Welcome Home, Silas Charles Tuan!

Silas was ready to meet his sisters right away! No warming up necessary- he just held their hands and walked around with them for several minutes.


He talked on Skype with my parents every night- I think this helped him recognize them. He even let my mom hold him for a few minutes!
They arrived home last night around 10:30 once they unloaded the plane. There was a big crowd waiting to meet them at the airport. Silas is absolutely precious. I can't believe he is already home!

My MK prize!

I started selling Mary Kay back in April or May, just a little bit on the side. For my first quarter in the business I sold enough product to earn a prize. MK is all about prizes. I've gotten several small prizes but this is the big one. I was able to choose based on my sales level what we wanted. I picked a Cuisinart Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker. It came in the mail this week. Wilson was SO excited! It has 3 separate compartments for mix-ins so we have chocolate chips, mini reeces pieces, and sprinkles in them. Last night we made our first batch of icecream- vanilla (dyed blue). It was very creamy and delicious! The ice cream maker can make soft serve icecream or sorbet. Looking forward to trying another recipe!

Why can't we get a break???

Frustrated.
Aggravated.
That's how we feel.
After our delicious dinner last night Andy and I ran over to Toyota to test drive a mini-van since we were kid free. We drove it for 10-15 minutes and checked out what they had to offer. They told us we could come back today and take one off the lot on loan to put the car seats in and try it out as a family. So today we did just that. We had the car for about 4 hours. We really liked it and Andy knew exactly what we could afford. So we went back after dinner, gave them our bottom line and waited. Listened to at least 3 different deals that never matched up to our bottom line so we walked out politely. They wouldn't come down enough. They also informed us that the previous owners of our Jetta had a fender bender and didn't tell us. We had no clue. Apparently the front bumper had been replaced after a minor accident so they weren't offering us much for our trade in. We would have actually still OWED $15 on our Jetta. Please! As we were leaving the nice sales rep said "do you want to drive the van home tonight?" I said no, we can't afford it so I don't want to drive it to just bring it back AGAIN. So needless to say we were frustrated about them not coming down enough AND finding out the Jetta had a minor wreck that the sellers did not disclose.
This morning I had to spend 3 1/2 hours at the OB. It. was. so. boring. I don't know the results yet. I finished my book and read a couple magazines. I was pricked 4 times. Took 2 walks, 1 being up to the maternity floor of the hospital to see if there were any babies. Hopefully I'll be gestational diabetes free!
We're still upset about the house falling through. That's why I chose this title. We'll just have a little pity party before we go to bed.

The Melting Pot

Andy and I had a great time on our date last night! The Melting Pot was a fun restaurant to try. It seems a little out of place in it's location, with the stores around it but whatever. You walk in and forget what it looked like walking in! The inside feels fancy and for what you pay it should look the part. The decor is really nice- greys and blacks- looks upscale. We were impressed. Every table has it's own heating element (or 2) for the fondue pots. With it just being the two of us and me not having a whole lot of room in my belly we didn't get dessert. But we seriously plan to go back JUST for dessert sometime so we can really appreciate the chocolate fondue! Any one want to join us? It would be fun to go with a group for dessert. Just think, dipping brownie bites, cheesecake, fruit, rice krispie treats, marshmallows...in melted chocolate. ANYWAY! We decided on the 3 course meal for 2 (instead of the 4 courses). We got to choose a cheese fondue, salad, and our meat selection. We chose the Carribean Cheese fondue (I think that is what it was called). It had two types of cheese, some type of red pepper, garlic, scallions, and a few other ingredients in it. They bring out all the ingredients and make it there in your fondue pot. Pretty cool! We dipped raw carrots/celery/cauliflower, bread, and granny smith apples into the cheese fondue. It was yummy. Then they brought our our salads. Andy had a Ceaser salad which he really enjoyed and I had a California salad (gorgonzola cheese, walnuts, raspberry vinagrette). Again, yummy! Last came our cooking pot. You choose what you want to cook your meat in. There are 4 choices. We chose a vegetable broth which we liked. Our meat included shrimp, salmon, chicken, teriyaki steak, and plain steak. They also bring broccoli, new potatoes, and mushrooms. Then there were 6 sauces to dip your meat in after cooking it. This part was fun- we each cooked 2 things at a time and tried the different sauces. It was good. We were stuffed! We didn't eat any of the mushrooms but we ate everything else. Our favorite was the shrimp. They have a great cocktail sauce. It was a very fun experience. Definitely not a place you could go to very often because of $$ but it was fun! We do plan to return for chocolate fondue sometime in the near future but it will probably be a long time before we have dinner there again. They told us it would take about 2 hours for dinner and they were right. It went fast though because we were having so much fun!

House Update and Pregnancy Update

We met with our realtor today and decided we're going to go to the Greivance Committee and Ethics Committee to try and get back some of our $750. These come before mediation and don't cost. Hopefully things can be settled through the committees so we don't have to do mediation. We're going to sign the release on the house when we get that paperwork back from our realtor to sign.
Last night Andy and I spent a lot of time on the realty website. I look at it a lot so I had written down 8 different houses to show him. We looked at all of them and crossed 2 off the list. So good news, there are 5 homes we're at least interested in seeing! We're hopefully going to go look at them with our realtor sometime this week. If we see one we're fairly interested in then we'll work at getting our house up on the market. We are going ahead and scheduling our soffit/fascia and gutter replacement which we had intended to do prior to the whole house trading possibility so that the outside looks good. The roof is new as of last summer. I'll keep you posted on our new home search!

My OB office called today to tell me the results of my blood work after the glucose test. My sugar was high so now I go back and do a 3 hour glucose test to see if I have gestational diabetes or not. I had to do this with Luke and it came back negative so I'm not worried yet. Just really dreading the blood being drawn from the same arm 4 times. That hurt so badly. I remember asking them if they would please use the other arm on the 3rd blood drawing and they told me they couldn't. I hate that part. I have to fast from midnight until I get there at 8:30. Then I have my blood drawn. Drink a glucose drink, and 1 hour after I finish I have my blood drawn again. Blood drawn again after 2 hours and 3 hours after drinking the nasty drink. So I sit and sit and sit there! No food for almost 12 hours. Not gonna be very fun.

Andy and I are going to the Melting Pot tonight to celebrate my completion of my National Board portfolio and test! I'm super excited. My mom is watching the boys and we have reservations for dinner. I have wanted to eat at TMP for YEARS and we are finally going tonight! I'll post about our evening later!

A Fun 4th!

Another good recipe from Annie's Eats!

Tonight I tried another recipe from the blog Annie's Eats! It was for Black Bean Enchiladas. They were delicious. We all enjoyed them. We just had mexican rice with them. It made a lot of enchiladas- more than enought for another dinner. It was pretty easy too. I followed the recipe all except for leaving out the cilantro. I didn't have any but I love cilantro so I'd recommend using it! Click here for the recipe!