Almost Italian Easter Bread

Another recipe I found and tried from Pinterest.  I know it’s a little early for Easter, but hopefully I’ll be in a hospital on Easter, and I really wanted to make these for the kids. You can find the recipe right here.  I followed the recipe exactly, but the reason I wanted to show them to you is because I did do something a little different.  You are suppose to put real dyed eggs in the middle of the bread and bake them, but I didn’t want to do that, so the kids and I made fake eggs out of the dough and dyed them with egg wash that was mixed with some food coloring. It worked so well!

What I did first was to make a double batch of the dough.  Which I would actually recommend NOT DOING unless you are bringing these things somewhere.  I ended up with 18 HUGE Easter Breads.  They were seriously the size of my kids heads. If you have a small family just make one batch, I think we could get by with 1 1/2 batches. Just remember to leave a little dough behind to make the dough eggs that go in the middle.  Then I followed the directions for the Easter Breads.  This was a perfect project for the kids, they all LOVED making the bread into snakes and winding them together to make the finished bread. Then instead of letting the breads rise and adding a dyed Easter egg we took an egg and made the egg wash, and added food coloring to it, then we made little balls of dough that we rolled in the egg wash and then in sugar (sugar in the raw).  Then we put them in the middle of the bread and let them rise together.  After they were done rising we added the plain egg wash to the rest of the Easter Bread.

Eggwash for the fake (dough) Easter Eggs.

I also used a little icing on top, mostly to get the icing out of my refrigerator. 

The kids loved eating them, as much as they loved making them.  It was a lot of fun.

ENJOY!!

The Plan!

So yesterday we spent another LONG day @ the U of W, MICC.  There are some seriously long waits to talk to a doctor at that place.  I started off the day by dropping 3 different kids off @ 3 different people’s homes around 11:20 a.m. (the older girls were at school and rode the bus to friends homes afterwards)  then I headed to Bellingham to pick Cameron up from work and head down to Seattle. Our first appointment was in radiology @ 2:00 p.m.  We were a little early but check in anyway, and they got to us right away, before 2:00 even.  The ultrasound was pretty fast it only took about 10-15 min.  It showed that the hydrops hasn’t gotten any better , but it also hasn’t gotten any worse .   He is still growing at an appropriate rate without the edema he is the normal size for a 24 week old baby, and his heart beat is still a normal 135 bpm.   So we get out of radiology really quickly and our next appointment isn’t until 3:30 pm.  We take a little walk around the hospital until 3:00 and then go check in at MICC.  Then we wait, for 2 hours and at 5:00 are are finally taking into an exam room.  The nurse checks my blood pressure and all that stuff, and some hospital apology person comes in and apologizes profusely and gives us free parking for our long wait.  After she leaves a social worker comes and talks to us for about 15 min.  That was really, really hard, but good.  We have a better understanding of what to expect, what we can ask for, and what kind of things we need to be thinking about if he is stillborn, or if it looks like is life will be brief.  Man, that was a hard conversation to have, but I know it’s something we might be dealing with, and I feel better knowing, than not knowing.   So finally the doctor comes in and around 5:40 p.m. and we come up with a plan that makes me feel like we are giving this baby his best chance at life.   First she explains to us about what a healthy babies prognosis would be starting with birth at 24 weeks (about 21% survival).  Then she works her way up to about 28 weeks, where the prognosis is much, much better, and she says they pretty much don’t expect to lose a baby who is born at 28 weeks in 2012. But now add on top of that, that our baby is not a healthy baby and that he is hydropic, and hydropic babies can be hard to intubate because of all the swelling.  So she then asks us what we want to do, and I have no idea what she means, so I ask “what are we deciding?” Then she explains that she doesn’t know what kind of a sick baby he is and she can make better choices about his care if she can monitor him for an extended period of time, and she needs to know from us when we want that monitoring to begin.  After discussing it a bit more we decide between 27 and 28 weeks.   So on March 24th, I’ll go down to Seattle and he’ll be monitored for 12 –18 hours and I will get the first dose of a medication that will help his lungs.  After that is over and she can see how he is acting over an extended period of time, we will make some more choices.  From spending that moment on in the hospital in Seattle with him being constantly monitored, to me physically moving to Seattle and coming in 3 times a week for extended monitoring, until it gets to a point where delivery is his best option.  There is also a procedure she can try that removes some of the fluid around his lungs, but that is really risky and not something we are going to try yet, but maybe if he gets older.  Now we really, really need him to make it to 27 weeks 4 days, roughly 3 weeks and 2 days away.  It doesn’t sound like a long time, but with a baby who is as sick as our baby is,  it is a long time and it will feel like a year I’m sure.  We realize that our little guy has some HUGE obstacles still to overcome, and even if he does make it to birth, he will still have a hard, hard fight ahead of him, but birth is a good thing and it does increase his survival rate (depending on how many weeks he is at delivery).  Right now he has about a 10 –20 % percent chance of survival, but if he can make it to birth and past the first 24 hours his survival rate goes up to 50 –60 %.   And I feel like if he is being monitored very closely then he will have the best chance at a live birth.   So we are praying he can make it to birth, and that, that birth can happen sometime after 30 weeks.  This is kind of the simplified version of everything, there are so many other things that I could go into but don’t really want too.  So what are we going to do if I have to spend the last weeks of my pregnancy in the hospital or living in Seattle?  I have no idea, we are trying to come up with a plan for the other kiddos.  Cam’s parents just left on their second mission (Ukraine) and my mom can’t come until May.  I’m sure we’ll work it out somehow but it gives me a head/heart ache just thinking about it.

Our Beautiful Baby Boy

I wasn’t sure if I was going to share this, on this blog, especially since I haven’t once mentioned I was pregnant.  But whenever I have been reading a blog and then all of a sudden they just disappear I always wonder what happened.  If life threw them a little curve ball, or maybe they just got too busy.  Well life did throw us a little curve ball on February 3rd.  

I was looking forward to last Friday for weeks.   It was my birthday after all and my husband had the day off, but mostly I was looking forward to seeing our baby for the first time.  I had scheduled my 20 week ultrasound on my birthday and was excited to put the worry I had, had all pregnancy about the baby not being okay behind me. I was worried about the health of the baby due to having surgery around week 9-10.  Unfortunately that day wasn’t what I dreamed it would be.  There wasn’t any happy news.  We have had enough kids and enough ultrasounds to realize that things were not like they normally are.  The ultrasound lady was really quiet, she kept leaving the room and would be gone for a long time.  She kept measuring the chest, and head over and over, putting arrows pointing at different spots especially on the head.  We had asked not to find out the sex of the baby but with her concern over getting all the pictures she needed for the doctor she showed us his boy parts at least 3 times.  Now I’m not a radiologist or anything but I can recognize a penis when I see one, and I thought that, that was really weird that we asked her to keep it secret and she didn’t seem to be paying attention to what she was showing us.  I really got worried when I saw his abdomen, even to my untrained eye I could tell things didn’t look right.  I of course didn’t know what it was, and I was still in a state of denial, or maybe hoping I was just wrong and being paranoid.  After the scan was over we met the doctor in an office, and was told that things didn’t look good for our baby.  That he had pleural effusions.  (He never told us the name of our baby’s condition) That he had fluid in his abdomen and in his skin, and that we needed to go to Seattle to get some more information and tests done. He then told us some of the things that could cause his problems but not much else.  Of course we were distraught and we didn’t even know what that would mean for our baby or really what we were even dealing with.  I mostly just cried, and cried and cried and that is pretty much how I spent the weekend.  Monday morning the U of W called and had gotten us appointments for Wednesday.  We had appointments with a genetic counselor, ultrasound and a consult with a perinatologist.  On Tuesday I finally got up the courage to Google our baby’s symptoms, I just needed to know what we were dealing with.  I found what I was looking for, what our baby has is called Non-Immune Hydrops Fetalis. All that means is that the baby has fluid in his body in more than one place.  (I wouldn’t recommend googling it, it’s pretty depressing )   It was good and bad thing to find out.  I learned that the prognosis for a baby that has hydrops is poor.  That more often than not it leads to stillbirth.  That of course was horrid, and quite frankly still is, it’s hard to know that, that is the likely outcome.  Especially as we look at him on ultrasound.  He looks so normal, and is so active, his heart beat is strong and healthy.  I also found out that there are a lot of things that cause this problem and what is causing it has a big impact on whether or not they can treat the baby.  I won’t go into all of that because there is a lot and really it will only matter to us what our baby has.  The two main ones that they are currently looking at are Chromosomal problems and Viruses.  We are hoping for a virus, and know it sounds strange but they can do more for our son if a virus is causing the problem.  So on Wednesday, we went to all our appointments and really didn’t find anything out that we didn’t already know.  We did get confirmation that our baby is suffering from Non-Immune Hydrops Fetalis, and he has a lot of fluid in his abdomen, lungs and skin.  But finding out what is causing it will take time, and there is still a chance that they will never figure it out.  They didn’t have an amino scheduled for us that day, but luckily we talked them into doing one before we left that night.  Without the amnio it’s harder to figure out what’s going on.  We were lucky to get it done too, because by then it was around 6:00 pm and there weren’t a lot of people still at work.  Part of the fluid they took will go for what they call a fish test, it’s a quick test that screens for the more common chromosomal problems, down syndrome, trisomy 18, trisomy 13,  & Turners syndrome (which we already know our baby doesn’t have because he is a boy) So that’s were we stand today.  Knowing our baby is fighting for his life, and there isn’t much we can do but pray and put his and our lives in the hands of our Heavenly Father.  It’s going to be a long road, but we’re on it and hopefully are headed toward some kind of answers as soon as possible.   People tell you to take it one day at a time, but right now it’s so raw, that I try and live moment to moment.  Some moments are better than others, and doing things like talking about it, or blogging about it will usually make for lots and lots of crying later.  We have great friends here that have done so much for us, watching kids, bringing dinner and so many other things I can’t even begin to list them all.  Plus of course our wonderful friends & families who aren’t here near us but offer very kind and comforting words.  I just keep telling myself to remember the scripture from

Psalm 46 “Be still and know that I am God”.  Also the song “Be Still My Soul”  is a great comfort to me, though I usually end up in a blubbering heap. 

1. Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change He faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul; thy best, thy heavenly, Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

  

Update * we got our quick test back and they were all normal!  That of course doesn’t rule out a lot of other chromosomal problems, but a least it’s something positive.

As for the blog as you can imagine, I don’t exactly feel up to it right now.  I have been sewing a lot, I call it sewing therapy.  It actually helps me get through some hard parts of the day.  Because I’m a good enough sewer that the kids can actually wear the stuff I produce, but I’m not that good that I don’t actually have to think about it a little and having something else to think about really helps.  

- Jaime

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

These are some of my favorite cookies.  The chocolate cookie combined with the peanut butter chips, is a great combo. I have also just used chocolate chips and they are great like that too, or chocolate and white chips mixed. So yummy, I hope you like them too.

Chocolate Peanut Butter cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 - 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour*
• 2/3 cup cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 a bag of semi-sweet or milk chocolate chips
• 1 bag of peanut butter chips

Directions

Cream together the butter, white & brown sugar, eggs and vanilla.  Then add the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt mix well.  Then mix in your chips.  Drop onto a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 9-11 min.

p.s you’ll want to have large class of ice cold milk standing by.

ENJOY!!!

*a little side note on flour.  Because of where I live I ALWAYS have to add more flour to any cookies recipe I use.  If you don’t have that problem go with 2 cups of flour. 

“Stop making bread, you’re making me fat!”

Yesterday, I wanted to try another new bread recipe to go with our Italian dinner, I was planning.  So I popped on over to Pinterest to see what I could find.  And I came across this lovely bread here.  But as you can see that recipe is not in English, and I really, really didn’t want to go to all the trouble to translate it.  But it does have lovely pictures, and I realized that what I liked about the bread was more about the technique and how it looked than it was about the taste.  Any dough that is stiff enough to work with will work just fine.  I actually used the French Bread dough recipe that I tried the other day, because I wanted mine to be savory and not sweet.  If I was going to make it into a sweet/cinnamon bread I would use my sweet roll recipe, (cut the recipe in half and use a bit more flour until the dough, cleans the sides of the bowl).

 After your dough has risen and is ready to shape, roll it out flat, like cinnamon rolls.  Then add whatever filling you want.  I used butter, Italian seasoning, garlic powder and grated parmesan cheese.

Then roll it up just like a cinnamon roll.

Then you cut it completely in half lengthwise.

Then you take the two halves and twist them together

Then join the two ends to make a circle. Then I brushed it with an egg wash.  Let it rise again for about 15-20 min.

Then I baked it according to the French Bread directions.  If you’re using your own recipe then it took about 30 min half of the time at 400 degrees and the other half of the time at 350. But if I was making my sweet bread recipe I would probably start with 30 min @ 350 and then go from there.

It was super fun, to make and super tasty too.

ENJOY!!

Oh, and the title of the post is a direct quote from my husband.  He also said that this was the best bread he has eaten… this week. 

Button, button, Who in the heck sews with buttons??

So I know you don’t know this, because I haven’t posted any of them, but I have been in a sewing mood lately and yesterday I finished my 4th dress. Currently I’m working on non-matching/matching dresses for all my girls to wear to my 2nd daughters baptism coming up in March!  The first one is finished a turned out great.  BUT that is not what I wanted to share with you today (I’ll share those when all 3 of them are finished).  SEW I decided to try and make a dress that required buttons for my 3 year old.  I found some really cute corduroy that I wanted to use and as I was looking through the patterns I found a pattern that’s style, I thought matched corduroy really well.  So I got it.  LATER when I actually got around to reading the directions I realized it had BUTTONS as fasteners, like real live buttons, not fake decoration type buttons.  Needless to say I was a little nervous, but I like a challenge so I decided to try the button instead of doing what my brain was screaming at me to do, (you know like cheat and use snaps or Velcro or something).  The top of the dress came together flawlessly, then it came time to actually sew on the buttons.  Well I’ll forgo the sad story of me spending 3 hours looking for, while tearing apart my entire house something I thought I needed, to then borrowing it from a friend, to finding out I had what I needed along. Sorry this is all getting really long.  In short I read the directions and made beautiful practice button holes!  I was ecstatic, then when I went to do it on the actual dress, well let just say that, they work great and it could have been worse.  All in all I’m glad I tried it and I would definitely try it again.  Lessons learned: Reading directions, really helps.  Trying something new is always an adventure!!  So here is the finished product, I can never get that great of pictures of dresses sorry. 

Oh there is suppose to be a band at the bottom of the dress in a contrasting color, I left that off for now because, the buttons I had didn’t match any of the colors of fabric, I had and it looked really funny, so I thought I would add a ruffle of the same fabric on the bottom instead, or look for some green material to match the current buttons or look for some buttons that match the fabric I do have.  But for now she loves it and wears it all the time!

French Bread

You know me, I LOVE a good yeast bread recipe.  Well I found this on Pinterest the other day and knew I kneaded (hee hee)  to try it. It turned out wonderful and it was super fast especially for a yeast bread, it takes roughly 90 min. You can print the recipe right here it’s called Fabulous French Bread and boy howdy it is fabulous! And of course I can’t wait to play around with it and add some herbs and other fun flavors.  I served it with creamy broccoli soup and it was perfect dunked right in the soup or with butter and a bit of strawberry freezer jam, YUMMY!   Hope you make it and enjoy it soon!

ENJOY!!