My Surprise

I went on my first ever "Girls Weekend" this past week, and I came home to find that Matt had been working on a special project while I was gone.
We live in a one-bedroom apartment, and will for a few months after the baby (lovingly nicknamed as Teeny) is born. We already solved the problem of where he will sleep with a half-size pack and play. But in addition to needing a bed, babies need a lot of other stuff. We figured we would just get a small chest of drawers or a bookcase. Now we have Matt's "baby closet" creation!
The picture is bad quality because I took it at night, and we have bad lighting in our dining room. Yes, that's right, the baby closet is in our dining room, but in such a discreet place, I didn't even notice it was there until Matt showed me.

So far, the closet is pretty empty. He hung up the few clothes that we have, and bought a bunch of baby hangers. (Have you ever noticed how cute those things are?!) Everything in it was given to us by our doctor or family members. However, there is one thing I've bought.Megan and I found this treasure back in February at Kohl's on clearance for $2. It was the only gender neutral outfit we could find. Isn't it precious? I can't wait to have a baby to put in it!

Seattle/Vancouver Trip

If you go with us to a new place, you will soon discover, as Megan did this trip, that we're all about the food.

Sight-seeing? Oh, sure. We do some of that. But the food, the local cuisine, is what we're all about. For that very reason, it would seem that most of the pictures I took are of the things we ate.

After 12ish hours in the car, we arrived in Seattle on Friday afternoon. We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and headed downtown to see the sights. We ate dinner at a local pizza place called Belltown Pizza. Surprisingly, I forgot to take a picture of our food there, but it was good.

After dinner we walked along the piers before we took a ferry over to Bainbridge Island...just because we thought it would be fun to ride a ferry. (That is part of Bainbridge Island behind us.)

Here we have Matt showing off the view of the Seattle skyline from inside the ferry. It was a little rainy, so it wasn't very fun to be out on the deck.

Saturday morning we headed up to Vancouver. Our first stop was the LDS temple open house in Langley. We took a few pictures before we left, but they're all on Megan's camera, so I guess you'll have to wait a little longer to see those. By the afternoon we headed to Stanley Park and Robson street, which, according to our research, are some of the must-see places of Vancouver.
Robson street had just what we were looking for: restaurants and shopping. We didn't do any shopping since everything is ridiculously expensive in Canada, but we did do some eating. We had lunch earlier in the day at an A&W/Chubby Chicken (not very Canadian), where Matt sampled poutine.

I took the picture after he had eaten about half of it, but it didn't look that great to begin with. It consists of french fries, gravy, and cheese curds. It is so popular, and so common, that we also saw it on the menu at Costco.

This was our "dinner" on Robson street at the Crepe Cafe. Megan got hers with applesauce, cinnamon, and whipped cream; Matt got Nutella, bananas, and walnuts; and I got mine with dark chocolate and strawberries. Amazing.

We drove back to Seattle that night, then got up Sunday morning to spend a good part of the day in Seattle before starting our drive back that afternoon. We first went on a tour of the Boeing factory in Everett, WA. That was definitely one of the coolest parts of the trip, but no pictures because electronic devices were not allowed on the tour.

After Boeing, we stopped by Ivar's Seafood so Matt could have some Seattle fish & chips. Megan and I opted not to try any.

And then the rest of our time in Seattle was spent at the Space Needle and Pike Place Market.

This the only picture of Pike Place Market I took. This is only a fraction of the gazillion tulips they had there. If they wouldn't have had to sit in a car for the next day and a half we totally would have bought some!

We finally started our trip back late that afternoon, and once we were a little ways outside the city we stopped to get gas and dinner. The Fat Burger we ate at was right next to a Kool Kreme. I'd never considered the concept, but donuts and ice cream are an amazing combination! This shop had extraordinary krispy kremes including chocolate and maple bars, doughnut sundaes, and this creme filled chocolate doughnut.

We are now fans of Seattle, Vancouver, and Kool Kreme. All in all, not a bad trip!

More Baby News

I fully believe that "it's not what you know, it's who you know," because although I'm only 16 weeks pregnant and should have had to wait another month for an ultrasound to find out if we're having a boy or girl, I know this awesome person named Hillary.

Hillary works at a medical clinic and happens to be really good friends with an amazing ultrasound tech, so she invited me to come in for a sneak-peek. The only other ultrasound we've had was at 9 weeks (the picture I included in the last post), and there was a world of difference in the baby we saw. This time it was moving all over the place and looked like a baby rather than a peanut!

It was through that movement that we were able to get several shots of good evidence that it's a boy. It was at that point that Matt leaned over to me and, in a very serious voice, said, "That's awesome." He's already planning the first tool set he's going to buy him :)

We're both extremely excited. In fact, I've noticed that neither of us have really stopped smiling since we found out yesterday. I'll have to put aside all of my ideas for little girl dresses and bows for now--instead I'll just have to be on the lookout for more "masculine" baby craft projects!

Guessing Game

You know me. . .I don't do things half way. That's why I wanted to initiate this guessing game.

Can you guess what this picture is?

Irrelevant fact: it was constructed out of Skittles

Hints:

• it resembles the original pictures (or at least I'm hoping it does)

• the B&W effect is supposed to emphasize the subject of the picture

You probably just want me to get to the point, don't you? Okay, then I'll give you one more hint:

You're still not sure? Well, then I guess I'll just tell you. . .

The Tiner family is about to become a little less teeny because we are expecting a baby on September 25th!

I am 13 weeks pregnant, and although you might not guess it by looking at me, I have a bit of a baby bump. I can't wait until it's big enough that it doesn't just look like I'm chubby!

Sorry my guessing game wasn't a very good one, but at least now you know the big news!

(And I just noticed the excessive number of exclamation marks used in the last four sentences. That right there should tell you just how excited we are.)

It's My Birthday!

Or rather, yesterday was, and let me tell you, it was a good one!

We recently asked our Primary kids what their favorite part of their birthday was, and every one of them said cake. I, on the other hand, enjoy the ice cream (but with the last name Tiner, I'm sure that doesn't come as much of a surprise to most of you), so we ended my birthday festivities at Coldstone.

Another great part of my birthday was meeting Millie. Most of you probably remember my post from October announcing our friends Buck and Niki found out they were having a girl in March. Unfortunately, their little girl decided to come early, and she's been in the NICU since November. Because of the strict visitor policy, we've been patiently waiting to meet her.

(You can see Millie's full story on their blog here)

And what do you know? Niki and the hospital decided to give me a great birthday present when the visitor policy changed the day before my birthday!

She got all dressed up in her new hot pink dress to meet me, and she managed to stay awake the whole time I was there. She's got adorably chubby cheeks, and she is so cute! Thanks again, Niki :)

Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. I had a great day!

Neighbor

We moved into our new apartment almost 4 months ago, but unfortunately, it was around the time I decided to take my blogging sabbatical. It was last week after I decided to visit the blogging world again that I realized I haven't introduced you to our new neighbor yet.

The view from our apartment includes a large dirt field, lots of power lines, and one giant Ikea store! The first time anyone comes to visit they always ask, "so how many times have you been to Ikea?" I'll have you know we do frequent that store, but you can only look at furniture so much.

We are loving our new apartment, and for those of you who haven't been to see it yet, come visit soon! I mean, how can you pass up a view like this?

One-Minute Bread

Our greatest discovery of the weekend: this recipe from lifehacker.com.

Because who doesn't love bread? Especially when it's homemade? And it takes almost no effort?

Ciabatta bread with less than one minute of prep time and only four ingredients.

• 4 cups of all-purpose flour
• 2 cups of warm water
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1/4 teaspoon of granulated yeast (or equivalent)

Pour the warm water into the medium-size mixing bowl and stir in the yeast with a spoon. Add flour and salt to your bowl of yeasty water. Stir into a heavy batter and cover your project with a hand towel or plastic wrap and set in a safe place for a few hours. After the dough has rested for 8 to 12 hours, it will have nearly doubled in size. Preheat the oven to 400F, and prepare a baking stone or cookie sheet with cornmeal or flour to prevent the bread from sticking. Check after 25 minutes. Take out when it is golden brown, and let it cool for 10 minutes.

The finished product? Amazing.

The original recipe post is a little more entertaining, so if you're looking to kill some time, check it out here.