Busy Days

Sorry, I don't have much to post tonight. We have been super busy with normal stuff...the kids, the house, and church ministries. We've been enjoying the winter by going for walks and building snowmen. Today I was able to take the kids to the park. Slides go even faster in the winter when they are so cold and slightly icy! Anyway, here are a couple photos and I will try to get a good post together soon!

Baby Gordon

I am so sorry it's been so long since I've posted! Things are busy around here! My parents arrived on October 2 and since baby still hadn't arrived I was scheduled to be induced on Sunday, October 5 at 9 am. But I went into labor at 1:30 that morning instead. I'm so thankful I was able to avoid being induced! By 3:28 am little Pepper Michelle Jewels was born. I'm so thankful to have had my parents here for that and also for the past week as I recovered. God is good!

The day before she was born. I was 40 weeks and 6 days pregnant.

Pepper one week old.

Summer Is Gone

I remember back in the beginning of summer thinking it would take forever for September to be here. I can't believe it, but September is already here! We had a great summer. It flew by, but it was a lot of fun. The kids and I spent a lot of time at the park, taking walks, and playing on the neighbor's trampoline. Shane and I had planned a trip to Whitehorse, Yukon on July 4 for my birthday. But we had truck troubles and that got cancelled. We  figured we would just have to wait until the spring to go but we made a slightly last minute decision to go on August 18. I was 34 weeks pregnant and it was a 12 hour drive on the unpaved Dempster followed by a 6 hour drive on the Alaska Highway. It was so awesome, though. We saw a black bear, 2 grizzly bears, and one caribou along the way. Along with some foxes and rabbits. Here are a couple photos from our trip:

 At the Arctic Circle

In Whitehorse. Jenna was being so silly and wouldn't pose nice for any photo!

Me and Shane . Everytime I see this photo it reminds me of the time Michael Heilman told me I had the biggest nose he'd ever seen. HAHAHA.

So I tomorrow I will be 37 weeks pregnant. I have all the signs of going anytime now. I am at the point where every little pain gets me excited. Then it all goes away and I get dissapointed lol. Weird to get excited about pain. 

And here are my kids so excited for some snow! We got it Thursday night. 

Some Photos

Some Yummy Meals

So for the past month or so I have been trying new recipes and modifying some old recipes. The goal is to prepare for when baby arrives. I want to make a bunch of meals ahead of time and freeze them. That way while I am in the hospital Shane and the kids will eat more than Chef Boyardee and when I come home all I will have to do is thaw out the supper instead of preparing everything each night. I saved a couple of my favorites to share with you all. I am sorry, though, I am horrible at remembering to take pictures :-( I will post links to the recipes, though, so you can see the pictures by the bloggers I got them from.

First is my new absolute favorite meal. I don't know why but I can't get enough of sloppy joes lately. Mmmm...I made some up for tonight's supper and I can't wait! Here is the link:
http://www.momontimeout.com/2012/02/slow-cooker-sloppy-joes-recipe/

Some things I do a little differently: (1) I cook the meat in the frying pan first. This way I can drain any extra grease. Also I don't have to worry about whether it's cooked or not in the crockpot, just whether it is hot enough or not. (2) There is no gluten free worcestershire sauce in Inuvik so I use soy sauce or nothing at all. (3) I used canned minced garlic since I cannot stand mincing my own :-) The recipe says to add water if it is looking dry but I usually put this in the crockpot Sunday morning before church and since I am not around to watch it I always just put in about a 1/4 cup water right from the start. That way I know it won't overcook. It always turns out perfect :-)

This next one is another one of my new favorites. I never loved meatballs so much. It makes the house smell like a restaurant. Mmmm.http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Meatball-Nirvana/Detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=meatball%20nirvana&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page&soid=sr_results_p1i1

For this one I don't use onions (Shane doesn't like them) and I use soy sauce instead of worcestershire sauce, like the recipe above. Also I use gluten free flour instead of seasoned bread crumbs. If I remember I will add a little extra seasoning to make up for the bread crumbs but half the time I forget. Then once they are done I put them in a small pan with sauce and let them simmer for a little while. The sauce I use is basically spaghetti sauce. I use some tomato sauce, salt, pepper, Italian seasoning and a bit of sugar. Then just stick them on a hoagie bun and you are good to go!

Ok, just two more. The picture on this one is sort of deceiving. It makes it look like you get a thick coating but you don't. I read all of the reviews for this crockpot Hawaiin chicken before making it and I am glad I did. I used boneless skinless chicken breast and cut them in small bite size pieces. I covered them in corn starch then fried them on the stove. If Will weren't allergic to eggs I would have dipped them in eggs after the corn starch. Anyway, once they were cooked well then I added everything in the crockpot like the recipe says. I added 2x as much of the soy sauce and brown sugar since a lot of the reviews said it needed more liquid. It turned out really well. I served it over a big pile of rice.
http://www.bigoven.com/recipe/sweet-hawaiian-crockpot-chicken/477852

Last one...fajitas! Fajitas are already a pretty simple meal to whip up but I like this one because it really can be a quick dinner. I cut the peppers up and put them in the freezer ahead of time. Produce doesn't last long up here so I do that with most of our veggies as soon as we get home from the grocery store. So anyway, the recipe:http://realmomkitchen.com/9318/oven-baked-chicken-fajitas/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+realmomkitchen/JNcN+(Real+Mom+Kitchen)&utm_content=Google+Reader

For this one I used jalapenos instead of chiles just because that's what I had in the fridge. There's nothing else that needs changed for this recipe. It is really just super good how it is!

I had another recipe but I can't find it right now :-( It was a really great one, though, so I will find it!! If any of you have any other recipes you'd like to share I'd love to hear them. I really want to have a good list of easy recipes for when baby comes. Anyway...I will try not to go so long between posts anymore! And let me know if you try any of these!
 

Enjoying the Snow and the Sunshine

We finished up our missions conference here a couple weeks ago. We met missionaries to Siberia, Argentina, and Alaska. It was such a great conference with excellent preaching and specials. After that we had our spring carnival, the Muskrat Jamboree. Now we are just waiting for summer :-)

It is warm enough to go sledding and play outside and we have been enjoying that quite a bit. Everything is starting to melt and although we hate the mud we don't mind. We know mud means summer is getting closer!

I am now 18 weeks along in my pregnancy. I am due sometime in the end of September. I am feeling kicks every day now. Shane even felt a kick the other day. William tries to feel baby. He will put his hand on my belly for about 5 seconds then give up, haha. William is convinced this baby is a boy and he won't even consider the fact that it may be another sister. He's very excited to see baby at our ultrasound in a couple weeks. 

Here are a couple photos from the past month or so. Enjoy!

Here Jennifer is wearing a parka that was passed down to her. It was made by her great grandmother using her great great grandmother's parka. It is a neat piece of history! It is so heavy and warm. You can tell Jennifer knows she looks so pretty in it by the way she acts as soon as she puts it on!

Home Sweet Home

Our trip to the States was awesome. I enjoyed it so much. We got to do so much and more importantly spend time with so many people. I'm thankful for all the new memories :-) but still, it is good to be home. It's been such a nice winter here this year. This whole past week has been -20 or warmer! That means spending a whole lot more time outside. The only downside is while we were gone our nice sled got buried under  the snow somewhere...Well that  or someone took it. I'm going to try to dig it out if I can...and maybe make a fort while I'm at it :-)

Here are a couple photos from the past month.

 I loved playing with the puppies at my parents' house.

 Will loved painting this bird house then watching all the birds eat from it in PA

 Me and Beck

 Beautiful Jennifer

Very excited big brother and big sister! 

Will's Quiet Book

Talk about procrastination! I leave tomorrow morning and I am just now finishing the quiet book! Well, finished for now. I still have several ideas for pages that I want to do so I will be adding to this book in 2014. Also I was originally planning on putting my quiet book pages in a binder for the trip. But as I was packing I realized how bulky that binder was. So I decided to ditch the binder and make my own cover. I didn't have enough time to make a nice cover so I made a 'for now' cover. I will be making a nice fancy one later. Perhaps while in PA :-)

Here are the final pages (for now) of the quiet book! (Again, sorry for the poor photo quality, one day I will figure out how to get my camera hooked up to the computer!) See you all soon!!

 The photo book all together. I sewed pages together back to back then made three button holes on each page. I tied them together with embroidery floss for now so it will be easy to add new pages.

 The final two pages. Will loves pirates, treasure, and keys so I love this page. It's very plain, as I was on a tight schedule ;-) 

 When unlocked, you find building blocks I made.by cutting a bunch of shapes and sewing two together. He can use the white page next to it to build the blocks on.