Happy Valentine's day

Today has been a busy, hectic day; rounding out a crazy 2 days in the part-time world. Random things that have made me wonder if I should contact tomorrow's volunteers and give them notice tomorrow might be crazy! I think I have fixed most of the random things, we will see.
So, today about everything I wanted to get done didn't get done in the time I was hoping for.  I wanted to have these pocket pies done before Eric got home, but it didn't happen, so now  they are waiting for him to finish the dishes and then we can eat.  

Now, before you go all dang that girl has a problem, I should say I made the cookies for Eric, since those are his favorite cookies and that is all I was planning on doing, but then I found this recipe for a chocolate cherry cheesecake and I decided to make that for tomorrow's meeting.  Well, I needed about a cup of cherry pie filling but then I would have some left over, and the question became what to do with these leftovers?  Enter the pocket pies!  Heart shaped, Valentine themed!  Sadly, I can't eat much if any of these things, gives me heartburn...I will suffer through 1 pie tonight and a sliver of cheesecake tomorrow, but that will likely be it.  I might be trying to fatten everyone up around me and I honestly haven't baked anything in a while!  So it was fun! 
Gwen seemed to enjoy her valentine's day.  And I decided to prep dinner, but have Eric make/assemble.  So I made some sushi rice, made some tempura shrimp and while Eric and the kids made the sushi, I assembled the pocket pies.  We were all in the kitchen and had a good time.  Gwen even ate some sushi!  A good way to celebrate the day!  Happy Valentine's day! 

Father-daughter dance and Valentines

The school has a father-daughter dance and Gwen really wanted to go.  I kept asking Eric if they were going to go and he'd say "I don't know anything about it".  So finally, at dinner the other night I asked and he said, I'll go if someone asks me.  So Gwen asked and low and behold they went to the dance.  I snapped a couple pictures before they left. 

Unfortunately I couldn't get her to change out of her socks, but I did get her to put a shirt under her dress.  WIN!  She also did her own hair and jewelry.  She is starting to get into necklaces and such, not so much bracelets or hair.  She is wearing a "medal" she made it school. 

Nate and I waited anxiously for them to come home, well Nate fell asleep, and I waited.  Gwen was fairly tired but I did find out they did have fun, ate lots of snacks and didn't dance.  Eric spoke to some of the other Dads and asked Gwen to dance, but she didn't want to, she just wanted to hang with her friends.  Apparently the had photographer who took pictures and Gwen brought home 2 flowers.  Eric got a glimpse of what the future will be and I am not sure, he might be scared.

Nate and I decided to secretly make some Valentine's cookies.  Sadly, I had to do a babysitting thing today, so I didn't have time to put the cookies away.  Guess who spotted them about 2.5 sec after she walked in the door.  Guess who told Daddy immediately so she could have some for dessert.  Oh well.  Guess I don't have to sneak them into lunches tomorrow. 

Nate really likes to help and now he has the fancy apron for helping.  He was a much better helper when it was just us and I didn't have to decide which kid does each task. 

School happenings

This week was Catholic Schools week and so they had busy happenings at the school this week.  The Kindergartners were invited back to school on Wednesday night in their PJs for bedtime stories and bedtime snacks.  Gwen was SO excited.  Sadly, I forgot to take a picture.  She had a good time and fell asleep almost as soon as she went into her room. 
Friday night they had the faculty/staff basketball game.  One of Gwen's teachers was playing in the game, as was our neighbor.  We were surprised at how evenly matched the teams were and there seemed to be a lot of players that weren't faculty or staff...I guess we will figure that stuff out as the kids get older.  The Pastor and the principal were designated foul shot takers.  Gwen sat with her friends under the basket.  I couldn't believe it, isn't that what the teenagers do, not my kindergartner?  Well, she and Nate had a good time, I guess that is all that matters! 

 Getting ready for the halftime dance, all the kids went out to do it...I took a video of just Gwen and Nate. 

 Gwen's friend came over and took these pictures of us, as you can see Eric thought he was going to be in the picture also, he was denied.

 She did take a picture of him also. 

During "half-time" it is traditional for there to be some sort of dance thing.  This year they decided to have a "flash mob" and invited all the kids to do the dance the teachers have apparently been doing all week.  The teachers apparently decided to break out in dance periodically during the week.  I recorded the whole song. 

Bless the heart of my uncoordinated children!  (Nate might be really tired and it is possible he fell asleep on the way home and stayed out all night!) 

Outside

We have a big field at the end of the neighborhood, the kids love to go there and run wild.  The husband enjoys running around with the kids, so I sat on the hill and watched. 

They would come and check on me every so often, but I was knitting and watching them, so I was good. 

It is good for them to get out in this unseasonably warm weather and run some energy out.  I know some day it might actually become winter here and they will have to stay indoors.

They are a little crazy, but man do they like to run outside! 

We like to encourage the running around outside, so they don't run around in the house and scream at each other.  Of course when they get too tired they whine more, but then they go to bed early, you win some you lose some.

The Quilt and other things

As some may remember, I have been working on this quilt for Eric for I don't know, like a million years.  Ok, in truth I started this bad boy in September of '09.  You can see the full thing without any quilting here and when I started hand quilting here.  But recently I realized that I'd only finished 3 squares and I still have 22 to go, so I have to figure out how to get this thing on the machine.  I did at the beginning of the month and I now have 9.5 square done.  I have really sped through the thing now.  The bad thing is that my basting method, while fine for hand stitching, is not holding up for machine quilting, the t-shirts have stretched some.  This is not going to be the flattest quilt, but it won't take me 25 years to finish!  I guess I should re-baste.  But, here it is so far, well actually I have another shirt almost done, I am working on the diagonals now.  

Today Gwen went to a birthday party.  She came home looking like this.  I don't know if you can see the jewels on her face. 

She wanted to look like a fairy princess!  By her account she had a very good time.  They had a clown who did a magic show (with a BUNNY!), balloon things and obviously face painting.  The lady had quite the skills! 

New Year's Eve

We were pretty excited to have visitors for New Year's Eve. Gwen was really excited, she wouldn't go to the grocery store with Daddy and she wanted to decorate the driveway. 

I think that Eric might have helped a little. 

It was nice to my friend and her daughter.  We don't get to see each other that often, even though we live closer than we used to, and we seem to be in the exact same place in life currently.  Which you know doesn't always happen, made Eric a little uncomfortable, just the idea of what we would talk about sent him off to another room!  But we had fun, kids stayed up too late, and we saw the ball drop.  The neighbor was kind enough to make a special trip to bring over some sparkling cherry juice that she apparently had laying around, so we were able to enjoy that in Champagne glasses, like we were real drinkers!  A good night indeed!

Mother-daughter tea

Gwen and I were invited to a Mother-Daughter tea on New Year's Day. (this is why we had the big practice tea party with Grandma).  Gwen was super excited and decided to wear her Christmas dress and I asked her if she wanted to do her hair in the hot rollers.  She said yes!  She wasn't pleased with the length of time the curlers were in her hair, but I tried to keep them in for as long as possible.  One thing I know about my hair is it starts out big and then falls, was pretty sure Gwen's would do the same.  

BIG HAIR!!

I combed it out a little, and she was ticked at me, but her hair is actually cut to curl out, so I just brushed it out a little. 

Ready for the party!

She and her little girlfriends had a great time.  They got to paint a little tea pot and cup, drank hot chocolate, ate little sandwiches and put on a play.  It must have been a lot of fun for her, she asked if we could go to another one the next day.  My friend has said she would like to make this an annual thing, I hope so, it was fun to chat with the Moms and watch the girls and their "play".

Christmas 2011

We had a very good Christmas this year.  Mostly quiet and lots of quality play time.  The kids tried to change up Christmas lists Christmas Eve, but they seemed to really enjoy the toys that they received and haven't mentioned the ones that they tried to change up for.  They played all day with their toys and are still playing with them.  I put together a slide show of pictures, but sadly it has taken me a week to save it!  The website was down and every time I tried to save it, the thing crashed.  Finally this morning I saved it!  So, FINALLY I am posting this. 
We decided this year to do a standing rib roast.  Not only was it super easy and fast, it was very good.  I think it was a nice "light" dinner compared to Thanksgiving, which is nice because who wants to slave in the kitchen when there are Legos and new toys to play with!  
It was a good Christmas for all, we hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!

Christmas 2011 - Free Slideshow Maker

Preparing

The time is here, to prepare for Christmas, and we are almost ready. Breakfast is made, cake is cooling, presents are being wrapped. 

But, I've been told it is time to get ready for Church.  So, I guess it is time to get the kids in from outside and find out what fits. 

The kids are excited and a little crazed today.  I guess that is to be expected on Christmas Eve, isn't it?

Who wants to take bets that Nate will fall asleep on the way to Church? 

That should make a for a fun evening! 

Oh, I almost forgot, the shrimp is thawing!  YUM!  Still have to pick up some bread though.  I would have made some, but Mom said it was too much work! 

Hope everyone is having a fabulous holiday season! 

Happy Christmas Eve! 

Christmas cookies

This weekend, in my utter craziness, I decided that our Mother's group should host a Cookie Decorating party for the kids of our Church.  Fortunately, everyone I talked to was on board!  A couple Mothers and I got together Friday night and made 10 batches of cookies, which translated to over 600 cookies!  We had about 35 kids RSVP, but you never know, and we might have just been making batches, throwing them into the fridge and then we counted and realized we had 10 batches!  We used the Church kitchen and had a great time.  Thank goodness for the convection ovens and my friends who so graciously stayed late to help, we couldn't have done it without them! 
The next morning we made some frosting, laid out the cookies and said get to it kids! 

I forgot to figure on the little kids and their love of frosting and sprinkles, many of the cookies were towering with frosting and sprinkles, which would be cool if the kids were just making these for themselves, but we decided to have them make some and donate some for the home-bound parishioners. 

 We decided to use royal icing and put it in plastic bags and cut out an end for them to squeeze onto the cookies, we had the kids bring their own sprinkles.  The bags worked well, for the most part.  We had a couple that split when we were trying to push down the icing and we had a couple that came out the zip part. But, we had no complaints and some kids stood there for the whole time just making cookies, I was impressed.

Everyone told us how great of an idea this was, and how much they loved it.  How well organized it was and all that, which was slightly hilarious, because we didn't do anything to organize it, really, just made cookies and frosting.  We also had the kids decorate bags and make cards for the home-bound.  They did such a great job and it was such a fabulous way to spread some cheer. 

I hope that the home-bound all get their bags and cards, the kids sure had fun doing it! 

It made for an exhausting couple of days, but well worth it! 

Thanksgiving

I may or may not have mentioned that Thanksgiving was not our best day, Eric has been fighting some mysterious illness for almost 2 weeks now.  He is on the mend, after I demanded he go to the Doctor.  He is at least able to participate in family time.  And, I think that he is finally able to sleep well, since prescribed a cough syrup!  Thanksgiving seemed to be just another day around here, except, I worked really hard to make a dinner, that basically only I ate, sure the kids had some, but not much, and then I had to do all the dishes! 

We got some cute pictures of the kids though!

After dinner, while I was doing the dishes the kids played and Eric laid on the couch, pretty much his M.O. for the last several weeks, poor guy. 

Nate likes to wear the buckets on his head, he's a funny kind of a kid! 

Hope your turkey day was better than ours! 

Turkeys

Today we left the house, it was the first time we all left the house since probably Tuesday.  We'd been outside, in the yard, but we did some shopping.  It was nice to get out of the house, stores were kind of busy, but not Black Friday crazy.  We were finally able to get Nate something to wear for Christmas.  Thank goodness.  I think it is time for me to attempt to get some Christmas pictures made.  Should be all kinds of fun!  Eric and I did pick up a Black Friday deal for ourselves for Christmas.  Guess we should really get Christmas shopping started for the family.  Maybe after Eric starts to feel better from his mysterious illness.  I am hoping that none of us get it, he's been sick with a fever for almost a week now.  I am hoping that since it has been almost a week, that we are all in the clear, the incubation period should be past, a girl can dream. 
I have some pictures to upload here, but I have to charge the camera battery and then upload to the computer.  Hopefully tomorrow, I will get to it. 

Happy Thanksgiving

Eric unfortunately is still sick, which was bad for my T'day dinner.  I heard him telling his Mother he didn't do my meal justice, and he certainly didn't.  I may have made too many things, but everything sounded good (and tasted good, if I might add.  As I write this, I realize I am a little hungry now, might be time for round 2!  This year I made mashed potatoes, but instead of regular mashed potatoes I saw a recipe for them with goat cheese and caramelized onions.  They were great!  Eric also wanted creamed corn, I found a recipe for skillet creamed corn (topped with bacon!)  YUM!  Then I also made the usual suspects, cran-bake, stuffing, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, biscuits, and gravy!  We also had "jello" my kids called it, which makes me kind of sad for them that they think cranberry sauce from a can is jello, but they love it, so it is a good thing I bought 2 cans! 
The kids seemed to have been suffering from over stimulation from being inside too long, so I sent everyone outside to finish up the cooking, but they didn't last long, Daddy slept outside while they played.  They didn't really hit their outdoor stride until after dinner when they ran outside to say hi to Mrs. Susan.  I went out with them and they ran outside basically in circles around her yard.  They did "help" her a little with her gardening.  She is a very nice neighbor and is so patient with them, probably because her son is in high school and she misses the toddler hugs! 
I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving! 

Half-a-day

YAY!  Half-a-day.  I am looking forward to cleaning this place up and starting some baking tomorrow.  I will be baking at least 2 pies tomorrow.  I couldn't decide between making a pumpkin or a pecan, I think E prefers the pumpkin and I prefer the pecan, so I'll be making both.  I am going to make a caramel pecan pie, instead of what I usually make-the chocolate pecan pie!  As E and I are married longer I learn more about his likes and dislikes.  I'd like a roll  for T'day, out of no where he tells me he wants biscuits!  Sure, I know biscuits to rolls, not a big deal, but I am wondering what else I'll learn. 
Gwen had her little celebration, came home with her vest, her necklace and her headpiece, all that she made.  They apparently had a feast outside on the picnic benches.  It feels like it is unseasonably warm around here.  We aren't going to complain, but I kind of wish we had a porch, because I would totally do the outdoor eating thing on the porch, like I grew up with! The kids would love it, they love the outdoor eating! 

Manic Monday

Nate and I went into school today and one of the ladies that works in the office gave him a little toy, while I was collecting checks.  Apparently she made him close his eyes and put out his hands.  He was incredibly excited, his exuberance was noticeable.  He has been doing reenactments all day. 
I am looking forward to the kids having a couple days off.  I am hoping to get some cleaning and stuff done around the house, that we just don't seem to have time to do with the pick-up, drop-off, other things to do in between. 
I went to the grocery store today without kids, and some crazy lady felt the need to talk to me.  I felt our conversation was weird.  First she was sending her shopping partner, who she treated as if he wasn't 100% with it and kept repeating "LIGHT brown sugar" for sweet potatoes, and then turned to me and said, "RIGHT?".  I have always been a little confused as to which brown sugar to use, unless specifically stated in the recipe, so I just agreed. And then she started chatting me up about what we were having for Thanksgiving asking me if we were having turkey or a roast?  I answered "turkey for Thanksgiving, roast for Christmas" to which she replied "oh, changing it up"?  I don't know about you, but I thought everyone (who eats meat) eats turkey for Thanksgiving.  Although I noticed in her basket a roast-like thing.  I went ahead and picked up light brown sugar for my sweet potatoes, because she seemed to know what she was talking about when it came to sweet potatoes.  I was trying to convince a friend that we should do Thanksgiving together, I would do half the meal and she would do half, since I didn't want our family to get a free ride...but she didn't want to relinquish half the control, so we are doing our own thing.  We'll likely have too much food, hopefully I won't have to cook much this weekend! 

Raleigh parade

Today we went to the Raleigh Christmas parade.  I think we didn't go last year, although we aren't sure.  We went without planning, just got in the car and went.  I couldn't really remember the parade route, but what the heck.  The kids don't care about that kind of stuff; they just wanted to see the parade!  We left about the time I would have liked to have been  pulling into Raleigh.  But, we found a spot, which we realized later must have been at the end of the route, so we ended up not missing much, if anything.  We started out at not a very good spot, and put the kids on our shoulders so they could see, but we could hardly see.  Then some nice tall man, asked if anyone wanted to get closer with their kids.  So I said sure, and we were able to just hold them up high.  There were plenty of breaks in the parade, since we were at the end, so we ended up being there 2 hours!  I eventually scooted Gwen up front because do you know how heavy our kids are after about an hour of holding them!?  People really started clear out at about 1.5 hours in so I also let Nate get up close, but probably only for the last 15 minutes.  I didn't get a whole lot of pictures, since I was holding one or the other of the kids, but towards the end I got more pictures.

Raleigh Christmas Parade 2011 - Slideshow

Gwen's favorite were the ballerinas and the princesses.  I just have to say, there were a lot of princesses.  Miss NC this and Miss NC that.  Gwen was so pleased!  Nate was pleased because we got to see the Star Wars people again, but he was a little disappointed there was no Darth Vader.  I was thrilled to see big balloons, although the toilet was a little surprising.  I think Eric's favorite was the large shopping cart.  It was hilarious because we could tell when Scotty McCreery (American Idol from Garner, NC-Mom) was coming through, we could hear the girlish screams coming from the crowd.  We all enjoyed the parade, I love a good parade, maybe next year we could print the route and you know plan a little in advance, or we could go with the flow again, whatever!

Ramblings

I sort of feel like I am running out of things to say on this blog.  Gwen is doing well in school.  Nate is endearing himself to the people at school.  Gwen is apparently supposed to dress in khakis and ponytails or braids for her Thanksgiving celebration.  Unfortunately, the kid doesn't have anything khaki to wear with her uniform top, what can I say, the girl likes pink!  Fortunately, we have a Kohl's gift card and a 20% off coupon.  The note said not to buy anything, but well, what else am I going to send her in?  Maybe I can scrounge up something from our hand-me-down bin, if I don't get to it this weekend.  I am pretty excited to braid her hair, I love to do bows/braids and all that kind of stuff, but she won't let me.  She told me today I could do braids, I didn't tell her ponytails were an option!  They have been working on all kinds of stuff for the classroom, building a tepee, making head gear, talking about the Mayflower.  Gwen keeps asking me facts about the first Thanksgiving, and I know about 95% of what she asks me.
Eric let the kids watch Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.  We watch every Charlie Brown special for every holiday, Eric feels it is important, or he likes to reminisce about watching those with his family.  The kids especially like the physical humor, like when Snoopy is trying to set up the table and gets caught.  Nate just laughed and laughed, which caused everyone else to laugh because his laugh is so infectious.
I am about done with my responsibilities for my first official month in my job.  The ordering process is about to come to a close and I have the whole of Thanksgiving break to work on my lunch lists. That will be nice.  Wonder if I can teach the kids how to highlight? I think it is going well, at least no one has complained to me personally.  Good news for me! 
I am starting to plan our Thanksgiving meal.  It will just be us this year.  As the kids have started to get more adventurous at meal time, ok well only Gwen, it has been fun to plan and hope they actually eat.  I will likely do too much for our little family, but then I am hoping not to cook for a couple days, so that will be really cool!  Who doesn't want a fresh turkey sandwich?   

Duck!

This was from this summer.  The in-laws have a duck race* where they live and the MIL loves to send the husband a t-shirt, this year the kids were delighted that they also got t-shirts.  I can't tell you how many times the kids and husband wore their matching shirts this summer.  I would imagine they would still be wearing them if the temperature went down to 50!  Fortunately, they didn't have my size, or maybe I'm not known for wearing duck race t-shirts!  How cute is my family!?

*I should note:although this is a live duck race no duck are mistreated in the race-or my MIL would not support it! 

Inspiration

I've been a pretty big slacker these days when it comes to dinner.  I have been uninspired and lazy.  Tonight I had a Mom's group meeting and there were 2 nutritionists there, one was a holistic nutritionist who kind of took over the meeting.  I have been trying to pull the snacks foods out of the house, preferring to make things on my own and that has helped me with some of my food problems, but I've gotten lazy and uninspired.  But I feel the need to get more fruits/veggies in the kids diets.  I also struggle making Gwen's lunches, so I started looking at some websites tonight, and now I've stayed up too late pouring over these darn beautiful food pictures on a random website instead of writing my grocery list and going to bed. Let's just say the next couple recipes coming out of this kitchen will be likely from that website, I hope they are as good as they look!  Sometimes you never know where the inspiration is going to hit you...hopefully it will continue through the holidays and beyond! 

Child of the week

At Gwen's school they have a 'child of the week' program, where the kid gets special treatment.  We went in a read her class a book and apparently the class thinks of things they like about her.  Just for her kicks, thought I should put it on here because it is so cute. 

• she has nice manners
• she has beautiful eyes
• she looks her nicest everyday! (which is kind of funny since they wear uniforms)
• she is nice to others
• she has a nice haircut
• she is very wise
• she includes others
• she is always bucket-filling (which is the theme for this year 'buckets' filling with compliments or taking stuff out with not nice behavior)
• she has nice handwriting
• she has a quiet voice
• she smiles with her eyes

It is funny to see what her classmates think about her!