Our First Baby Video!

Well today was the much anticipated day that Nikki and I were supposed to find out whether our baby is going to be a boy or a girl. We had read a lot of different advice about how to get the baby to cooperate and decided to try eating a little before the appointment and drinking something with caffeine. After eating we headed to the doctors office a little early hoping that we might get in before our actual appointment time. Shortly after signing in we were called back for the ultra sound. Everything started off fine, the tech was able to see most of what she needed for the doctor rather quickly, unfortunately this was not the case for determining the baby's gender. The problem was that the baby was basically standing up, and its head was right behind Nikki's belly button. On an ultra sound any empty space, like a belly button, creates a large dark shadow on the image, this was inconveniently located directly over the baby's face. The other problem was that the baby had the umbilical cord tucked right between its legs making it impossible to determine its gender. After nearly 45 minutes of pushing and prodding on Nikki's stomach to get the baby to move, we were no closer to getting an answer. This was one stubborn baby. The technician politely informed us that she had to move on to her other patients, and apologized for not being able to do more. On our way back to the waiting room she told us that if she could work us back in before we went back to see the doctor she would give it another shot. After about 30 more minutes of waiting the technician came rushing in and said OK lets go I've got about five minutes, let's see if the baby moved. We hurried in to the room and prayed that we would get an answer this time. Well, we did! It still wasn't easy, and we didn't get the best of images for confirmation but the tech assures us that it is a... Did you already place your vote on our Baby Poll? We wouldn't want anyone cheating! Nikki and I were very surprised and very excited. We had both thought for the longest time that it was going to be a boy, but this was a great surprise. So now we get to start working on a name, picking out nursery decorations, etc... We were very excited to get a video of our ultra sound. It was originally almost 20 minutes long but I have edited it down to just the highlights so now it's around 6 minutes. I hope that you all enjoy the video. It does pause several times throughout to identify some of the key areas so don't mistake a pause for the end. You will also see the video go crazy in one spot, that is one of the many times that the tech was trying to encourage the baby to move by pushing it around a bit. The last image in the video shows the gender so don't miss it!

Happy Mother's Day!

This is a special Mother's Day message. I hope you all enjoy...

The Taco Salad experiment !

Last night Nikki and I had the rare opportunity to actually enjoy a home cooked experiment. With Nikki working and me working to find work we find ourselves trying to avoid complicated meals. To be honest most of the time what we eat either comes out of a box, bag, or can. This time though, Nikki got off work a little earlier than usual and we decided that we would try something a little different, Taco Salad.

Now I know what your thinking, "Taco Salad", really? It is not that difficult of a meal. Well you might think that at first, I certainly did. After assessing our pantry for what ingredients we already had, Nikki headed out to the store to get what we needed. Something you need to understand about what we had in mind is that we wanted actual Taco Salad bowls for our Taco Salad. I don't know how many of you have tried to find these in the store but apparently they are not exceptionally popular, so very few stores carry them. If you can find them, what most stores stock tends to be something like the Old El Paso brand corn Taco Salad bowls. Needless to say that's not exactly what we wanted. We had envisioned the light flaky tortilla shell like Taco Bell has. Well to our dismay grocery stores in Auburn don't sell those. At this point most people probably would have either settled for the corn shells or would have given up all together and just gone to Taco Bell, not us.

I started searching online for the best way to MAKE a tortilla taco bowl and guess what I found? I found a whole lot of information on how FRY your own shells using specially made forms, which I obviously didn't have. Again most people probably would have given up hope, but for those of you who know me, you know that I do not give up easily. I got up from the computer, wandered back into the kitchen and began blankly staring at the ingredients we had pulled out earlier. One of the things I saw was two giant soft tortilla shells left over from the last time we made wraps of some kind. Then it hit me; I know how I can make them. I proceeded to pull out a large cookie sheet, a medium sized Pyrex bowl, and a can of smart balance cooking spray. I preheated the oven to 375 degrees, sprayed both sides the tortilla shells with the cooking spray, draped each one over a different bowl, placed them in the oven, and began praying that I didn't burn them because they were the last two tortilla shells we had. Magically about 10 minutes later I pulled out two perfectly formed golden brown Taco Salad bowls.

By this time Nikki was back from the store. I had already cooked some ground beef for Nikki and some fajita steak for me, (Nikki doesn't like fajita steak), and so we built our salads; first piling some lettuce in the bowl, then adding some meat, tomatoes, cheese, and finally topping it with sour cream. The result was two, near perfect, restaurant quality, home-made, Taco Salads and probably at least a monthly tradition.