Yummy Power Bars!!!

Hello gang!

Sorry I haven't been on here now for TWO whole months. I cannot believe how much has happened since I last wrote! We celebrated our sixth anniversary and our birthdays with a great long weekend getaway to Ro_cky Mou_ntain Nat_ional Pa_rk and did lots of hiking and enjoying God's creation. It was amazing! Then we had a big birthday party for both kids and that was a lot of fun. And now, June is all over! Wowsers. I will try to post some pics sometime, but in the meantime, I'm getting ready to go sai_ling with my sweet man and some friends. It should be a good time!

SO, I'll leave you with this...the neatest recipe that I've used in a long time! My friend KN from MO_PS put this recipe in our coo_kbo_ok that we put out a few years ago, and it is AMAZING!!!

Ultimate Power Bar

Ingredients:

3.5 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
3/4 cup raisins
2/3 cup raw sunflower seeds (I had salted ones because my store didn't have raw)
1/2 cup toasted sesame seeds (I didn't have sesame, so I added more sunflower)
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/2 cup oat bran
3 tablespoons flax seeds (you need to grind them up in order to get the benefit of the oils inside...and you can use flax seed meal/purchased ground flax seeds if you don't have the whole seeds - that's what I used and it worked really well)
1 Tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt (or you could omit this if you have salted sunflower seeds)
1 cup shredded coconut (optional...but SO delish)
1.5 cups peanut butter (I used Ski_ppy natural smooth)
1 cup honey (I used a local honey)
4 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup dark chocolate chips (or semi-sweet)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In large bowl, combine first ten ingredients (through coconut). Stir in peanut butter, honey & melted butter. Press firmly into foil-lined or sprayed 9 x 13 inch baking pan.
3. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven & sprinkle chocolate chips over bars. Return to oven until chocolate is softened (about 2-4 minutes). Spread chocolate evenly over bars. (mine didn't spread very well for some reason, fyi...but still tasted delish). Cool on rack then cut into bars. Refrigerate until firm (about 2 hours) then remove from pan and wrap bars individually and store in refrigerator or freezer for a healthy energy-packed snack. (I used plastic wrap for the individual bars and then placed them into quart-sized freezer zipper bags.

ENJOY!!!!!!!!!!

Hi!

Well, I haven't posted in a bit so I figured it was time! Here's the update on life from our home:

Last weekend we had our first ER adventure with Little Bug. She had Croup and was barking like a seal at 1:15 AM on Saturday morning, then threw up and was just generally having a hard time breathing. I called the Dr. and he said that if she was in a lot of distress to take her in to the ER, so we did that. On the way there, Bug started to feel better because of breathing in the cold air. We went in and they gave her a steroid to help relieve the inflammation in her larynx and then offered her a Popsicle, which she proclaimed after one lick was "too cold!" She's going through a phase where things are always too hot or too cold. Anyway, I'm glad that we went. Children's Hospital in St. Paul is wonderful. They really had so many neat tricks to help our little one stay calm. The whole time we were there, I kept thinking about all the people we know who make many many trips to the ER with their children on a regular basis...and I can't imagine how difficult it must be for those families.

Bug has had an icky cold all week, but I think she's starting to feel a little better. Our weather has been changing a lot too, so that might be part of it. In fact, as I type this, we're having more SNOW!!!!!! I thought for sure it was done a few weekends ago, but I should've known better!

Also, I had a fun little weekend trip to Houston a few weeks ago to visit friends. One dear friend is getting married, so I went for her bridal shower. I also had the privilege of staying with my voice teacher, his lovely wife, and their teenage son for a few days and it was great to catch up with them. Then I spent one night with my girls from grad. school and we had a really nice time together as well! It was fun to take one last trip before baby comes in July.

I'm starting to get a little swollen and hoping that Preeclampsia isn't setting in. If you think of it, I would appreciate your prayers over this matter. I'm a bit nervous about getting the illness again, but at least this time I'm much better prepared to understand what is going on if something should happen.

Have a great weekend!

Hubby is Home!

Erik got home last Saturday from a 3.5 week work trip in Asia. He goes usualy twice a year to many many countries in the Asia Pacific region, and I hear lots of cool stories about the people he meets and works with, as well as foods and places that he gets to see. Of course, he is doing work almost the entire time he is gone, so there really isn't much time for sight seeing. One really great thing from this trip was that Erik got to spend some time with our friend in India who was an exchange student of sorts here at the University of Minnesota. Thanks to our friend for showing him around the big city and taking him to lots of fun places, as well as a good traditional Indian lunch!

I'm so glad to have my man back home! We missed him a lot.