Nickerson News

Since I have a little time today (Abel has been napping 3.5 hours and still going!!! Somebody look at the window, are pigs flying??? ) I am going to share an easy recipe.

After his TERRIBLE episodes of nasty short if-any-naps last week, I think his little body hit the wall OR he is having a growth spurt and will be 3 inches taller when he wakes up.

Either way, I am enjoying this. I still can’t believe there are babies out there that do this type of FANTASTIC napping every day for their moms. I’ve said this before, but I could be supermom if my child took a 3 hour nap everyday!

I actually got some work done (business and personal), designed a postcard for a friend, took a short nap, made dinner, ran a marathon and even took pictures. Rock on!

I wanted to share one of my very first recipes that I learned how to make when I started cooking back in the day. I would make it in college with my roommates. It is actually from Carolyn’s mom, Connie, and it has become a huge favorite around here. I have given this recipe out so many times so I thought since today I have the time I would even take pictures of it for you and send you the recipe.

I will say, I cut back on the butter and crackers to make it a little less fattening. (Us 5 ft gals need to watch our calories). Seth on the other hand could eat a horse every night and never put on an ounce of fat.

So here it is: (add more butter & crackers if you need the fat!) Not only is it delicious but it is SO EASY!!!

Poppy Seed Chicken:

What you need:

- Chicken (1.5 lbs) Boil and then cube
- 1 cup of sour cream (light if you are watching)
- 1 can of cream of chicken soup (again, you can go light)
- 1/2 stick of butter (by all means, butter it up more if you can stand to add some fat to your thighs)
- 1/2 package of Ritz crackers, crushed
- poppy seeds (the amount is up to your liking)
- (optional) to make it a little more creamy-add 1/4 cup of milk

1) In a 9×13 casserole dish or whatever dish you please, add the sour cream and cream of chicken and mix together.
2) Add cooked, cubed chicken into the dish and mix together
3) Melt butter
4) In separate dish crush the Ritz crackers and then pour the melted butter onto the crackers
5) Add the crackers onto the chicken
6) Add poppy seeds
7) Cook for 30 minutes at 350 and ENJOY!

And here’s my dear friend Carolyn, Carebear as I like to call her, doing a FANTASTIC job babysitting Abel and Ava while I photographed baby Tyler the other week.

They are singing “The wheels on the bus” and now Abel is obsessed with that song!

or I get this one too – “Don’t wait too much longer to have another one.”

These questions & comments have been coming up more and more lately. It’s like the closer your child gets to two years old people just assume that it is time for another one.

Last week I heard this question (or some form of it) at least 3 times. One being from the cashier at the grocery store that sees me every week. To be honest, when I first hear the question I think to myself “Well, actually I would be 7 months pregnant right now.” But I don’t want to tell strangers or people I barely know that I lost my unborn child. I just don’t want them to feel bad then for bringing it up and then feel like that have to apologize.

I still have bad days and think of Baby August a lot.

I also think how hard it would be right now because if it was anything like my last pregnancy I was so miserable by 7 months and to think I would be trying to chase and discipline my tough toddler right now. God knows best and His timing is perfect. I think to myself, “but I could have done it, Lord.” Sure, it would have been really REALLY tough, but I would have done it all just to have my baby in my arms in August.

But that was not the Lord’s will, so I have to look on the bright side of things. I will say I am so thankful that I have had this time with just Abel. We have the best time together! (minus the horrendous terrible two moments) I have so much energy right now and I love just being able to chase him around and easily pick him up.

So for now, I am loving life not being pregnant. Hopefully, the time will come again sooner than later, because we really do want more children, but for now here’s to having energy!

Emily is the daughter of Russ and Alena. I have known “Rusty” (he goes by Russ now am I am still getting used to that) since I was in 9th grade. (Wow, I just realized that was 15 years ago!) His mom was my soccer coach and Russ would always come to our practices and teach us new techniques and tips. We ended up going to the same college and have stayed in touch all these years and now we only live about 5 miles from each other.

It was so fun to photograph a baby girl! I love seeing pink in my photographs. Emily is a joy! In the hour session we had together, her personality showed. She definitely knows what she wants, is the most chatty 2 month old I think I have ever met and loves to smile. I couldn’t believe all the smiles she gave me. She was definitely suspicious of me at first, but after a few minutes she worked the camera and become such a little model.

Russ and Alena, thanks for letting me photograph your gorgeous daughter and being so cool and laid back about all my crazy ideas. I know she will be true delight to your family.

The Good:

-We had good weather.
-We had great company.
-We had lots of yummy food & fun.
-Abel loved being outside and playing with his friends.

The Bad:

-Our car almost overheated on the way down there and we had to pull over on the interstate.
-It rained caterpillar poop like you have never seen! When we were in our tent it sounded like rain and we kept peeking out to see if it was raining….nope, just poop!
-Abel jumped out of his pack & play.
-Our monkey also escaped from the tent (no joke)! He figured out how to unzip it and was a screaming maniac in his pjs.

And the Very Ugly:

-Abel had 10 bouts of diarrhea! And I honestly have no idea why? He didn’t poop for a day and half once we got home. (We joked that he felt so free in the great outdoors because he would just hug a tree and grunt “poopies”.)
-We sat in 1.5 hours of DEAD STOP traffic to get to our campsite (which was only 15 miles away!) Got love NOVA!
-Abel REFUSED to go sleep in the tent and SCREAMED for hours! (I’m not sure if our neighbors will want to go camping with us again.)
-Abel slept maybe 5 hours and was up by 5:30am. (waking up everyone else in our campground) He popped up and said “Good morning! Owen up yet?”  He was the last to go to bed and the first to get up. That’s our boy!
-Seth and I maaaaybeee got 2-3 hours of sleep.

The kids (Owen, Sophie and WILD CHILD)

The girls (Lauren is due is Oct. What a trooper she is. It is highly unlikely I would ever go camping while pregnant!)

The guys. The were SO loving the outdoors. It sure is nice to have great men to set up the camp site and cook dinner.

Our set-up. Crazy how much stuff you need and we were only there 18 hours! ha! Next time will be longer. Can you even believe I am even saying there will be a next time?

And we saw about a million of these little things. Seriously, I had no IDEA caterpillars pooped so much!!! All your heard was them crunching on leaves and their poop droppings! Thank God Nick and Heather were smart enough to set up a tarp above our food, because there were about a million caterpillar droppings that fell on the tarp. so nasty!

And that about wraps it up folks. I can’t BELIEVE we actually did it and we survived (just barely), but we did it! I will say I had a moment of “I am never doing this again” when we got home because Abel refused to nap after all his shenanigans! But once I got my sanity back, I realized it wasn’t that bad and really was a lot of fun.