My Very Own Pot Roast Recipe

Well, I wanted pot roast...and bad! I did my usual search and scan for recipes but nothing was "suiting" this pregnant craving of mine. I decided to "invent" my own recipe and it turned out pretty awesome. The only thing I might do different next time is add a teed more salt. I just wanted to post a quick blog for my future reference regarding the recipe. Feel free to use for yourself.

I started with an almost 4 lbs Beef Chuck Pot Roast (boneless) that was thawed completely. I wanted to slow cook this all day for that "fall apart tender" look and taste. So I put 1 chopped onion, about 15 baby carrots chopped into thirds, 1 package of mushroom gravy mix, 1 can mushroom slices, and 1 can of cream of mushroom with roasted garlic soup. I stirred all that to mix well. Meanwhile, I took about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and heated it in a pan until really hot. I seasoned both sides of the roast with salt, pepper, and cummin. Then I added that to the hot pan and seared the roast on all sides to seal in flavor. After that was done, I added the roast to the crock pot. I then added about 1/4 cup water to the hot pan and worked all the bits of drippings from searing the roast into the water. I poured that over the roast in the crock pot and turned it on low for about 8 hours.

That roast was so tender I used a fork to break up the meat and the gravy was awesome over my mashed potatoes.

It's A Boy!

I finally had the "big" ultrasound. You know, the one where you get to find out the gender if you want to know. Of course, we wanted to know! I am THRILLED to announce it's a BOY!  Oddly I kept feeling like it was a girl, but really really really wanted a boy! I mean after all, Kristina is 19 and will be leaving home soon and Kenton is only 5, he needs a playmate! Seems everyone in the family was happy about the news too!

We got some great shots of the baby, too. In the top picture, he's looking right at the camera and his eyes are WIDE OPEN, and you can see his little fist right at the top, too. The bottom three pictures show him from primarily his left side. First showing him with his ankles crossed and arm/fist up by his head. He kind of has his face snuggled up into the placenta. The second picture is almost a double image. It shows a semi-great face shot, but then he moved so his fist is partially in the way. The third picture shows him kind of rubbing his eyes with his fist and you can see his lips, cheeks, and ear.

We are still deliberating over names but have it narrowed down....we really like the "K" tradition that we have going on. However, it's been sooooo hard this time around finding a name everyone agrees on, or that we can find any middle names to go with. This baby is our last and we really want to make it unique after all we've been through. We found a name that means, God has been gracious and shown favor. How awesome is that given the road we've been down? The name we are leaning most towards is Jaxson Kole Naval...we'd call him "Jax". We think this baby won't mind his "K" name being his middle name with such an awesome first name, and if it does really bother him, he could always switch and go by Kole later on. Other names still in the pool vary between Jaxson Raylan or Rayland Jaxson. Both of these derive from the main characters of TV shows we LOVE and they represent some pretty "billy badass" characters. We think Jax will be a perfect fit in our world of K's.....

Kenton Starts Swim Lessons!

Kenton finally started Swim Lessons. I was beginning to think the boy was always going to hate pools, but he started showing an interest finally so we signed him up! He started liking the pool a couple months ago on a random trip. So to test it out I took him to our local indoor waterpark. I knew he was ready when he started trying to "dog paddle" in the big wave pool! Success! So I contacted the base and found out when the next round of lessons would be and signed him up. We only had to wait a couple months and it's only $45 for the month. Not too bad, so we dived right in. He has five other kids in his first class and all boys. He seemed to really love it and is very excited to go back for the next class. He'll be going twice a week for the next month. This is great for him! If he's anything like his dad or mom, he should be a regular fish in the water. I'm really excited for him!