(never a) Wordless Wednesday: PB&J

I know, I know, I usually save my best posts for Wednesdays. "Best" meaning, lots and lots and lots of pictures, heavy on the captions and sprinkled with cuteness- gosh I love Wednesday's writings. But I'm going to be honest with you friends, this pregnancy (number three, for anyone who might have lost count, haha) that was once on a smooth sailing freshly paved road, took a hard right down a bumpy dirt path last week, and since then, I literally cannot stand being in my own body. I've got a big detailed-filled post in the works, but until then, bear(bare?) with me?

Rather than going on a photo filled adventure loaded with summertime activities and memory making... today we're eating peanut butter and jelly.

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(We ran 8,000 errands this morning. We hit up a .50 cent sale at the local kids consignment store, put the title of the motorscooter into Christopher's name, went thrifting at the Airman's Attic, pulled the car over in the middle of downtown to lecture our screaming tantrum throwing daughter on how to safely sit in her car seat and how to not scream so loud that she breaks the glass of the windshield, and by the time that we finally got back home- we treated ourselves to some peanut butter and jelly...)



(Now, maybe pb&j isn't a luxury to you, but- we've only just recently settled upon a sandwich bread worth writing home about. While most of you can go to the store and pick up any ol' loaf whenever you please, we've been gluten free for going on 4 years now, and bread, especially a good bread, is a big deal.)

(That right there, is from a freshly baked, just last night, homemade loaf of heavenly bread.)

(Imagine how good my house smells every 3 or 4 days...)

(Maybe I'll do a big post on how I make it? Recipe and instructions included. The works.)

(Maybe next week?)

(Maybe.)


(We have two different kinds of peanut butters in the house. Skippy Natural, for me, and Jif, for the hubby and kids. The Jif comes free, with our WIC benefits. The skippy we have to buy.)

(Why don't I eat the same kind as everybody else? Well, for the same reason that we buy the crazy expensive jelly that you see there. Because the other kinds have fructose in them, and these kinds don't. Skippy Natural, and the "seriously strawberry", are both molasses and fruit juice free. Tia-safe.)

(So just like the homemade bread that we treat like gold, the fructose free pb&j, are also a big deal.)



(She loves it. Finally, just before turning four years old, shes been introduced to every kids favorite sandwich.)



(For little Charlie, we cut up an open faced sandwich into bite size finger food style pieces. He makes a big mess, but he doesn't quite understand the concept of "sandwich" yet, so this works best.)



("Yum yum yummm", say the kids with the sticky fingers and gooey roofs of their mouths.)

(See... we're totally normal now. We eat pb&j's, just like everybody else.)

(Thats what I'll remind my kids, at least, when they're asking why they can't go to so and so's birthday pizza party at Chuck E Cheese, 5 years from now...)

Bumbleberry Pie On The 4th Of July

I want to write out a big blog post about the amazing day that I had with my family yesterday. I want to tell you all in extreme detail, about how my daughter and I made our very first lattice topped bumbleberry pie with each other, and then about how I sheltered the babies from all of the 4 fireworks that we lit off out in the driveway. I want to gab on and on about the belly painting (you did see yesterdays post, didn't you? Its a good one), and the temporary tattoos, and the fun American flags that Charlie thought were brooms, but-

I'm sort of on bed rest. I'm very much on steroids. And my brain isn't working the way that I want it to. Earlier, I literally didn't know what numbers were.

I was hoping to sit down and edit these pictures to be the most beautiful mother/daughter pie baking pictures ever, but after a 30 minute brain stutter, without so much as one photo even being re sized, I decided that it just didn't matter, and I'd just post them the way they are (nobody cares other than me, anyways).

At first, she didn't want her picture taken. Party pooper Eleanore.



But then I came up and tickled her until she cracked.



She stood on a chair and held the wooden spoon proudly. Making pie crust isn't easy, you know?



She helped me roll out the dough. First the bottom layer, and then the lattice top.



Look! The dough actually looks the way you'd expect a pie crust dough to look like!



Hi.



"Its kind of like, play dough!", Eleanore says.
"Yes, only, its... pie dough", Daddy corrects her.



And then I poured in the berries/sugar/flour, and put together a pie!

Maybe you need a close up of the lattice top...
(I can't believe it didn't fall apart)



Yeah, check that out. A gluten free, lattice topped, bumbleberry pie.

And hour and a half later, it looked something like this...



!!!



It almost doesn't look real, right?



The most beautiful pie, ever.

Christopher made the comment, while enjoying his second piece, right around midnight, that-

"I just completely forgot that I was gluten free. I felt like I was a 13 year old boy, eating a pie at my Nana's house".

And I take that to be one of the greatest compliments, ever.

Hold on, just one more close up...



I told Eleanore that come August, during the fair, if there is a pie competition, that we'll enter it.

She of course thought that I meant we were going to the fair right then and there, and thats all I heard about all night (ohmygosh, enough already child!), but- maybe when the fair rolls around we really might enter it?

Ok not likely. But, its a cute idea, right? Maybe I can come up with some kind of fake fair, with a fake blue ribbon. Anything for another excuse to steal my daughter away from everything else for a morning, just so her and I can hide away in the kitchen with the rolling pin.

This will be our new tradition.

Bumbleberry Pie on the 4th of July.