Monday, November 19, 2012

Best Dinner Ever...No Exaggeration.

Let me start off saying this is NOT my recipe. I wish I could take claim, but I cannot. We did a recipe exchange for our MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group and I ended up with some great recipes. This was one of them. For those of you that are local, I honestly felt that I liked it better than Love Love Teriyaki...and that's saying something. No offense Love Love, we still "love" you, but I do like that I know what ingredients are being used...I always prefer food I make over food you can buy cooked for you. Requires a little more effort, but I just don't like not knowing what is being put in my food. So, for those of you wanting a great, quick, easy dinner recipe for the whole family...here it is (Ruby, you can stop reading now, you won't like it..haha). Oh and I should add that the only change I made was to use honey in place of sugar (since we don't eat refined sugar) and added sesame seeds (they are filled with great nutrients despite being so small). 




Crock Pot Teriyaki Chicken
Serves 3-4 (I halved the original recipe, so if you have a large family feel free to double it)
Adapted from Jess Eggert

Ingredients:
6 boneless skinless chicken thighs
1/3 c. honey
1/3 c. soy sauce (we use an organic gluten free one)*
3 T. apple cider vinegar
1/3 tsp. ground ginger
1-2 minced garlic cloves
Fresh ground pepper
2 1/4 tsp. cornstarch
2 1/4 tsp. water
Cooked brown rice (baked brown rice is amazing, try it, you'll LOVE it)
Sesame seeds for garnish

Directions:
Place chicken in a crockpot. In a bowl, combine the honey, soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, ginger, garlic, and pepper. Pour over chicken. Cover and cook on low for 4-5 hours (depending on your crockpot) or until chicken is cooked through and tender. Remove chicken and set aside, keep warm. Place the leftover sauce from the crockpot into a saucepan and bring to boil. Combine cornstarch and water until smooth. Gradually stir into sauce and let simmer until thickened. Serve over chicken, rice, and veggies of your choosing and toss on sesame seeds. 

The person who gave me the recipe suggested using broccoli slaw (I've seen this at Trader Joe's and at Winco...I'm sure you can find it at any store). What a great suggestion that was! I simply sauteed it in a bit of coconut oil until softened and slightly brown and we were both raving over the flavor. You must add it! 

So, definitely try this one. Josh even raved over it despite the fact that he has a cold and can't taste a thing. Yep, worth it.

*Whether or not you choose to eat gluten, I will always recommend an organic soy sauce. For those of you watching out for GMO's, soy is notorious for containing lots of them. Pregnant or not, I don't want nasty chemicals in my food.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

A Little More About Israel

Time for me to introduce you all to Israel. He's obviously not here yet, but I haven't had a chance to really chat about our baby boy yet. Plus I may have promised a reveal video to you all, and we may have been unable to use internet in our hotel, so I may have been harassed a few too many times for not posting it sooner....

Let me just say I have felt like the baby inside me was a boy the whole time. It was weird. I had no reason to really think it would be, but I just KNEW we were having a boy. Ironically, Josh truly believed we would have four girls. Of course when we found out it was a boy, most said (innocently I'm sure) how Josh was probably so excited to have "his boy." To us we don't see it that way. Neither of us have ever cared what our babies were. We just feel blessed to be able to have these babies and know that God had our family planned out long before we even thought about it. So, despite what people think, while we are over the moon excited that we are having a boy, we would have been overly excited to have a girl as well. We don't believe that because we have a boy and a girl we have a "perfect" family. I am sure those that have all boys or all girls certainly don't think their family isn't perfect. When we go to adopt we will not specify gender. Just as we don't have a say in who joins our family through pregnancy, we will let God decide who will join our family through adoption. Sorry, just wanted to be clear that our babies are very important to us no matter what gender :)

Seeing this boy on the ultrasound was the best feeling. With Eden we had sooooo many ultrasounds for many different reasons and this time around we haven't had any complications that require an ultrasound so we happily waited 19 weeks to see our little boy. By happily I mean we were bursting at the seams to see our baby's sweet face, but were happy that we didn't have a reason to see him sooner. Thankfully the ultrasound tech that we had was gracious and looked at the gender first thing. For Eden we had to wait until the very last minute! Josh and I both can read ultrasounds fairly well (since we had a lot of practice last time) so we knew it would be obvious to us if we were having a boy or girl. It certainly was obvious. I have no doubts that we have a little boy coming. After that ultrasound we had to prepare for our reveal video to our family. We made ourselves wait an agonizing 9 days to reveal it to the rest of the world since we were determined to announce from Disneyland. We had also picked out a pair of shoes at Nordstrom for a boy or a girl so we ran over to pick up our cute little boy Adidas (I'll have to share a photo of them...they are adorable). We quickly worked on our reveal video so we could send it off to family at 6 p.m. on the dot. It was the first video I have ever made and if you haven't heard me say so, I am quite proud of it. Without making you wait longer, here is the link to watch the video. Crossing my fingers that it works...Josh promises that it will...


We are seriously so in love with this little boy. 

Every name that we choose has to have meaning. I think that's probably true for most. It is so scary choosing a name for a baby that they will have to live with the rest of their lives. We had prayed over names and had a boy and a girl name picked out before we were pregnant (come on..you know me by now..). Let's just say, Israel was not the name we had picked. In fact, it wasn't even in the running. The story of the name is this, Josh was working one day and a little boy named Israel came in. He chatted with him and texted me saying he LOVED the name. We chatted more about it and he said he felt like it was the perfect name for our son. Um, excuse me?! We had the perfect name for our son! I liked the name, but it just wasn't what I had planned on. I prayed, hard. The answer quickly came to me...if Josh felt so confident that this was the name for our future son, then that was the name. So, our other name is now ready for another boy if God should choose to bless us with another son and I have no doubts that Israel is the perfect name for our baby.

The name Israel means "God perseveres." What a beautiful and strong name. For us, we couldn't think of a better name for our baby to carry the rest of his life. We pray that he will understand it's importance. 

His middle name was one we chose long ago. John was not only one of the twelve apostles of Jesus, but that name also belongs to Josh's grandpa. We like to choose middle names that honor a family member. Eden's honored my grandpa, while Israel's honors a grandpa of Josh's. We love the combination of the two names. 

I have so much more we could share...and one of these days when I get my computer files recovered from my old computer I'll be able to share my bump photos that we have been taking. One of these days I'll get them back...

Thank you all for your sweet words about our baby boy. We so appreciate all the excitement you all have for us! We can't wait until we can see his face...because seriously if his ultrasound photo was any indication, he is one handsome little boy. And I am obviously not biased one bit. 



Love you all!

*The DIY Surprise Lantern used in the reveal video came from the blog, Oh Happy Day. 

Sunday, November 11, 2012

It's a....

BOY!!!!!!

Can't wait to meet you Israel John Crain!

We will post a video of our reveal later :) We are so excited!

Monday, November 5, 2012

Eden: 2 Years


Eden, please forgive me for posting your birthday post almost 2 months late. Better late than never....right?!

You, my dear child, are quite the amazing daughter. We love your personality. One moment you are quietly observing everyone and everything and the next you are dancing and singing loudly and saying a million sentences at once. You can look like the most stoic child ever and yet you rock the facial expressions. You have so many manners for a 2 year old and we are so proud of you for that. You are great at expressing your emotions and have started to let us know when you are sad, scared, mad, happy, etc. You are also the girliest tomboy we know. You will hold a purse on one arm while simultaneously jumping in every mud puddle you can find. You dislike dirty fingers, but will happily dig in rock piles at any given time. And so much for girls not getting hurt as much. You get hurt on a daily basis. Not for lack of us trying to keep you safe...you just really like to climb and explore.

You keep us guessing, that's for sure. 

On the day of your birthday we wanted to do something special for you. You had a family party coming up that weekend, but we couldn't miss out on celebrating our firstborn on her actual birthday. We took you down to Riverfront Park and let you ride the carousel until both mommy and daddy were sick. You got to run around in the grass and then we took a walk to a fun alleyway to take some photos of your sweet face. Then, daddy surprised you with a trip to Dutch Bros. for your very own "coffee." We spent the rest of the day just doing whatever you wanted. I think that's how we will always spend birthdays...it was so fun and so relaxing. 

Eden Rae, these last two years with you have been fun, challenging, and the greatest years of our lives. We cannot wait to see what your third year holds as you get ready to become a big sister. We know you'll rock that role for sure. Love you big girl!