Scallops. It's what's for dinner.

I've been meaning to write about this scallop cooking process for about a year. Yikes. Well, that's what this year is all about, getting to all the baloney that got left behind because it wasn't critical to our survival during Matt's last year of undergrad.

So, back when I needed to lose some weight for Becca's wedding, I started doing Medifast. It worked amazing, I lost about 25 pounds in 2 months. Medifast consists of 5 of their own packaged foods, and then one of your own. But yours needs to be lean-n-green, meaning protein and veggies. No carbs, no fruit. So I needed to make sure that the protein I ate was yummy to keep me going. So if you wanted steak, you only got 5 oz., chicken 6oz, but any kind of seafood was 7 oz. Time to figure out how to eat something besides steamed crabs every night. :)

A few searches on the internet, a few trial and errors (including one big flop of boiled ones at poor Becca's house) and here it is.

You will need:
Scallops

   - these should be the larger ones if you can, and they need to be dry. If they are wet when you get them,         rinse them off, pat dry, and set on paper towels in the refrigerator until you need them. If they have too much liquid in them, they will just boil in the pan. Yuck. 

Olive Oil - a few swirls
Butter - 1 tbsp
Salt and Pepper to taste

Dry scallops as described above. You can also choose to salt and pepper them on both sides at this point, I think it soaks in better.

Heat non-stick pan over medium high heat with a few swirls of olive oil. (If you are using a non-stick pan I guess it's possible to do this without any oil to lower the calories even more). Place scallops in the pan one by one.

Let cook for about 3 and a half minutes. They should have begun to caramelize (i.e. turn brown) on their bottom side.

Flip scallops over and cook another 3 and a half minutes, depending on how big and thick they are. When you do this, add a few pats of butter to the pan and swirl around. Then you can use a spoon to scoop up the juices in the pan and drizzle on top of the scallops as they cook. This way a little bit of butter goes a long way.

When they are finished cooking, they should be firm to the touch. It's kind of hard to explain when they are done, and I prefer to have them more done than not. But you can definitely over cook them for sure.

Let me know what you think!

(more thoughts on why I am not doing Medifast anymore in another post to come)

Many, Many Thanks!!!!

(Note: This post was started a week ago, but we got derailed by a virus/ear infection with Zoey (and me) that had us in the ER two days in a row, though we spent actual New Year's Eve at home. She is better now, so let the thanks begin.)

One more day left until the end of the 2011. I can't believe we are here, and I am so relieved. And tired.And our house is a gigantic mess.

Some stats from 2011:
Graduate Classes taken by Sarah - 3
Undergraduate Classes taken by Matthew - 10 (a few were Grad classes as well, didn't make it our lives easier for sure)
Degrees Earned - 1, BS in Mechanical Engineering
Geek Frats Joined - 1 (Tau Beta Pi - Engineering Honors)
Babies born - 1, our beautiful Zoey Rae
Cats lost - 1 (we will always miss you Fatty)
Fish still surviving despite being majorly ignored - 8 (all)
Brand new Bathrooms Completed - 0 (it's close though!)
Number of 3-year old birthday parties thrown - 1
     (Number of Groupons bought so that Merry Maids would scrub the kitchen and bathroom before party - 1)
Number of beds in Master Bedroom at height of occupancy - 3 (one queen, one toddler, and one co-sleeper)
People hosted for Thanksgiving dinner - 15
Wedding china/crystal broken during said dinner - 0 :)

I just wanted to take the time to say thanks to everyone who helped us through this year (and the previous years after Evan's birth during Matt's studying at UMBC).

Thanks to my all of my family who let me visit time and time again with the kids so we could give Matt time to study. Mom, Dad, Becca, Mark, Jessie, Lance, Lisa, Albert, Helen, Peggy, Joe, Tammy, Jo Jo, Cindy, Sean, Christian, Heather, Dave, Hunter, Haley, Paul, Tracy, Griffin and Katelyn.

A gigantic special thanks to Peggy for surviving in our house for almost 3 years, doing uncounted loads of laundry, making thousands of pitchers of tea, picking up the kids many times over, participating in potty training (bet you thought you were done with that, huh?) and most of all for helping to provide as stable as possible a household for our small children during the craziest year of our life.

To Zoey's aunts Jessie and Becca, who lovingly stayed up all night in the hospital with her the first three days of her life, so Matt could go home to stay with Evan. A labor of love, for sure. (I mean, she was pretty irresistible).

Thanks to all of my friends who let us visit too (many times w/ no notice) or visited us to help: Jennifer, Doug, Brynn, and Brayden; Christy; Heather and Greg; Jess, Jeff, Trent, Mya, and Ally; Maxine, Rick, Ryan and Avery; Jackie, Rob, Robert and Austin; Barbara, Dustin, and Nathan; Kim, John, Jacob and Ben; Nicki; Walt, Agnes, Michael and Catherine; Walter and Elizabeth; Becca and Dave (and Amelia!); LeeAnne; and Nori.

To Miss Valerie, for loving our children and watching over them at your home. It was one less thing on our minds, we know that they enjoy being with you and your family. We so appreciate it.

Thanks to Walter, for coming and helping Matt with one of his final Heat Transfer problems on a day where you should have been relaxing, having just completed your Master's Degree. We are so proud of you!

Thanks to our neighbors on our street for letting me take the kids on a walk and not return for hours. Mike and Cindy, Mike and Bonnie, and most of all the entire 'Stone House' family (as Evan calls it), for letting me bombard their house whenever I needed to. To Mary, Mark, Betty, Molly, Sophia and Ben, we are thankful to have you in our lives.

To my fellow workers at APL, again, our family would not have accomplished what we did without you allowing me to have a ridiculously flexible schedule, and at the same time letting me work on very cool projects that I can't wait for one's launch next year and the other's arrival at Pluto in 2015! Alice, Becca, Elliot, Annette, the NH Flight Team, the RBSP TC Team, and most of all Randy and Al, you guys are all amazing and supportive and really great people to work with.

Thanks to all of the Nordiques players, especially Walt and Terri, for keeping the team going in our absence.  I mean, who knew you could accomplish a win-less season without us? :) We really miss playing and are going to return as soon as we can!!!

I'm sure there are people we have forgotten, but you know who you are and I hope we do a well enough job expressing our thanks to you. Feel free to call me out for my brain lapses. :)

I can't wait to see what 2012 holds for us. (Less, I'm hoping, haha).

Love,

The Buciors
Matthew, Sarah, Evan and Zoey

Milestones

So busy, 31 days left until Matt graduates. I can't believe it's almost here. In the meantime, things are moving quickly.

Matt and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary. Our family picture to celebrate:

And a few weeks later I turned 35. Sheesh. Here's my pretty ice cream cake though. (And Becca also got me a football cake with lots of crunchies but I forgot to take a picture of that, I was too busy eating it).

And then we moved Peggy in to her new apartment, so Evan got to have his own room. (For now at least, until Zoey takes up space in there. This will only happen when I can trust Evan to not yank her out of her crib, hmmm maybe this won't happen ever. Grrrrr).

Look how teeny he looks in there! He gets the full size bed because this also doubles as our guest room, and toddler beds just aren't that comfy for adults!

Thanks Kate!

 During all of the craziness with moving Peggy on Saturday, and my Aunt and her husband visiting from the west coast, I managed to get my niece to snap some sweet pictures. It was a great (though exhausting) day.

Parenting and Learning

When you have more than one child, somethings you are able to do for the second time like clockwork, diapering, bathing, feeding (usually). But sometimes you have a big blank, like 'uh, what did we do for this last time?'.

As a nursing mother, pretty much when I put my baby to sleep it's after the last feeding of the night. Bath, pajamas, last feeding, and boom asleep they are. Ironically, in the book about sleeping that I have the 'Nightime Nursling' as they call it is the hardest child to teach to go to sleep on their own. Alas.

Last night I couldn't get that girl to sleep, she wasn't hungry, I knew she was tired, she was fussy, and I just didn't know what to do. So I just put her to bed.

Awake.

Not because I thought this would work, but I was just tired of holding her when it was obvious she didn't want me.

And lo and behold, she went right to sleep. After I thought about it, I underestimated her need to just.be.away.from.the.noise in our house. The TV, the crazy 3-year old, the people getting ready for work, the cats meowing for food.

And she didn't wake up again until this morning.

What a beautiful little girl I have.

A Brother's Love

Lots of changes happening. Evan just turned 3 on Friday, and Tuesday Zoey turned 4 months old. I took them both to the doctor for their checkups.

   Note: remind me not to do this again because it was so hectic that I forgot to ask half of the questions I wanted to, about food and teething and such. And why if you know you are a pediatrician's office do you have a bunch of instruments out on a table at toddler eye-level that they are not supposed to touch and nothing else for them to play with?

Both kids passed with flying colors, thankfully. However, Zoey was scheduled for 3 (!) shots and Evan needed a flu shot.

Zoey started to get her shots, of course they hurt, and she screamed appropriately. After the first one I looked at Evan and could see his serious concern, and when the nurse went to give the second shot, he actually put his hand out and hovered it close to the needle. He knew whatever was happening was hurting her, and he wanted to stop it, but wasn't sure if he should. It was the sweetest thing for her I've ever seen him do. 

   Note: do NOT listen to the doctor when she says to do the baby's shots first because the older one will probably need more consoling. Have these people not done this before?

After shot number three, Zoey was screaming and Evan was also full-blown crying, tears streaming down both of their faces. The doctor appeared and asked if they were done (!). She took the baby and consoled her, and I pinned Evan down in my lap so he could get his flu shot. He was so scared and crying and shaking when it was actually done.

Pretty bad when I'm in tears by the end of the appointment. And who wants to tell Evan that we need to get his blood drawn because they need to test for lead because our house was built before 1960? Not this mom.

So I am proud of my little boy and I know that he will be an amazing older brother to our little girl. The other day he asked if he could hold her, I grabbed the camera.

Proximity

One of my sister's friends is in town visiting. She lives a good 8 hours away, so obviously we don't see her very often, but are so happy when she's here. This got me thinking about how close and how far people are. We are fortunate in that pretty much all of our immediate family is within a 2 hour drive, and we see them on a pretty consistent basis. Especially now that we have kids, I am glad that we spend as much time with them as we do.

But sometimes I get so frustrated when I realize that our neighbors that live across the street are pretty poo but we see them everyday, and some of the people I love the most I see maybe once every two or three years. (I will throw in here that I am eternally grateful for phone, e-mail, and facebook that allows me to be closer to my and my husband's extended family).

There are two friends in particular in my life that my heart breaks sometimes when I think about them and wish they were closer. I want them to be here to see our children grow up, and in one case I want to see their child grow up as well (and not just through pictures online).

So to Jenny and Mike, I miss you both so very much, and I wish you didn't live so far away.

(Ugh, nursing moms have way too many tears in their heads that are always wanting to come out, haha).

What 2 months can do........

Okay, maybe almost 3 months. Our baby girl will be 3 months old in two weeks, I can't believe it's gone by so fast.

From this (birth):

To this (about 5 or 6 weeks):

To this (2.5 months):

(I wish she was smiling in this, but she was being a stinker every time I took a picture). Not surprisingly for a child of mine, she has started talking quite a bit. No one knows what she's saying, but she doesn't care. Tons of smiles and laughs too. 

And most importantly of all, 2 different nights of 9 hours of sleep each. Can you see me dancing a jig? NO, cause I'm sleeping.

Don't forget, I also have this piece of wonderfulness (2.5 years).

I have started to really love our bedtime routine (do parents ever say that?) After the usual fight about pajamas and teeth brushing and such, Evan, Zoey and I all climb into the big bed. I read books to Evan while feeding Zoey. Sometimes we all fall asleep together, but if I can stay awake to put Zoey down they are usually asleep together in the same room by 9:30p. 

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

The Beauty of Double Sleep

Yesterday and today I have managed to get both kids to nap at the same time in the afternoon. (Ok I had help, Jessie is here).

Anyways, I went in to the living room yesterday to check on them (Evan on the couch and Zoey in the pack-n-play).

Both kids have eyes wide open, looking at me.

And then, they both smiled at me.

That makes me happy.

She has arrived!

I have a daughter.

Wow. After almost a month of her being in my life, it still sounds weird. Great, but weird. For some reason I just thought this was going to be a boy. Probably because the 3D picture looked so much like Evan. So, presenting the girls of the Bucior family of (the nearly famous because of this movie) Panorama Drive..........

This beautiful picture is with many thanks to Meagan Hahn, please check out her photography site, she did an absolutely wonderful job.

A couple of notes about the days surrounding the birth of this baby.

• After my last post at 11 pm the night before the birth, Matt finished up his exam at 1:30 am (!) and then we sat down to pick baby names. Settled on a boy name, but still had 6 different combos for a girl. Oh well, that was more progress then we had made in a month, so off to bed we went. 
• Matt had reheated pizza at 5:30 am for breakfast, this is now a tradition to do before any child's birth apparently.
• Arrived at the hospital at 6:30 am, ready to head to OR at 7:50.
• Once in the OR, learned that we were delayed almost 2 hours because apparently ONE BAZILLION babies insisted on being born at the same time, and there are only so many docs to go around.
• My anesthesiologist was very nice, but ummm, she had the shakes. Really? However I noticed the shakes were only in her head region, not her hands, and that seemed the most important. :)
• All went well, though the doctor liked to tease us because he announced shortly after plucking her from my belly, "It's a baby!"
• When they said it was a girl, I cried. (Not to say that I wouldn't have cried when Evan was born, but I was way more drugged up that time. I didn't even know they had started the surgery until they popped a baby up in the air.)

The most exciting part of the day was when Evan came in the room. He was so excited. He even had a pink stuffed bunny to give to her. And even now, he loves her so much. When he kisses her, he is very gentle. He learned her name immediately (once we actually picked it) and will tell anyone about her. 

I am beyond grateful to God that our family is happy and healthy. I know our lives are so busy right now, but I couldn't be happier.

(Oh, and I had to change the title of the blog. Kind of sounds like a pair of super heroes, huh?)