maternity leave!

First, the long ago promised belly picture! Joel finally helped me take some pictures, so although I kind of missed out on the whole "pregnant belly progression" here's me at 8 1/2 months!

Well, I got hit with the whole influenza thing and have been forced into early maternity leave. haha, which isn't a bad thing, except for the being sick part. But now that i'm feeling better I don't know what to do with my time! My apartment is spotless, laundry is done, no dishes, I even have lunch and dinner mostly ready, I just have to cook it...I don't know what else to do! I'm so used to never having any time and then being exhausted, not I have lots of time and energy to go along with it. This inbetween time of not working and not having the baby has me stumped. I did have a dream that I knitted little brian a blanket, so i may head over to the yarn place to see what I find so I can go ahead and knit him something. Anyone have any good ideas?



I went to the wedding of a really good friend on saturday and it was so beautiful! Katie was a young woman who helped us sisters out on the mission all the time! She was like our third companion and we could always count on her. Well now she's married and she was a beautiful bride! Plus I got to have some old companions/mission friends come stay with me for a couple days which was so much fun. It was nice catching up.

The other day my mother in law and I made a flan and it turned out so well I had to share the recipe!

Flan

2 cans Lechera (sweetened condensed milk, but you can find the lechera brand in the hispanic food aisle)

2 cans evaporated milk

4 eggs

2 tablespoons cream cheese

1 1/2 tablespoon vanilla

8 maria cookies (also found in hispanic food aisle, it should be the gamesa brand and it says galleta maria)

Blend the galletas maria first so it's like a powder.

Then blend it all together in a blender!

In a cooking pot melt some sugar! Melt a lot if you want a lot of caramel, just kind of eye it I guess. so melt it and stir it so it doesn't burn until it's like a caramel color.

pour your melted sugar in your flan mold or any round baking thing (like my professional cooking lingo?) You can let it harden a little so it doesn't mix with the flan stuff. then pour in the flan stuff! cover with aluminum foil. you want to put it in a bana maria. so put some hot water in a bigger container, the water should hit righ below the bottom of the flan mold. put the flan mold in the bigger container full of water. and you're going to bake it for an hour in the oven at 350 degrees. once it's done let it sit until it's cool then put it in the fridge, once it's chill, go for it! careful when you're turning it out of the mold since the caramel will spill all over the place.

I love October!

I love fall and winter! They are my two favorite seasons! All the pumpkin things come out! Pumpkin candles, pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins...mostly foods with pumpkin in it is what I look forward too. It's going to be a bit of adjustment after I have the baby and don't have any excuse to eat whatever I want...darn it.

Well my last doctor visit went well. Little Brian isn't a monster like we thought so i'll be waiting for another 3 weeks, but we're so excited! I finally bought a crib and next we're going to go to babies r us to buy this super cute crib set we saw with little monkey's on it.

I'm also pretty excited to go on maternity leave. I do have one complaint, I only get 5 days of paid maternity leave! Really?! If I were a more aggressive person I would complain...but i'll just write about it in my blog...

Other great news, we're buying a house! I really don't plan on living here in Arizona for the rest of my life but if we're going to be here until we both finish school I would much rather be making a house payment than rent. And then we figure we can rent the house out when we move back to Washington. Atleast thats the plan so far. The only downside is that the houses we're looking at would mean we would have to switch wards! We love our callings and our little branch! Although I haven't been able to do as much with the young women since i'm a little bit pregnant I love seeing them each week! And i'm so excited for the things we have planned for the next couple of months. So Joel and I agreed that we'll make the slow transition...but after christmas, haha.

This week i also have an appointment with my counselor at ASU. I was accepted into the Justice Studies program and plan on studying human rights/immigration. But i'm thinking of just sticking with cross cultural communications which is what I was studying my first 2 years of college. I guess i'll see what my options are and what classes I have left.

Joel's working pretty diligently on convincing me that we need to buy a dog also. I try to remind him of when we first got married and bought a little chihuahua and how he used to step on him all the time (accidentally of course) and about how he hated waking up in the morning to take him on a morning walk. But he seems to have forgotten all of that.

And I have to share the cutest thing about Joel. A little bit ago we bought some corn pops cereal because he loves all of those sweet kinds of cereal. So I get home from work and he was a meeting with the elders quorum and I see the box of corn cops literally ripped apart and two big bowls full of corn pops on the counter with no milk. And then I notice something next to them. A little star trek light up badge! haha he had ripped it open and poured out ALL the cereal to get the little toy, but then didn't like the little toy so he left it all there! I love him for things like this. haha.

Well I hope everyone's doing well and that they enjoyed General Conference this past weekend! I don't care what anyone says, I would have a poster of Elder Bednar on my wall if they had one.