten busier.

We decided to give my son the chance to earn more 'Skylanders time' by doing a learning activity.
For 25 minutes of learning, he gets 5 extra minutes of Skylanders time.

To keep track, each time he finishes his 25 minutes he gets to pick out a sticker and put it on this paper.

Once we've used the extra 5 minutes of X-box time, we cross the sticker off.

So, this activity is one of my favorites.