Winter Specials

There was a moment this week when I thought I had lost some pictures that I had not yet printed. My digital card was full, so I had dumped pictures onto my computer and burned a disk. I checked the disk and deleted the pictures. WEEELLLL...I went to get a picture off the disk and it acted goofy. I was able to copy many of the pictures back to my computer from the disk, but then the disk froze. I brought the disk to my wonderful husband, whose computer was able to retrieve the remaining pictures without freezing. Yeah Ken! It did give me a "get these pictures printed" kind of feeling. I also thought I would share a few special moments from this month.
Here is Anna displaying the lovely Valentines that she made for Pre-school. She cut out the sayings "You really fly, Valentine" and then signed her name. On most of them you would have guessed correctly who the Valentine was from if you were in her class and knew every one's name :)

Joel's Cub Scout Pack had their annual Pinewood Derby. Joel worked very hard on his car, designing it on paper, sanding the car, taping for the paint job and gluing on the stars. In the end, his car won for the Most Patriotic and Ken said Joel was a fantastic sport! (I think that translates to...never won a race, but was enjoyed every minute.)

Carolyn was the Star Student this week. Anna and I went to lunch with her today and attended her presentation of special ideas and treasures. First you need to know that lunches are MUCH healthier than they used to be when I was a kid.....ok - more than even last year. Whole wheat buns, grilled chicken breast....dessert was cherries in jello. I digress...it was great fun to hear Carolyn's "favorite things" and what she aspires to be when she grows up (currently a souvenir shop worker). She then answered 20 questions from her class, which was fun. The most interesting was when she was asked who her friend's were and you could see her eyes scan the room as she listed all the girls in her class. She is very thoughtful and wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. It also was sweet that she bought her sister a balloon animal from the class "shop" the day we came to visit.

This is a staged shot, because I forgot my camera the day Matthew had his first "Solo festival". (He was all dressed up that day!) This basically meant that Matthew played a piece on his trumpet for a band teacher from a local district who the critiqued his work and gave him a rank. I was so impressed that he maintained his cool because his teacher accidentally played the wrong background music - several times. After the competition we went and shared some one on one time at the local bagel shop!


GOOD TIMES!

Joel is Seven!

Joel and his friends enjoyed his party. It was a nice number of kids and they were wild and crazy - which was just what we expected!!! Carolyn joined the Party Hosting by offering the boys prizes for playing nice and cleaning up the broken pinata. It was very sweet. She also joined the fun as did Anna whenever she could.

There was a pinata:


Pizza and cake:


Treasure hunts and an obstacle course: (Matthew was the "gym leader" (Pokemon term). He created the entire event, wrote the script and led the boys through their challenges.)
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"Welcome to the Pokémon treasure hunt. At this party you will be collecting a lot of treasures and putting them in your treat bag. The Pokémon in your envelope shows what team you are on. In the next event, it will determine what YELLOW card you will be searching for. This card will give you 5 points. Also you can find smaller other cards that are not YOUR Pokémon. They are each worth 1 point, unless you find a pair of two identical cards – which are worth 3 points. The team that gets the most cards will go first in the obstacle course. Good luck."


"Now the winner of the card search will go first in the next event. You will be going around an obstacle course to collect keys to unlock a prize. I will be your gym leader and lead you through these obstacles:
-1st smash the ice boulder and find your keys in the rubble
-you must cut the rope and let your 2nd key drop
-you must spin the whirlpool so that you can collect your 3rd key

-you must surf on your belly across the table, then reach for the 4th key
-you must scale the waterfall to reach your next key 5th key
-you must use your awesome jumping skills and reach for your 6th key

-there is a mountain of snow in your path, dig through it to find your 7th key
-your final challenge is a humongous boulder blocking your path. Use your immense strength to move it away from the treasure door while still collecting your final key, which is underneath

Now that you have found your 8 keys you can go into the locked freezer room (FYI - this is our unfinished little library, that doesn't have good insulation and gets cold in the winter) to find your treasure. It is in a treasure chest."
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We also played "squash the squirtle" by putting a stuffed animal in a balloon and blowing up a bunch of balloons so the boys had to smash the balloons to find Squirtle. We also had a Poke-walker pop-rock walk. (think cake walk).

Whew- and now the fun is done and I have a (mostly) clean house! That is my birthday present!

Party Planners

I love to plan my children's parties. Typically they consist just of our family, but we love the celebration just the same.

Joel is having his first "friend" birthday party tomorrow. He has been asked on other occasions if he would like to have a friend party, but he said no, he wanted to celebrate with his brother and sisters. This year he REALLY wanted a party. I think this has to do with the other parties he has gone to this year and the fun his sister had at her party.

I love the joy my kids have about their birthdays and their special cake. It always looks like it was made by a mom, but the kids love them. I also love this year that my basement is totally cleaned and that Matthew has been so involved in planning the party. (Our snow day came in handy!) This year's party theme is Pokemon and Matthew had a Pokemon party when he was in second grade. I asked if we should do Pokemon Bingo again and Matthew said, "maybe we should do something more active". His answer made me smile. He then proceeded to develop a Pokemon obstacle course and cut out 50 keys that the first graders will earn along the way. He also was a great help with the basement, because he was told that the basement had to be cleaned before the obstacle course could be set up.

I have to go get tomorrow's birthday boy at school, but for the record, Anna isn't as much fun to plan a party with! She stuck the black frosting knife into the yellow frosting, cut out pictures that didn't need to be cut, etc. etc. She is enjoying the anticipation of the whole thing, though. She keeps asking if Joel's birthday is tomorrow. Finally, today I could say yes!

Blog-Slacker!

I am not going to say, "oh I have been so busy", because like a friend reminded my Faith and Friendship group, "We have the same number of hours in a day as Mother Theresa had". (I was especially productive after that meeting.)

My issue in the New Year is that I only have a certain amount of computer time and I have been getting our budget in order, working on taxes and reading other blogs that motivate me re: my budget and good eating.

On that note, I will share 3 items that I recently have started eating that are SOOO good - I wonder where they have been all my life.

My friend C. in Omaha shared the first recipe with me in the middle of the summer, but I didn't start making it regularly until recently. Now I make it most days and eat it with apples or bananas. YUM. My friend C, even freezes a bit on banana rounds, but I just eat it at room temp......Mix 1/3 cup plain non-fat yogurt with 1 tablespoon of nut-butter (I use almond butter or peanut butter.) It makes a plain apple into a wonderful treat. I dip the apples, but do make a plate of banana rounds and add a dollop to each.

My friend K from Omaha brought the next recipe to my house when she visited in November. It is a fantastic way to eat low fat dairy + a ton of veggies.....
Mix:
1/2 C cottage cheese (I use 1%)
1/4 C nonfat plain yogurt
1 T light mayo
1 T of feta or a triangle of Laughing cow cheese for flavor
cut up cauliflower and broccoli and/or spinach
seasonings (garlic for sure and Italian or Mexican seasonings are great)
mix together and eat with crackers or veggies if you are really inspired - I prefer crackers :)

My kids love this dip, and they are not big cauliflower fans. It hides in the cheese and adds a great crunch. My friend K added bacon, which they really loved too. I don't make bacon much, but we had some bacon bits (yuck) that they added once to their portion. I even put a small bowl of this in their lunches sometimes.

The last recipe came from Dr. Oz, in a magazine my mother-in-law gave me after she had read. (Probably Woman's Day).

It is called Roasted Indian Pumpkin Soup...but I used canned pumpkin and just roasted all the other veggies.
1 can broth (Dr. O called for vegetarian broth, but I had chicken broth)
1 can pumpkin (after growing my own pumpkins one summer, I decided they are A LOT of work and prefer canned) I could see myself roasting butternut squash for this recipe.
1/2 C milk (Dr. O called for coconut milk, but I used skim the first time and almond milk the second time since I didn't have coconut milk)
1 T honey

at 425 degrees for 30 minutes, roast 1 apple (peeled and cut into chunks), 2 carrots, 1 onion, that have been coated (I use my Pampered Chef sprayer) with olive oil and turmeric, cardamom, curry and garlic powder (or fresh garlic) (if you don't like Indian spices, just sprinkle on what you do like)
I added cabbage the 2nd time I made this soup and although it tasted good, I don't recommend it unless you are going to spend the rest of the day alone...enough said!

Grind up the roasted veggies and then mix with your pumpkin/broth/milk.
I love it as a tasty way to eat more veggies.

A forth recipe I made recently just takes 1 can pumpkin and 1 chocolate cake mix. (I was given this recipe by a woman at Walmart after I picked up a can of pumpkin. She told me her grandkids loved them - my kids did too.) Mix your two ingredients and put into 48 mini muffin tins, if you are blessed to have so many, otherwise you can make bigger muffins. Bake at the temp per the recipe on the cake box. They are so tasty - sort of fudgie! I actually had to freeze 1/2 to keep from eating them too quickly - all things in moderation!

Have a great weekend.

Year in review

My friend MJ started a tradition of asking her kids a list of questions on their birthdays. Years ago I had done something similar, not necessarily on birthdays. I think Joel only completed the list one time, if that is any indication of how well I did at this neat tradition. I decided that New Year's Day might be a good day to ask everyone a list of questions. Many were lifted from MJ's list, but many are the same as I asked years ago for the kid's scrapbooks. MJ, if you mind the plagiarism, leave a comment and I will create a completely new list next year - I promise.

Ken even completed the list of questions, but I am pretty sure he wouldn't complete a list in 2012, if I published his answers this year.


Matthew took 5Xs as long as anyone else to complete his list and it was like pulling teeth. He wanted each answer to be creative and the absolute best answer possible. (I tried to convince him that originality was not needed.)

Within Carolyn's answers, there were a few surprises, but like most of the family, I could probably have answered for her.

Joel was finished in no time. He certainly had a DS theme and painted an accurate portrait of how he sees himself - "afraid of nothing" "so cool" "God" is his hero - I borrowed that answer too!

Anna obviously needed a bit of help and was terribly swayed by the fact that she was eating the ring pop that she got in her Christmas stocking at Grandma and Grandpa's house. If I had let her, "eating this ring pop" would have been the answer to 5 questions". She also was highly suggestible, often answering the last thing I offered to her on a list of options. I did use some "insider knowledge" to answer some of her questions

Happy New Year

PICTURE HERE WHEN HOME COMPUTER IS NOT ACTING UP!

The ultimate reason for setting goals is to entice you to become the person it takes to achieve them. —Jim Rohn

Above is the quote of the month from Dave Ramsey's Newsletter. Doesn't it make New Year's Resolutions seem noble?

I started on my New Year's Resolutions at the end of November to get a jump start. I am eating healthy again and exercising regularly - and it feels GOOD!

We started cleaning out the storage room in attempts to achieve another goal of ORGANIZATION. I think this is one I have every year, but I will continue to strive!

We are following Dave Ramsey's cash budgeting system in 2011! We actually started earlier this week and I already see challenges (like when you go to the store and buy 3 things from 3 different budget envelopes....) but I am up for it!!!!

Do you see a theme.....yes folks - it is all about controlling my world (in a good way). Yeah - I love when I am driving the bus rather than being run over by it!

Go team!

Merry Christmas

PICTURE HERE - when computer is cooperating :)

We had a quiet Christmas morning sharing gifts with each other. I don't remember this tradition as a child, but ever since I had nieces and nephews - they always had to gather on the stairs going down into my parent's basement for the traditional Christmas morning picture. I decided it was a great idea. It is a good thing, because I forgot to take any other group shots (with all 4 kids) that morning.

After we enjoyed the morning, we packed the car and headed to Grandma and Grandpa's house. We had the pleasure of joining my brother Joe's family and the rest of my extended family for Christmas dinner at his house. We also played Christmas Family Feud, which was a lot of fun. (I didn't take a single photo that night though.)

Here are my folks with my kids and their favorite cousins Monday morning, before we headed for home.

PICTURES HERE - when same computer cooperates!