Things to Tell I Guess

In today's edition of "I'm done with parenting..."

I don't want to cut grapes up anymore. I mean, I will but mostly because if one of my children did in fact choke on a grape I would never forgive myself for skipping the step that adds about a minute to the routine. But still. I don't want to cut up grapes anymore.

And then there's this. Except let's throw in mom instead of dad then shall we?

We are going to be dog sitting this upcoming week and seriously, I am the most excited to not pay for air conditioning for a week! 

We went to the zoo last night for member's night. It was the best. Seriously, I have never enjoyed our zoo so much. But it was just perfection. The animals were so active. Like even the sloth was moving. 

Seriously awesome. We loved it. All of the fine places we have a membership for close at 5:00 in the summer (and most of them year-round if they're open at all so it's not often that Husband gets to come along for the fun. So thank you members night! 

This weekend is girl's weekend. It got moved up a weekend this year but hot diggity I am ready. In 2015 it was something I really needed. In 2016 it was a refreshing breath of fresh air. And even though it's local this year I am so excited. I picked up one gal from the airport yesterday... it's going to be the bee's knees. Actually, maybe I am especially excited it's local because all of the fun with none of the travel. 

I wish you all wonderful weekends!

Read All The Things

Once upon a time there was a little girl. She had good generous parents, a love of reading and deep appreciation for golden birthdays. That is to say, the birthday where you turn the age of the date of your birth. (Apparently not everyone celebrates or even understands the concept of a golden birthday she has found.)Okay so that little girl is/was me. And wouldn't you know everyone that this year, is finally the year in which I get to celebrate my golden birthday. (Not until next month mind you, but still, the excitement looms.)

I haven't built it up in my mind at all. Except I totally have. There is little chance at all it could be the most magical birthday of my entire life up to this point but I am sure as heck going to try. I declared years ago that all I wanted was to go to Disney World. While we will be traveling earlier than the actual day of my birth because of school (which turned out to be a non-issue because it's not even real kindergarten and who cares if he missed a week) we have made that part happen. It's in my birth month which is close enough right?

Also important to this story is that I love read. I was the kid who got in trouble in school for being too far ahead in the book we were reading aloud in class.

I just love reading. Like it's July and I am already at 35/24 of my Goodreads Challenge for the year. Reading is my jam. Specifically I like to read in bed, but even with a book light it is hard to do while Husband sleeps.

In January 2011 I bought a 3rd generation Kindle that looks like this:

And I loved it. I know that ereaders are one more thing that millennials have embraced that has "ruined the world" and all that, but gosh darn it, it is just so much easier to hold, and read and carry than a bunch of books. I loved my Kindle but as the technology improved it wasn't as wonderful. Sure it works and there's nothing wrong with it, but that whole requiring light thing still put a damper on the situation. 

So I have done almost 100% of my Kindle reading on the app on my phone for the past year or so. Which worked. But it just wasn't as awesome a reading experience as it could have been because all that blue light science or whatever. Oh and the fact that eight times out of ten my phone is DEAD at bed time and I'd have to lay awkwardly to have my phone charge while I read. 

Well since the whole theme of my upcoming golden birthday has been "celebrate early" my parents somehow got on board and last week I received the most wonderful Kindle Voyage with just an absolutely stunning origami case. It is leather and magnetic and it feels so good in my hand. And reading on it is such a joy. Well and it smells great because it's leather.

Oh my goodness, this Kindle is a game changer. I can read outside in full sunlight. (Really hard to do to on my phone, a lot of headaches ensued.) I can read in bed in the dark. And my new Kindle does it all. It's AMAZING. Plus has the added bonus of looking like I am reading a book instead of ignoring my children with the internet. Because no one knows you are reading on the Kindle app on your phone you know?

TOTAL AND COMPLETE SIDE RANT If I hover too much while my kids are outside I am a "helicopter parent" and that is bad. If I sit down and read a book (or even just surf the internet) I am "neglectful" and that is bad. Someone make up their minds already! I safely fall into both categories depending on where we are and how I feel about the situation. END RANT 

I love my new Kindle. It is amazing. I took some pictures that were *cough* not at all staged *cough cough* to show you. 

Though if I was going to take the time to stage the picture I maybe should have tried a little harder because nobody really needed to know the catch all mug in our bedroom contains an adjustable wrench, scissors and measuring spoons among the assortment of loose change and pens. But... that is the reality of my life. I gave you staged real life. 

Don't worry, whether the case is opened or closed it says Amazon on the back. Which I have no shame in, since Amazon and I are in a deep and loving relationship. I just love this little Kindle of mine. Maybe too much. I need to start practicing just a little more self control as I have come upon a healthy dose of this disease: 

But I think the only prescription is more reading, you know, just in case you need me... 

Happy Friday Everyone!

A little snap shot from our week... 

It's been a hot week. So we've been finding things to do to keep cool. We busted out our super fancy inflatable pool and did some backyard swimming. It was a ton of fun. 

Of course we ended up with half the lawn in there too floating around, as you do. 

Yesterday we went to Burger King to play in the morning. Slides and tunnels. Burning energy in the air conditioning. We were going to try out the new trampoline park this week but after reading about the little boy who broke his leg... we decided BK was a better bet. 

Then after we used up some energy we went to see Despicable Me 3! 

It was M's first time going to a movie theater and she did amazing. I was so impressed by here. We got there early to scope out good seats. You know, on an aisle in case we need to sneak out, up a few rows for a good view but not too high. But then there were SO MANY previews. 

Going early turned out to be a good idea because there was a field trip group there and the theater was filled up pretty much, but man. We were in our seats for 45 minutes before the movie even started!! So the fact that M made it through the whole thing quiet and calm, I was really impressed. 

Last night I hosted book club and we read Wonder. If you haven't read it, you should. Then go see the movie this fall. We saw a preview before Despicable Me 3 and I got a little teary so I can only imagine how I will be at the movie. Anyway, read the book!! 

Because a lot of the action goes down at a school, I went for a school lunch theme. Sort've. The lunch box has baggies of pita chips for the spinach dip. Then fruit and dip and Rice Krispie Bars. In the milk crate are juice boxes, bottled waters and little cartons of orange juice. (I didn't figure anyone really wanted milk...)  

Want to Play a Math Game?

Kindergarten Math. I am not a math person. And I sure wish I was British and could say maths because it just seems better and maybe I wouldn't have disliked it so much...

ANYWAY. So I found this game  on the interwebs and this is a great version on Teachers Pay Teachers but I just kind of stole the idea, made my own and didn't pay for the sheets. 

This was the first time I introduced C to Base 10 Blocks but he took to them right away and he really loved the game. Instead of using the ones cubes I decided to have him color. Mostly because M was around I didn't want the ones to be scattered. But I had him switch every other row to help exaggerate the groups of ten. 

So basically we took turns rolling the die and coloring in our squares. Every time we filled in ten squares we earned a "tens" block. And then practiced counting by "tens." C also wrote the numbers he rolled underneath his square. Well most of them anyway... clearly the excitement caught up with him and he missed a few. Also clearly we need to work on writing the number 3, since I was upside down and didn't notice he was writing it backwards the whole time.

Then obviously, when he got to 100 he earned a "hundreds" block. He won mostly fair and square but I think I got skipped once or twice while I was redirecting a rambunctious two-year-old. But we got some good math practice in which is awesome! We'll play again soon with the "ones" blocks, probably while someone else* in our house is distracted or napping. 

Mondays

Monday is nearly over. It was a good one. Honestly, in this last little bit, the "good ones" have greatly outweighed the "bad ones." Not just Mondays. But all the days.

I could go on and on about the family adventure we had on Saturday.

We rode the water taxi across the Mississippi to "Illa-noyd" as C calls it. We took in the "tractor museum" which was fun-ish but there were a lot of grown adult men walking around playing with the machinery. I know that it is a museum for everyone but they were face-timing in the combine etc... anyway. It annoyed me. We walked a bit further for lunch out and rode the water taxi back around to our stop.

So there it was in a nutshell. I could also tell you about book club on Saturday night.

We got together at one of my family's favorite restaurants at my recommendation. We enjoyed pizza and calzones and chatted about everything. And I left feeling full both physically and intellectually. Even of the book sucked. (Which it did. Luckily it was not my pick.)

I didn't take any pictures because I was in the moment. But I wasn't even going to write about it so there you go.

I am well aware of the fact that every note my kid writes isn't actually that interesting or impressive to anyone but his parents and grandparents. But daily I am impressed by what comes out of the end of his pencil. He got a hair cut yesterday. I didn't take a picture but he looks so grown up and it's hard to not think that he actually is getting so grown up.

Bringing us to our ever returning Monday. After a slightly annoyed start to the morning, I opted to make lemonade and we accomplished a lot. We went to the post office, the park (and then had to switch playgrounds due to an onslaught of big kids from a summer program) and the grocery store.

I got my kitchen cleaned during rest time including cleaning out the fridge and the top of the fridge. I mopped. The dishes are done. I also got dinner into the crock pot which essentially took care of that. God bless the inventor of crock pots. (And rice cookers/veggie steamers which took care of the other part of the dinner.)

So what I am saying here is that life is normal but good. Errands mixed with fun outings. Chores mixed with play. The kids even got postcards today from my parents which made it a good mail day. Mondays are a rare breed, they really aren't always fun, but there they are. This one wasn't bad. This one was pretty good. And I am thankful.

These Kids

Hooray! It's Friday! It's also pay day at our house. Does anyone else feel like July is the tightest month financially? I mean, we are blessedly and wonderfully fine. But I feel like the "fun budget" is practically non-existent right now, just at the time I would like to go do fun stuff! On the list for sure is to take C to see Cars 3 and Despicable Me 3. Maybe on Tuesday I can make that work for one of them since it's $5 day. 

This kid. Grandma and Grandpa sent some "Write Your Own Books" books and he is loving them. I also got the brain quest workbook for him and he is just going to town. He loves it. The other day when we were at Target we picked up a composition notebook for him to work on writing on lines. 

We started a summer journal. After dictating the date for him to write, I told him to write his name and one sentence and this is what he wrote! So it's a run on and there's some capitalization shifts but he made it all the way to salad before he asked me to help him. 

"Today I got a book and I got to play Legos I got frog e salad." (Froggy Salad aka Frog Eye Salad that we call Froggy so as not to dissuade the picky eater from trying what is a conglomeration of his favorite food groups: pasta, fruit and sugar.)

He was writing about our trip to the library yesterday where he got to pick a book for completing the summer reading challenge. There's also a Lego table at the library. He just cracks me up. He has such a thirst for knowledge. We got a Brain Quest workbook in the mail and he will not put it down.   

Then there's this kid. 

My stubborn little spitfire. She has been playing so hard and she is really testing pretty much any boundary that she deems a boundary. What to eat, how much to eat, should she sleep, potty training... you know all the things. She is currently going through a "mom phase" and loves me the most. Which kind of infuriates her dad, but I *think* that's the point because she only likes me when Husband is home. She will not sleep without 105 stuffed animals in her bed, two blankets, and a hug, kiss and love from me. Love is when you hug and make that annoying "hmmm" noise in case you don't have quite the specific bedtime routines in your house. 

What a goose. She was refusing to sleep last night so she was laying like that looking at the monitor because she's no fool. Then fell asleep anyway because she was tired. She has very little patience for the learning time her brother wants but she also doesn't want to miss out on anything. It's a hard balance to keep. 

My kids are strange little beings who keep me on my toes that's for sure. Happy Weekend everybody!

Let's Talk About Plates

I know what you're thinking. (If you read the name of the post that is.) Plates? Like... plate plates?

Yep.

You see, of all the household chores, the one that I absolutely just detest is the doing the dishes. Pretty much anything to do with dishes. Washing them, drying, putting away, loading or unloading the dishwasher. I am not a fan.

Which brings me to my obsession with paper plates. I even gave them up for Lent a few years back which was not a good idea. I do not think I focused on the Lent of it as much as I just counted down the days until I could use them again. But this isn't about my terrible Lent of paper plates.

It's about that Husband kind of loathes paper plates. So I am sure you can see where this is going then? I love them. He sometimes tolerates them. It's a crossroads.

I narrowed in on a bonus reason for paper plates a while back, and it was that all the plates in our house aside from the kid plates are breakable. We have our nice Pottery Barn ones from the wedding. Some smaller plates from Ikea but still porcelain. And sometimes one just doesn't want to risk broken plates. (That would be me. All the time. Unless we are having roast. Or it's a holiday.)

PLUS our kids are going through this dropping things and knocking things off the table period. I don't really understand it but we cannot get through a meal without at least a cup or a fork landing on the ground.

Basically, we needed some plates that don't break! So we started the hunt. Last night at Target we found some and not only are they the exact plates we were looking for, but they were a steal! $0.79 a plate! For both the adult plates and the kid version with separators. They match our kitchen, they are microwave and dishwasher safe... and we are happy campers. But not like actual camping because I would rather do dishes than go camping.

Pretty much, I am excited! And the moral of the story is, if you are reading this and you're a single gal or engaged,  when you create your wedding registry add some plates that don't break. It doesn't have to be a lot but there will come a time where you want to eat a snack in the living room without worrying about your future toddler knocking the plate off the coffee table and breaking it. 

I still probably won't like doing dishes. But, short term I am excited about these plates! 

What a Wednesday!

Hello from the other side! (okay so it's Wednesday which is just the middle of the week, not the other side but... let's just pretend?) How has your week been so far? Ours has been pretty good. I had a massive headache yesterday that took all of my arsenal of remedies to solve. (Sleep, shower, peppermint, lots of water, ibuprofen, cookies, caffeine...) But today was a whole new day and no worries!

Husband had a round robin at work today so he had to go in really early. So that meant we were all up really early. And we jumped right into it. C has been wanting to do school stuff so that's what we did. We started addition to five today, just with counting bears and papers I wrote out. He seemed to enjoy it.

We also did pattern blocks, Legos, writing numbers practice, name puzzles, reading and just play time. Then because it was raining. but not thundering or too heavily, we went outside to do some puddle jumping. It was a super muggy rain so it was fun.

After showers and lunch the real fun started. M took her rest and C and I started carrying ALL the books from his room downstairs. His room has been the landing spot for the kids books and his shelves were as messy as it could get.

I kind of had no idea how many books we were undertaking. These are them after the first sort: paperbacks, board books, nonfiction, activity books, the Harry Potters, Magic Treehouses and hardcover books which took 3 piles. This was after I weeded out the books that we will for sure be putting in Little Free Libraries around town and the ones that were so damaged or junky from the dollar store that we're just going to throw.

So after this I sorted all the piles by shape and authors where it made sense. Then started putting them back. After M woke up I started going through the books in her room. My book shelves are going to look awesome. 

To cap off our excellent day we went to Red Robin for dinner. It was going to happen. Husband has been talking about his "round robin" for days and M has been mishearing it as Red Robin. So this morning she said, "Have fun at Red Robin! Have a good cheeseburger daddy!" Then talked about Red Robin all the day long. So we decided to go for it. 

All in all, the best kind of busy day. Plus, clean organized book shelves. (Which will be finished tomorrow!) 

Prime Day, Kohl's Cares and Let's Sale Away

It's Prime Day! Which is just about one of my favorite holidays of the non-holiday variety. 

Amazon and I are thick as thieves or whatever you call total and utter shopping loyalty from a customer who they don't know from Adam.

Anyway, there are some wonderful deals to be had. I already got some headphones for the kid's Kindles for the upcoming trip at a good price so that's fun. I didn't see any toys that sparked my interest much so I guess this will not be a repeat of using Prime Day to get ahead of the birthday/Christmas shopping.

There are some good children's books to be had including a whole bunch of Mo Willems books which you know I support.

But guess what friends?! Kohl's Cares currently is featuring Mo Willems!

They have Knuffle Bunny, Pigeon, Duckling, Elephant and Piggie stuffies for only $5 with the total price going to charity. They also have a good selection of books available, but we have all the ones offered. (Well we have the big version of the activity book but same thing really.)

Guess who came to live at our house? I am the most excited about Elephant and Piggie because the only other ones on the market are $20 and they are a pair and tiny. Then we had to get a big Pigeon because now with the Duckling we have they are size appropriate instead of being the same size. At least that is my justification for the reason we now have three in our house. I mean, it was for charity. Obviously.

ALSO today through Thursday there is a super duper Scentsy sale. Alligning with Prime Day by accident? Doubtful. It starts at 1:00 EST/Noon CST and if you're interested I would love for you to be a customer of mine. You can shop here! 

A Heck of a Weekend

Sometimes you just need to have a solid weekend. Just the run of the mill fun weekend.

And that is what we had.

Friday night, Husband and I finished the last bit of Grey's Anatomy season 13 which was INTENSE. I think the most nerve wracking episodes I've even seen. They were just, realistically awful, in a way that made them possible. This is why we don't follow the show in real time, too intense to take a week or more between episodes.

Saturday morning brought sleeping in. For me. Let's not get crazy my kids have a healthy does of this disease:

We played outside in the morning and Husband cut the lawn. (We were safely on the porch reading a story and singing some songs when he did the backyard, don't worry!) After a delicious lunch and the reading of some I Spy books it was time to get ready for the birthday party.

We dropped C off and then we headed out for some special two-on-one time with our girl! We first hit the frozen yogurt shop.

She picked cookies and cream flavor with sprinkles, a brownie chunk, some gummy bears and chocolate chips. She loved it. This particular shop has games on all the table and our table had Frozen Trouble. We didn't play but she popped the die and moved the pieces a few times. 

Then we went to the park. Which we absolutely did. But we took the extremely long way and took a 40 minute drive to get there. Part of it on the highway to encourage a little bit of a car nap. It was successful and then we went to play! 

It was a new to us park and it was wonderful. Quiet and beautiful, with brand new equipment and then with some luck we were the only ones there! 

After we picked up C we realized the baseball tickets we had for the night were a lot closer to home plate than we realized, and also that our kids were too overtired, overstimulated etc for such an experience to be any fun at all. So we had a pizza party and watched The Emperor's New Groove. Which was just the ticket. 

Sunday brought an easy morning of cleaning up the playroom and a heavy snack for the kids before Mass. We were hoping it would help the behavior of our resident two-year-old. But she seemed to derive power from it and it was the worst she's been in a while and lost her playground playtime privileges afterwards. That didn't go over well and she went right to bed when we got home and slept for 2.5 hours. 

During that time, the rest of us had lunch and the boys went grocery shopping. They got all the ingredients to make this dip which was just as delicious as Kathryn promised.  Though it really doesn't need the coconut. I love coconut, Husband doesn't and I put it in anyway. But I don't think I would again. 

After some fun play time we went out to a local burger joint for an early dinner then we came home and ate fruit and our dip. It was a party! 

All I was missing was dancing around to this song with a margarita or pina colada drink too, which... hind sight. 

We read some books including some new ones Grandma and Grandpa sent. Husband went and took this picture of us reading a book from the Easter/Spring book basket that is still rocking it in my living room. #reallife I never switched it out for summer books... oops. Then posted it to Instagram without me knwing. But it's cute even if I am wearing a princess crown... because 

I was a pineapple princess like the Annette Funicello song...

Then when it was time for pajamas C put on this little get up which rocked my world. 

His Vikings pajamas with the hat?! I died it was so cute. What a sweet heart. After our kids went to bed we watched two episodes of The Great British Bake Off and loved every second. 

It was everything a weekend should be. I hope yours was as wonderful!

Outings!

Yesterday we visited a local park with a splash area for the kids. We met some of our good friends for some play time. I didn't take any pictures but it looks like this:

It wasn't that crowded though and the blasts weren't nearly so high. The kids had so much fun and then Husband brought us some lunch right to the park. It was a good outing and the perfect summer fun. I will definitely take my kids to more splash pads this summer, I had been hesitant about them in the past but now having seen it in action, I am not so worried about M. She was really able to hold her own and also use her listening ears.

This morning we went to the zoo. We have a membership in a bundle with the other museums and botanical center around us but somehow haven't made it to the zoo in 2017. It was really really crowded today and I am not sure why. So we just did the basics with a promise to come back really soon.

The tortoise is new this year and C LOVED it. M LOVES the giraffes so pretty much this right here was the highlight. 

It was nice to have another outing. I still stress over outings but I really shouldn't because they've been going so smoothly. Sometimes I forget I don't have two kids under three. 

Tomorrow C has a birthday party for the two boys we saw yesterday. It's at the YMCA and they are going to swim. During the party M is going to get some alone time with her parents which... literally never happens. I don't even know if it has ever happened that we've had her alone. We are going to get frozen yogurt and maybe go play at a park. It might rain though so we'll have to come up with some back up plans. 

Have a glorious weekend! 

Super Fun Grandma and Grandpa Weekend and the 4th of July

My parents came to visit this past weekend.

And we did all the things. We had made a list of all the fin things possible for them to choose from with some options for food as well.

My dad took C fishing per the agreement they've had for months. It was super exciting and though it didn't last too long they seemed to have a good time. The worms being the biggest hit because 5-year-old boy. We did talk about how a lot of the times one doesn't catch a fish, which was good because they certainly didn't.

We all went out to dinner, went to the skybridge because my mom had never been there and then out for ice cream. That night for pajamas they wore their coordinating Black Bear, Brown Bear Gummy Bear shirts. M's was new but C has had his for a while. My dad gets them on his big fishing trip to way way up north MN/Canada.

Fun fact: my dad loves to go grocery shopping. Another fun fact: he takes my kids grocery shopping every time he comes into town. This time, my parents took the kids and let them use mini-carts. It was an enjoyable experience for everyone. Husband and I spent some time alone together in our house. (We cleaned out the pantry because we correctly assumed they would come home with stuff to fill it up.) 

After making the hot dogs and brat lunch they picked out at the store, we went to the family museum. My parents had never been there with the kids and they enjoyed seeing the kids in their element. We spent about two hours playing and showing them around. It was the most relaxing trip I've had in a long time. 3 adults to 2 kids? That's glorious. 

The Sid the Science Kid exhibit is in town and it is amazing. We love to watch that show and the attention to detail in the exhibit was just extraordinary. I am so impressed and cannot wait to go back. They even had a car that plays the "my mom is cool" song so... that was easily my favorite part. 

The rest of their trip was spent having fun at our house. No one was super happy for them to leave but that's how visits work. The rest of Monday became potty training boot camp for M. Some progress was made. She at least has earned the right to wear undies some of the time... but she is a stubborn one my girl is. 

Yesterday was obviously the 4th of July. We celebrated by doing next to nothing. Which is my favorite kind of day. We had red, white and blue food with every meal. Husband made fireworks pancakes for breakfast. We had bomb pops with our lunch. And we made another flag poke cake for dessert after our cheeseburger dinner. 

Keeping with our tradition, we watched fireworks on TV and the kids got glow sticks. This was even more fun this year than it was last year. I tried while we were waiting to get the kids to watch the Disney World fireworks but they just wanted to dance to the music. The Macy's Fireworks concert thing on NBC is apparently the tradition my kids love. After the TV fireworks were over, we went to bed. 9:00 is still staying up late and they had fun, but the local fireworks hadn't even started. Plus no bugs or crowds so I feel like I win and the tradition isn't going to die for a long time. 

I hope however you celebrated you had a happy and safe holiday!