Healthy Eats

Finding meals to cook that are healthy and easy can be challenging. We have found a few staples lately that we love.

Bruschetta Chicken

Season your chicken as desired and grill or back. Top with hummus, bruschetta, and black olives. For my bruschetta, I toss tomatoes, fresh basil, olive oil, salt and pepper together. This tastes great with roasted carrots! Toss your carrots in olive oil, season, and roast at 425 for about 25 minutes.

Roasted Veggie Quinoa Salad

cauliflower/broccoli/carrots
mushrooms
quinoa
pecans
parm
balsamic vinaigarette
olive oil
salt and pepper, basil

Chop your veggie of choice and toss with mushrooms in olive oil and seasoning of choice. Roast at 400 for 20-30 minutes. Cook quinoa according to directions. Toast pecans. Once everything is done cooking, combine quinoa, roasted veggies, pecans, and dressing. Top with some parm and enjoy! We ate ours with baked salmon and it was delicious and very filling!

Instagram Obsessed

Time for more pictures of my boys!

If Daddy does it, Hayes does it too...

 Those eyelashes...

 

 Such a happy baby

I know one day soon, he won't want to snuggle with me. I'm taking advantage of these moments while I can.

Hayes loves to "mow the gas."

Top 10

1. My vacation from Top 10 is over, again. The last few weeks have been super busy with weekend trips, sickness, work, and life. Blogging comes after family and there hasn't been much time left after family lately...

2. I have been whipping up some easy, healthy meals. Will share soon!

3. Several friends are expecting over the next few months and I am so excited to meet all of the sweet new babies!

4. Speaking of sweet babies, mine are growing way too fast. Posts coming on those two soon too...

5. Dropped off my first breastmilk donation this past week! I know one ice chest had 302 oz of frozen milk. There was a second ice chest full as well. I am so happy to be able to do this. Ryan is happy to have freezer space again...

6. Had a peanut butter and bacon shake from Sonic the other day. I was kinda disappointed, it was all peanut butter and not enough bacon.

7. I really want to color my hair and I'm really digging the ombre look...but I'm not sure I could pull it off. I've never colored my hair before...

8. I made a goal for myself to stop drinking McDonald's mochas...and it's been almost 3 weeks since I've had one! I replaced them with coffee from home with Almond Joy coffee creamer. Heaven in a cup!

9. Shows I am loving right now: The Americans, Mad Men, and Smash.

10. Prayers for our nation and those healing from the Boston and Texas tragedies.

Instagram Obsessed x3

So I am a little behind in my blogging. As a result, you get a few weeks worth of Instagram sweetness. Enjoy!

Just in case you can't tell, that's a basketball on a t-ball stand with a hockey stick for a bat. Wouldn't want any sports to feel left out...

 

Sweet brothers

Keller's 4 month glamour shot

Like father, like son

Group effort tummy time!

Hayes was not so sure of the crawfish.

In Hayes' world, socks double as mittens...

Keller's Birth Story

Time to share the story of Keller's birth!!

We found out we were pregnant with Keller on April 2, 2012. I was actually going to play an April Fool's Day joke on a friend about being pregnant...turns out the joke was on me:) This pregnancy happened much faster than we expected, but we were super excited about the new baby.

My pregnancy was super easy. We had decided we didn't want to find out the gender. We did this with Hayes and it was such a fun experience. We did something a little different this time though. I had the ultrasound tech send the gender to my parents when I was around 32 weeks. My mom sent a box full of personalized and gender specific goodies for Keller to have right after he was born. They did a great job keeping the gender a secret and it was fun to have so many things for Keller right after he was born.

Once I hit my third trimester, baby started measuring big. This wasn't surprising since Hayes was also a big baby. I asked one of my doctor's if my babies were big because I wasn't eating healthy enough. With Hayes, I ate whatever I wanted and I tried to restrict my french fry intake with Keller to avoid a huge weight gain. My doctor asked how tall Ryan was. He then said, "Well Katie, if you had married a short Asian man, you might have smaller babies." Gotcha. So, another big baby it is!

At my 38 week check up, baby McCormick continued to measure very large. I wasn't progressing at all at this point. The doctor I was seeing that week begin talking about c-sections due to the size of the baby. And caused me to have a major panic attack. I had one more ultrasound which once again confirmed my baby was gigantic. At my 39 week check up, I got to see my regular doctor who delivered Hayes. I still wasn't progressing at this point and I was stressed about the baby being too big to deliver naturally. Dr. Little is the best doctor ever. He arranged to have me admitted that night to start the induction process. He was on call the next day and assured me I would have a baby one way or another.

Fun side note: My 39 week check up was on December 3rd. My nephew, Callen, was born early that morning. Exciting week for the McCormick family!

My in-laws came to Dayton that night to stay with Hayes while we went to the hospital. They had been pretty busy in Delphos with the arrival of their other grandbaby, but we were so grateful that they made it down to help us. So Monday night, we headed to the hospital!

We were admitted and they started the induction process which involves a gel and I am sure no one wants any other details about that process... I was having mild cramping throughout the night, enough to make sleeping difficult. Pitocin was started at around 7 am Tuesday morning. The contractions hit pretty hard and I was ready for the epidural around 8:30. My water broke right before I got the epidural. Let me tell ya, that epidural was astounding. I swear I couldn't feel anything. At all. I fell asleep and took the best nap of my life due to the numbness. At noon I was at 5cm and progressing nicely, so I went back to sleep. My sweet friend, Jessie, was going to be at the hospital to take pictures of Keller's birth for us. She left her house at noon to head to the hospital and hang out while we waited on baby to come...or so we thought. At 12:35, the nurse came running in saying she needed to check me because of the baby's heartbeat. I was half asleep and not quite sure what was happening. All of a sudden, she's flipping out stirrups and yelling for the doctor. Dr. Little comes running in, I push a couple of times, and out comes baby at 12:47.

Right before Keller was born, Dr. Little asked what our final gender guess was. We both said boy and once he was born, Dr. Little said, "looks like you were right!" I was so excited to have another little boy. They put Keller on my chest and I was overwhelmed with love for this little baby all over again. He looked exactly like Hayes while he was screaming his face off. Dr. Little and the nurses were guessing his weight, we knew he was a big one. Of course, no one guessed high enough. This little man weighed 9 lbs 11 oz and was 22 inches long. I gave birth to a 3 month old, basically. I am so glad Jessie made it just in time to capture this special moment for us.

A big thanks to Jessie for the pictures and to Aunt Kristin for editing!