Kitchen helps that I've found useful

I am such a huge fan of emergency substitutions and other tidbits of knowledge in the kitchen that I thought I'd share some of my information with you. Here are just a few to get you interested!

• Unless specifically instructed not to do so, always preheat your oven to the temperature required.
• Always beat eggs before adding sugar.
• To see if an egg is fresh, place the uncracked egg in a glass of water. If it sinks to the bottom, it is fresh. If it floats, throw it out!
• To make fluffier scramble eggs, beat in a small amount of water, instead of milk.
• You can always substitute 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour for 2 cups cake flour.
• For muffin tins, if you don’t have enough batter to fill all the cups, pour a little water in to the empty cups. This will prevent the pan from scorching.

Next time I post I will have emergency substitutions and "how much is enough"?

Hope you all are having great weeks! The girls and I are having fun while Jacob is camping with the scouts this weekend. I'll have to blog about that later!

The most beautiful girls in the world!

I'm too lazy to fix this picture! I forgot to flip it before I posted it and my computer is too slow to make it worth fixing! Emma loves to play in the sprinkler!

Linnea really enjoys her breakfast!

Such a beautiful baby!

Jacob was able to be home Thursday-Sunday this weekend! Usually I just get him Sundays and even then he is at meetings for most of the day. We spent Thursday doing yard work and Friday playing. Saturday Jacob was gone all day helping put a roof on a lady's house in our ward.

Emma and I went on a mommy/daughter date Thursday night. She was acting up really bad and we could tell she needed some alone time. So we went to Toy's R Us and Dairy Queen. Emma loved running around the toy store looking at all the different toys and I enjoyed watching her face light up again. She loves her little sister so much but is having a hard time sharing the spotlight. We went into DQ and sat down and enjoyed our ice cream together and had a fun conversation. We talked about pretty much everything. I think Emma was glad to get some of the talking off her chest.

Then on Friday night Jacob took Emma and our dog Annie on a walk and they stopped by Emma's friend Connor's house and they played together for a while. She did much better yesterday and today with listening to us.

I love being a mom to Emma and Linnea! They are such wonderful girls!

There are some things I missed while being pregnant that I didn't realize I'd missed until last night. I missed not being able to lay on my back and tummy. And I missed not being able to wrestle Jacob. I don't know how many of you wrestle with your husbands or wives but it's so fun! I get beat horribly every time but I have had a couple moments of victory when I flipped Jacob. It's so fun to rough house! Jacob and I are both pretty physical people and a good wrestling match every once in a while is sometimes just what we need. Last night he wasn't too happy because I decided at 11:30 that it was time to wrestle. He humored me though! I love him!

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Being a mommy of 2...

Is fun, tiring and awesome! Emma is such a good big sister and Linnea is such a good baby! Linnea is still eating every 3 1/2-5 hours (depending on the time of day).

Emma has started to act out towards me and doesn't want to listen to me when I tell her to do things. I'm trying really hard to not get too frustrated with her. Her world has been flipped upside down recently and I'm trying to have a little understanding with that. Before my mom left she told me to just remember that siblings are the best things for kids. They learn a lot from having a sibling. So I just keep telling myself that Emma is just going through a learning phase.
Emma with a cupcake the Relief Society Presidency brought over for her.

I've gone out to the grocery store once with both girls, the library, Target and just on a drive around the town with them. Oh and WalMart. It's not as bad as I thought it would be. As soon as I get done feeding Linnea we are out the door running errands.

I am starting to come off the high of just giving birth and fatigue is now setting in. I'm tired and sometimes crabby but I wouldn't trade this for the world. Looking at Emma now I've realized just how quickly time flies. It makes me kinda sad to think about my little girls growing up and going to school. Emma will go into Primary this next year and I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

I love pictures like this!

So far Emma has tried to pick up her sister, whacked her sister in the face with a rattle that she was shaking to make Linnea stop crying, and stuffed the pacifier into her face to make her stop crying. Nothing too damaging, but still frustrating. They are all things that she was doing to try and help me so I couldn't get too mad at her but we did have a long talk about how to handle Linnea.

And I won't slack off... I'll post a new recipe for you guys too while I'm at it. The recipe is Artichoke Chicken and you cook it in a Dutch Oven. Since it's pretty much summer I figured why not a Dutch Oven recipe.

Artichoke Chicken

14 inch Dutch oven

8 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

2 Tbs. butter

½ c chopped onion

1/3 c flour

1 tsp dried rosemary

1 tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

2 c chicken broth

2 6oz cans artichoke hearts, drained

1 (4 ½ oz) jar whole mushrooms, drained

cooked noodles or rice

In 14 inch Dutch oven, brown chicken in butter. Remove chicken; do not drain pan juices. Sauté onion in pan juices; blend in flour, rosemary, salt and pepper. Add chicken broth; cook until thickened and bubbly. Remove from heat, add chicken breasts, arrange artichokes and mushrooms on top of chicken and gravy up over the top of the chicken. Cover and bake at 350˚ F (about 8-10 coals on bottom, 14-16 on top) for 30 minutes or until chicken is tender. Place noodles or rice on serving platter; top with chicken and sauce. Yield: 8 servings

Linnea is here!!!

We now have a new member of the family! Linnea Merline was born May 27th 2009 at 11:09 pm. She weighed 7 pounds 12.4 ounces and was 20.5 inches long.

I went in for my Pre-Op appointment on the 26th (my due date) to talk about my C-Section that was scheduled for yesterday. My doctor checked me and I was still a 2 and 70% effaced and Linnea was a -3 station. I asked him if he could induce me thinking that it would be Friday or Saturday before it would happen. He called the hospital and they said it was the next morning or nothing. I freaked out a little bit. So Dr. Anderson told me if I wanted him to come and deliver the baby that he would be there. I told him that I would really like that. I go to a clinic where there are 7 doctors and Dr. Anderson wasn't on call that day. He's in my ward over here so I was very glad to have a familiar face and one that I knew had the same faith that I did.

I went in at 7 am to be induced. Since I was attempting a VBAC I couldn't eat or drink anything. I didn't realize this until I got there and had only eaten a yogurt since dinner the night before. Needless to say I was hungry. I was so nervous going in that the nurse couldn't find a vein to stick my IV into.

I was given Pitocin at 9 am and slept for a couple hours until I started feeling little contractions. The doctor that was on call came in and went over the risks of a VBAC with me and asked if I would still like to continue. I told him that I would. This would be one of many times where he would come in and make sure that I still wanted to go through with it and listing all the dangers of doing so. The risk of uterine rupture I was told was 1-5% which just isn't a big number. He also told me that since I had to be induced the likely hood of me pulling off a successful VBAC was not good.

My water was broke later that afternoon and I endured 2 hours more of contractions before I decided that enough was enough and I wanted an epidural. The anaesthesiologist was amazing! He had such a calming effect when he walked into the room. He talked to me like I was his daughter and I felt so relaxed which helped a lot to get me through those last few contractions that I would feel. After I was given the epidural I was a 2 and 80% effaced. I was told that if nothing had progressed by 10 that evening that they were going do a C-section. I was fine with that because that would mean 13 hours of labor.

A while later I woke up because I felt something change so I had the nurse check me and I was a 6 and 80% effaced and Linnea had dropped into my pelvis. A couple hours after that I was a 10 and 100% effaced and Linnea was almost ready to come out. The nurse told me that she thought I should wait to push and let my body bring down the baby on its own (to decrease the amount and time of stress I would be putting on my uterus to push). An hour later I was ready to push and I pushed for 1/2 and hour and Linnea was born. What a wonderful experience it was! I felt so good afterwards and so energized (I had slept ever since I had gotten the epidural) I thought I could go again right then.

Now it's been a week with Linnea in our family and she fits right in. She's eating every 4 hours and is so laid back. She's so much easier than Emma was which I didn't think was at all possible. We finally decided on a middle name right before we left the hospital and went with Merline. Merline is Jacob's grandmother's name and she lives in California. So now Emma (Jeanne) and Linnea are both named after their grandmothers that were alive at the time of their birth.

Emma is smitten with her little sister. She's very protective of her and is such a big helper getting me diapers and wipes and blankets. I have noticed that she is more emotional about things and makes a big deal out of nothing which she didn't use to do. I think I would be a little mad too if someone I didn't know (or in her case fully understand) was coming and was going to stay at my house and snuggle with my mommy just showed up one day. But, we will move on and try and make Emma's transition into being a big sister easier.