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!