The week in review

A lot happened last week and I finally have some time to blog about it! So here is how the James family spent last week.

MONDAY

Since my birthday and Valentines Day are fairly close together I've told Jesse from the time we were dating to just do one combined gift. This way we don't have to try and overbook ourselves and he won't break the bank buying me things. The first part has always worked, but the second part... not so much. But I get to have revenge every August because our anniversary and his birthday are only 2 weeks apart. :) Back to Monday... Jesse got me tickets to the Jason Mraz concert at Purdue. We had a friend watch Rosalee and we were able to spend a nice evening listening to great music and enjoying the company of other adults. Okay, so the guy in front of me was 6'6" and smelled like cheap beer and cigars, but I got over it!

The first picture is of us all ready for the first date together in several months! The second was requested by Jesse. He says I should show the world baby #2. For those of you thinking, "wow... looking a little big there!" Keep your comments to yourself! For those of you who are nicer, the shirt isn't a maternity top so it accents the belly all the more.

At the concert! To the right of me is the stage but it didn't turn out. Jesse again is trying to accent my ever growing stomach...

These were taken without the zoom so you can see we were fairly close and had a good viewing area, once I moved around the tall smelly guy.

One of the many reasons we enjoy Jason Mraz's music is because of his modern jazz band. Some of the players came up and played from the front row of the lower balcony. We were in the third row so we got to see them up close.

For your listening pleasure...


While mommy and daddy are away, the baby stays up late and plays! Rosalee had a great time playing at her friend Mia's house. I sent her with a Pebbles Flintstone ponytail and this is how she ended up. The video is her dancing at Mia's house. That kid sure loves to shake her bum!!

TUESDAY/WEDNESDAY

We decided to put up a guessing game for baby #2 which you can find on the top right side of our blog. We're still working on a girl name but we have the boy name narrowed down to two we really like. Middle names are still being discussed... so maybe if you win the baby game we'll let you pick the middle name so we won't have to!
Rosalee was being really cute this week! I taught her where her nose, ears, mouth, teeth, tongue, eyes, and chin are. She had a great time pointing to my face and telling me the names of the body parts. She gets so excited when she feels smart. I kept trying to get a picture of her teeth. She now has 4 of them but when I say, "where are your teeth", she sticks her fingers in her mouth to show me them. So I taught her to smile and say "smile" when I say "smile".

The first picture is of her saying "smile" and smiling. You can kind of see the bottom 2 teeth if you look close enough. You can also see the pretty clip in her hair. When I first started doing her hair she would scream and wiggle. Now I can brush it and put it in a clip or ponytail with little to no fight. The other picture was taken by Rosalee. As you can tell she was confused by me pushing her finger into the camera.

I tried a second time to get Rosalee to show off her teeth and this is what I got! This is what happens if you tell her to say "cheese" instead of "smile"!

Thursday

Was my 24th birthday!! Woo hoo!! I woke up feeling terribly sick (cold like, not pukey pregnancy sick) but decided that I wasn't going to let that stop me from having a great day. In the morning I went to a friend's house for about an hour and then instead of going home and feeling sick I went out. Rosalee and I went shopping at the mall and "she" got me some very nice things! :) I actually did hold up some of the shirts and ask her which one. She would grab one and I took that to mean she liked it better than the other one. While I was riffling through the pants rack I turned around to find Rosalee missing! My heart almost came out my mouth and I started running around looking for her. I found her two aisles over in the intimate apparel section... A lady was laughing and saying, "child you got your body parts mixed up!" Then I saw what she was talking about. There was Rosalee wearing a DDD40+ bra on her head! She looked at me and said, "mama, hat! Hat, mama!" I wasn't sure to laugh out loud or not so I just scooped her up and went back to the pants section. After we went shopping, Rosalee and I went out to lunch. I was craving a BLT REALLY REALLY bad so we went to Arby's and I got a turkey BLT wrap for myself and a baked potato for Rosalee. The doctor wants us to try dairy with her so I decided to be brave and put butter and sour cream on the potato. Thankfully, it didn't seem to bother her at all!! So either this means she's outgrowing her allergy (which the doctor said might happen) or Arby's sour cream isn't cream... After lunch Rosalee and I took a nice nap until Jesse got home. When I woke up I found out he went shopping while I slept and got me some presents. I got more scrapbooking supplies (you can NEVER, I repeat, NEVER have too many!!!) and a small digital picture frame. It holds about 30-40 pictures so I'm excited to get it out and set it up. Then I helped him with some choreography for his theater class before heading off to a Pampered Chef party. If you don't know what Pampered Chef is then I am very, deeply sorry for you!! It is only the best cooking supplies on the planet! You can buy cooking utensils, random kitchen gadgets, bake ware, etc. and like most parties of this nature the more you buy the more free stuff the hostess will get. While there I had the BEST potato snacks! That might be the pregnancy talking, but they were fabulous. So fabulous that I requested the recipe and am now going to share it with you!
12 2" red potatoes
1 T olive oil
2 pressed garlic cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
4 ounces of chive and onion cream cheese

3 T sour cream
*Toppings- bacon bits, grated cheddar cheese, and fresh chives
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Cut the potatoes in half, crosswise. Carefully scoop out a small amount of pulp from each half. In a bowl combine oil, salt, pepper, and garlic. Add potato halves and toss to coat. Place potato halves hollow side DOWN and bake 30 minutes or until golden brown and tender. Remove from oven and cool slightly. In a small bowl combine cream cheese and sour cream until smooth. You can either use a cake decorator to pipe the mixture or just spoon it into the hollowed out spot on each potato half. Top with toppings and serve slightly warm.

I know it doesn't sound that creative or fancy but I promise you that you will love them!! After eating my body weight in potato bites I went home and found Rosalee sleeping and the cake Jesse and her made for me.

A wonderful lemon cake with cream cheese frosting. YUM!!!

I was really REALLY tired and sick but Jesse wanted to take one more picture so this is the face he got... This is my hurry up before I go crazy face!
FRIDAY

Instead of the normal one child (plus Rosalee) that I watch I watched 3 kids. I was tired and sick so it was a little crazy but we all survived. Then we had the missionaries over for dinner and I decided to make them a unique dinner. For dinner I made jambalaya, white corn, cornbread, and fried frog legs. They taste like chicken and fish mixed together. I say more fish than chicken though so I suggest eating them with a tall glass of lemonade because it makes them taste even better! The worst part about frog legs... they look like what they are.
I gave both of them a copy of this picture to send home to their parents. :)
SATURDAY

Jesse and I taught Saturday school like always and my after work plans were ruined by the snow and ice. In the 3 hours we were teaching about 1-2 inches of snow, mixed with ice, fell so we decided to go home and have a lazy afternoon hibernating. We had to find some creative ways to keep ourselves entertained and here is one of them... We lovingly call this video "Fishing for Trouble".