Saturday, March 19, 2011

Dr. Seuss week

I am not very good at remembering birthdays, but ever since my kids started school I never miss Dr. Seuss's birthday. Not that I realised I was missing it before. This year at our school made spirit week the same week as this famous birthday with themed days such as "Green Eggs and Ham day", "Thing one and Thong Two (Twin day)", "Crazy hat day" etc. So of course on green eggs and ham day the kids want that for dinner so below is my version of it. We had green scrambled eggs with bacon bits, sour cream and a slice of avocado for a little extra green ;) in a corn tortilla. As a side dish I colored the hash browns green and while they don't look all that appetising it was in fact a yummy meal. My supremely talented party throwing friend had a Dr. Seuss party for the little pre K kids. Aiden had a blast and came home with great party favors and lots of stories of the fun games they played.

Same friend made Thing one and two shirts for her daughter a friend. Tyler wanted in on that action so he became Thing 3.
Thanks Dr. Suess for all the great books that you contributed to my and my kids childhood, and thanks for all the fun you inspire.

Friday, March 18, 2011

a Cake

I got to make a cake for one of Courtney's friends birthday party. It has been almost a year since I did a cake and it was fun to decorate one again. The inside was even cute too...
One day i will get back into doing cakes, but for now it is still to much to seriously take on with the little ones. I'll just do one here and there, when the opportunity comes.

The big field trip

I remember going on an over night field trip when I was in 5th or 6th grade. Casey got the chance to also do this as his 5th grade class was the first at our school to take an overnight 5th grade trip. They went to Lake Pleasant Desert outdoor Center. They took many classes in the 2 days they were there. They made Journals....
Took nature walks and learned about the local desert atmosphere.
They stayed in Bunk houses/dorms
They got all bundled up for midnight (8:00) hike.
and got to watch the sun go down. I will say that AZ has great sunsets.

The next day they participated in lots of team work and team building activities.

They even got to practice building a shelter and attracting a rescue team.


And how to build a fire.

Building Bridges

Casey's class did a study on bridges. They were then put into groups and assign "jobs" like architect, accountant, builder etc. They had to find a bridge, study it and design how they were going to replicate it. They were given a budget and they had to purchase their lumber (toothpicks) and glue. They then had to build the bridge meeting certain requirements.

Every night at dinner we would get an update on how the bridge was coming and how much money they had spent compared to the other teams. One day the lumber was on sale so they bought it on sale and then sold it other teams at a profit later. Casey's team had the most money left over at the end of the assignment. It looks so fragile to me, but looks are deceiving, his team won the weight test and could have taken on more, but the time was up so their bridge didn't brake and who knows how much more it could have taken on...

Finally!

After Aiden showed me how he could put on his own diaper...seriously, he laid the diaper out, sat on it and did up the tabs. I immediately felt shame for putting it off for so long and then informed him it was time to start going potty on the toilet, he was already doing the other, so we were already half way there. He had recently started asking for a pillow pet, so I told him when he went a whole 7 days in a row with out having an accident we would get him one. It really didn't take long...i would say within 2 weeks he was accident free. So there is something to say for waiting to long...they learn faster :) he chose a bumble bee pillow.

Valentine day

Before going to bed on Valentine Eve :) I put out cards and candy for the kids. In the morning they were excited to show me what they had done with the candy wrappers.
They took it upon themselves to eat the Pixy Stix so that they could use the paper to write me a note. Yes they considered this binge on sugar to be their breakfast.....on a school morning....I informed them that they had better get something sugar free in their bellies before they left for school!

and of course our traditional Breakfast for dinner, since Chad was already at work for breakfast.

And I didn't cut my finger!

After Casey cut his finger i showed the kid the proper tools to use to cut carrots since this is a popular snack at our house. Aiden takes it upon himself to make himself a carrot which consists of cutting off the ends and peeling off the skin.,,,this was a common sight in our house for a while.
Aiden was so proud of himself and his skills in carrot preparation.
"And I didn't even cut myself!"

The wrong hand

after breakfast one Sunday morning for some reason we got to talking about people who can write with both hands and Chad told the kids to go get paper and pens and we all had to write with our "Wrong" hand.
It was really funny watching the kids holding the pen with their wrong hand.


After we were done we compared it with our regular handwriting...Tyler was not even legible, Casey and Court were pretty shaky, but we could still read it.

Diaper Dash

There was a Huggies "Diaper Dash" crawling contest at babies r us one Saturday afternoon so the kids and I headed over to sign Brody up.
The first round was him a little girl.

As soon as they said go everyone started calling the babies to come and they just looked around at all the noise. Eventually the little girl started crawling as her parents pulled out her bottle. I couldn't even get Brody's attention over the noise.


So we lost, but we stuck around and they let him sign up for the 3rd round since there were very few people there. He won that round since the other two kids didn't move and I think he was more comfortable with his surrounding by that time.
He won a $10.00 gift card.
In the final round all the winners from the five rounds competed for 3 months worth of diapers. It was between him and the little girl from the first round. They both crawled and then right before the finish line they stopped and sat up. i should mention that she was crawling for his toy. Well they both sat there and then she put her hand forward and touched the finish line!! so close!!
We decided if daddy had been there Brody would have totally won since he crawls for Chad super fast. Oh well.

We still got a package of diapers and some treats for Brody. Good job buddy :)

And he fell asleep

One afternoon I was doing some work on the computer when Aiden crawled up to his normal spot on the arm of my chair. On this particular time he must have been pretty tired. He takes naps every once in a great while...today was one of those times because as I clicked away I slowly noticed him leaning on my arm more and more till I realised he was completely knocked out.

father daughter winter ball

Court and Chad of course went to the dance and a great time.

They danced the night away. Court was in heaven.


We had a desert bar with cake pops, brownies a chocolate fountain and more. We had a game going on in the food room. It was a How well do you know your daughter (like the newlywed game) which was a bug hit. The dance was going on in the other room.