Confetti Mom strikes again!

I had a blast today doing a Haunted Lunch for X and four of his school friends.  (And August slept through most of it, which was very helpful.)  There is just something exciting about October, I guess, that makes me want to throw parties!  Maybe it has to do with my birthday coming up, I don't know.  I don't like being the center of attention for my birthday but planning and hosting kids parties is a great alternative! I was able to finagle this one for $23 - pretty proud of myself!

The Haunted Menu

*Jack-o-lantern grilled cheese sandwiches

*Spiderweb (peach) Smoothies 

*Monster Apple Mouths

*Breadstick bones

*Bugs on Ice

*Haunted Cakeyard

The Haunted Cakeyard - taken from Family Fun magazine; 

X saw it and that's how this whole thing got started

Arrival activity

Coloring wooden cutouts of Halloween things - spiders, candy corn, bats

(The best part for me? They were only 19cents at JoAnn's!)

Mr. Potato Head Pirate Pumpkin - special lunch guest

August kept pulling off his ears all morning and then saying, oh! and looking at the ears on the ground like she didn't know how they got there.  Then again, he did take her spot at the table.  Maybe it was revenge?

Bugs on Ice

I used this for the table centerpiece just as lunch started.  Each of the kids picked a bug they wanted to keep and watched it throughout the party to see if it had melted out yet.  I kept forgetting about them but then someone would yell, hey, let's check our bugs! and they'd all run to the table. We added a little water now and then to speed things up. It was great! 

(Directions: Put plastic bugs upside down - I forgot that part - in a regular-sized muffin tray, pour ice on top and freeze; take out of freezer, run some water on top and set the tray upside down over a large bowl so the ice falls into it as it melts a little; put bowl of bugs on ice in freezer until ready for use)

Jack-o-lantern grilled cheese sandwiches

Really I was going to use cookie cutters to cut the cheese slices into Halloween shapes and just have the sandwich with a bottom slice of bread and cheese shape on top, but I think the cookie cutters went to storage instead of the house during our move.

Spiderweb Smoothie

This is really just a homemade peach smoothie with a little sour cream/powdered sugar mix for the web. I was glad I had spoons on hand for everyone because it was too thick to just drink out of the cup. 

Our cute lunch guests included a giraffe, a caped man, batman, a witch, a future policeman, and a mom 

The red-orange walls in the house made just the right background for a Haunted Lunch.  Candy corns were spread out on the table and I (barely) remembered to get festive plates and forks the night before when I was at JoAnn's Moonlight Madness (which meant 60% off - yay!).  

Breadstick Bones 

(called Salty Bones in Family Fun magazine)

You may notice these got a little burned on the bottom.  I just laughed it off and told them bones are supposed to be crunchy!  Then we all showed how loud we could crunch our bones.  The kids got a kick out of the crazy food. Some things they wouldn't touch but everyone had lots of laughs.  

The lunch conversation went something like this: Kid 1- Ok, who is in Ms. Jenny's class, raise your hand?  (hands raise); Kid 2  follows the lead -Who is in Ms. Tami's class? (hands raise) Kid 3 - Who is in the skeleton's class? (hands raise and everyone giggles); Kid 4 takes it to the next level - ok, who is in the poopy class? (lots of laughs); Kid 5 - Hey! Let's check our bugs!

Monster Apple Mouths - no picture

it's hard to remember to take pictures when you're the host!

Basically, they are two apple slices for lips with a bit of peanut butter spread on and marshmallows as teeth.

Hauntingly Great Games
They had Halloween stick puppets to play with, a full-length mirror to admire themselves in plus extra costume pieces (in case someone forgot theirs), X's room toys, and then we played (pictured here) pin the face on the jack-o-lantern. They had the option of choosing crazy eyeball glasses which only let them see a little bit or, if they felt brave, the sleep mask which doesn't let them see anything. Five and six-year olds want to be confident that they are doing things right, so I made sure to show them how putting the eyeball in the wrong spot was perfect for making a a crazy jack-o-lantern face.

Another fun game was our feel-in-the-Halloween-pillowcase-and-guess-the-contents game (I really need a better name for that) tailored just right to kindergarten level, I thought!

The kids had a worksheet with three pictures on it (a black cat, a pumpkin, and a skeleton). Each picture had a blank box underneath.  To avoid congestion during the game, I put the three Halloween pillowcases in different spots around the room (one with each of the objects from the worksheet inside - that way they would know what to feel for and wouldn't be scared to put their hands in). The pillowcases were numbered and the kids wrote which number of pillowcase they thought matched what they felt inside.  They LOVED it, especially when I revealed the contents of the pillowcases and they had gotten them ALL right.  So cute!  They got Halloween stampers for a prize.

Note: If you try this game, make sure to show them how to reach in, feel the object, leave the object inside i.e.don't pull it out, and then write their guess down.  



All in all, we had a great time, played hard, and ate lots of spooky food!
 I was so thankful all the parents let their kids come on extremely short notice. Hip, hip, boo-ray!

Family pictures

Family Photo Oct. 2011 - View from the Conference Center roof

   

Cute cousins!

The first set:  X & Z are only a few months apart

The second set: T & A are only a few months apart

Brother & Sister

A few of her favorite things...

August is a very busy baby and I love to watch her.  She is such a delight (unless, of course, you tell her 'no' in which case she gets mad and cries really hard). She loves so many things right now and she is really starting to understand our words, which makes everything so much cuter!

For instance:
"Let's change your diaper." = she falls (lies) down on her back wherever she is at that moment, whether its on the edge of the bed or in the living room.

"Let's take a bath." = she pulls on the top of her shirt by her neck and runs to the bathtub to wait for us.

"No bye-bye" = She stops walking away from us and comes back.  This only works if used sparingly.  Whenever a door to the outside opens, she heads out the door and down the street. Most of the time I have to go catch her and bring her back flailing.

"No touch" = stops touching, but in the case of the grill for our campfire she kept looking back to see if we were watching as she kept trying to touch it.  You should have seen the look of triumph she had in the morning when she finally touched it.  There was no fire, then, thankfully!

"Clean up" = she helps put one or two toys away

"Do you want to wear this?" = She decides by shaking her head NO if she doesn't want to wear something or half-grunts if she approves.  This is how she picked her sippy cup the other day and how she tells us when she does or doesn't want to eat something.  Can 1 year olds really do this?!  Yes!  It's crazy.

Here are a few of her favorite things at 14months:

1) She loves to draw and has already drawn all over the cover of a book. Thankfully it was in pencil and I could erase it.  I'm just waiting to find her drawings on the walls. This girl is going to need all of those markers that work only on paper or the aqua pens, I think.

2) She loves to give high fives, even with fingers sticky with food. And she makes us all laugh because she wants to give the whole family high fives until she is satisfied.  She will hold her hand up until Joe walks all the way around the table to give her a high five as well, and then she starts the rounds again, Mom, X, Dad...

3) She loves her family.  She says enthusiastic "HI!"s to us after her naps or when she sees X after school.
4) She loves cats and meows whenever she sees them.  At granddad's house this weekend, she learned the sign for bird and signs it whenever she sees them in a book now.  She does hilarious growls for ducks and dinosaur sounds.

4) She loves clothes and shoes.  She loves picking out her clothes and we have a great method.  I open up the doors to the nightstand where her clothes are on shelves, she grabs what she likes, and gives it to me.  Then she lies down so I can put it on her. She is starting to be a tease though and swings her legs away as I put them on her.  She thinks she is sooo funny.  :)  Her daytime fashion sense may need a little honing...pajamas seem to be a favorite.  As far as shoes, everyone's shoes are fair game but she especially likes visitors' shoes or small shoes

5) She loves toothbrushes.  Beware any visitors who leave toothbrushes out.  She loves to steal anyone's within her reach (and she is quite resourceful for getting things despite being small) and it is not easy to get them back without her having sucked on them a good while!

6)  She loves Xavi's light saber. It's one of her favorite things to play with when X is at school.

7) She loves baths.  So, as soon as I can upload the picture, I will show you how after her bath time, she then climbed into Xavi's bath fully dressed.  She just loves the water and goes wild as the water drains, wanting to splash until the last drop.

8) She loves to be outside.  Okay, who gave her that gene because the rest of our family prefers inside activities.  Sure, we can be outdoorsy, you know, a camping trip once a year, some good time spent on the trampoline, a walk up to the parking lot of a hiking trail to look for rocks, and yard work, but that's about what we do. (I do want to try cross country skiing though - that's on my bucket list).

9) She loves books. This is definitely a combination of both Joe and I because we love to read, too.  She has several reading nooks in the house, but her favorite is Joe's closet.

10) She loves herself.  It's important to be self-confident, right?  This baby, like most, loves to look at herself in mirrors. I showed her the shampoo on her head with a mirror the other night during bathtime and she thought it was great!

Oh so sad!!!!

Much better

I am just constantly amazed at her growth and abilities.  Love you, baby girl!

First Day of School

Pretending it's the first day of school to show off his new school stuff. 

The real first day of kindergarten...what a grin!

Showing off his new ensemble...Star Wars shirt, shorts, shoes, & 3D backpack

 

A yellow school bus like the one he rides to/from school.  It is his favorite part of every day!

First day greetings by his teacher, Miss Jenny

Three sessions of morning kindergarten ready to go inside.  There are 120 kindergarten children this year.
There are tons of parents milling around  the lawn and outside the gate.  X was starting to get nervous about leaving us at this point.

Not so happy anymore.  Mom?..Come with me. (I did.)
(He cried during the line up outside, which made me tear up,
but found a Lightning McQueen puzzle inside and was just fine after that.) 

He came home talkative and with a big smile (like this one) and told me he was starving!
This picture is of his robot he made for a Lego Club, Jr. contest.

Future Author

This is a story thought up and written by X and his mom on 2/16/2011 (I was feeling sad that X was getting so big that he was hard to carry and he felt sad that I wouldn't carry him as much anymore.  I thought making up a story might help both of us understand what was happening...X came up with the solutions at each part in the story):

A Happy Frog Day
Once there was a baby frog who hatched from an egg. His mommy loved him very much.  The baby frog grew into a little boy frog. He started to grow legs.  He wanted to go on the land with his mom, so she carried him on her back.  But soon little frog grew into a big boy frog.  When his mom carried him to the tree she hopped very slowly.

One day the mommy was sad.  She said, I am not strong enough to carry you anymore.  Big Boy Frog said, You can get stronger. So Mommy Frog lifted weights to strengthen her back but just as soon as she would get stronger, Big Boy Frog kept growing. He was still too heavy. Mommy Frog was was sad.  She loved carrying her son to the tree.  She asked Big Boy what to do.  Big Boy Frog said, Make your legs grow bigger.  So Mommy Frog ate lots of healthy food but her legs didn't grow. She asked the doctor why her legs wouldn't grow and he said, You are already grown!

Mommy Frog told Big Boy Frog the bad news and he said, Don't worry, mom, because now my legs are big and strong.  You don't need to carry me.  I can hop by myself when we go to the tree.  The next day, Big Boy Frog looked sad.  What's wrong? Mommy Frog asked.  Well, he said, I miss getting carried on your back. Mommy Frog pulled him on her lap and they cuddled and talked and read stories.  I may not be able to carry you anymore, Mommy Frog said, but I am strong enough and my legs are long enough to cuddle you everyday.

So everyday they hopped to the tree together, and everyday Big Boy Frog and Mommy Frog cuddled together.

THE END.

Vegetarian Month - Wk 1 & Wk2

It is Vegetarian Month in our household, which always requires some mental gearing up and a lot of recipe searching. So far this year I am doing great! I only grumbled half as much as last year during the weeks leading up to it and even convinced Joe to do it in August instead of February when more fruits/veggies are in season and are somewhat cheaper.

The fun thing about eating vegetarian is that we get to try a lot of new recipes, which means our recipe books get good use for a month!  Normally, it takes me two weeks to get into the swing of it (and lots of cheating during lunch) and two weeks to get out of the habit, but this year I just dived right in and haven't cheated except once.  Lunch has become sandwich fare or noodles...grilled cheese sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly, egg salad sandwiches, mac and cheese, etc. I guess bean and cheese burritos would be good, too. We don't hold the kids to vegetarian month, of course- August eats her pureed meats and X eats chicken nuggets for lunch, but dinner is  meat-free.

It's fun for Joe and I (and even August who loves tofu and mushed up real food) but X is not a big fan of all these unfamiliar dishes.   His mealtime pickiness is, unfortunately, increasing.   He generally comes to the dinner table with, "I don't like that," as soon as he sees the meal and, after an obligatory bite the size of a dust speck, claims he is full all the way up to his eyes.  Of course he quickly backtracks on his fullness level if something he does like happens to make it on the table during the meal i.e. fruit, yogurt, bread, dessert.  :) It's hard to be patient and just let him try the food without making him eat it all.  I guess that's just the way I was raised.  I remember sitting at the table forever because I wouldn't eat my oatmeal.  X's Food Sense Nutrition program at his preschool teaches the idea that parents should provide nutritious options and make sure a little of everything goes on his plate, but then leave it up to him to decide how much he eats or if he even eats things at all (we require a bite, usually).

Tonight, red peppers got a thumbs down (but he didn't throw up - yay) and one bite of tofu and one snow pea got a thumbs up.  If he hates something, I try to leave the option open of him liking it in the future.  I might say something like, mmmm, I love red peppers! To which he would say, I don't!  Then I would say, maybe you'll like them next time or maybe you'll like them when you're a grownup. He usually agrees that he might like them as a grownup.

Joe came up with a great idea of fixing food along a theme each day and I tried to come up with a catchy way to remember which day is which.  So, Monday is Mexican; Tuesday is Italian (emphasis on T); Wednesday is Whatever day (I don't think Joe knows this); Thursday is Asian; and we've got nothing on the rest yet.  The funny thing is, we haven't followed them at all, but it's still fun to think we might and it helps us find recipes a little faster.

I would take pictures of our delicious meals but they are so good we just eat them up.  No, actually, I just hadn't thought about taking pictures until I started to blog. (Why do white lies come out so easily?)

Vegetarian Menu - Week 1
Day 1-Mon: Cereal (we were waiting on someone to come buy our car & she was 2 hours late!)

Day 2-Tues: Mexican black bean casserole - YUM!

Day 3-Wed: Ronzoni wheat spaghetti with chunky tomato sauce (kid favorite), corn and fresh green salad.

Day 4-Thurs: Cottage cheese casserole (crockpot) - X kept saying how good it smelled all day but when
he saw the casserole he didn't want any.  He is more of a keep-things-separate, don't-let-my-sauce-touch-my-spaghetti kind of kid.  You can't separate a casserole into its individual ingredients so he didn't like it.

Day 5-Fri: Hawaiian pork and rice, yummy rolls, cucumber salad, macaroni salad, fruit salad, cake/ice cream, etc.  Yummmmm. (Okay, pulled pork is not vegetarian at all but I was at a birthday party and Kirsten made such great food, I had to try some! It was delicious!)

Day 6-Sat: Corn on the cob, zucchini enchiladas (So good! August loved the enchiladas-we grind her food up and she just mmmms when she likes it.  So cute! Btw honey, I hope you're saving these recipes for next year!)

Day 7-Sun: Berry smoothie - which made A throw up, edamame, mushroom rice side with pierogots (some mashed potato concoction) that made X throw up. Oops.

Vegetarian Menu-Week 2
Day 1 - Mon: Nachos at the pool during FHE, and Cereal again! (Maybe it's just Mondays...?)

Day 2 - Tues: Tofu stir-fry with black bean sauce, sliced peaches with vanilla yogurt and granola on top (not quite Italian Tuesday but I didn't want the veggies to go bad in the fridge)

Day 3 - Wed: Green chile casserole (an egg/green chile combo)

Day 4 - Thurs: Hawaiian haystacks with cream of mushroom sauce instead of chicken (X ate the rice, a piece of pineapple, and lots of chow mein noodles after a lot of persuasion to get him to try just one)

Day 5 - Fri: Veggie quesadillas (so yummy! We had never had so many things in our quesadillas before...carrots, black beans, etc.)

Day 6 - Sat: Cake and ice cream leftovers from bday party (oh and all the veggies, too):)

Day 7 - Sun: Fruit, veggies, and chips from the party for lunch; cereal for dinner

Here's the recipe for Vegetable Quesadillas:
4 flour tortillas
1/2 c black beans, rinsed and drained
2 Roma tomatores, chopped (or none - we didn't have any on hand)
1/2 c bell pepper, chopped
2 green onions, chopped
1 carrot, grated (Joe cut these in thin slices instead and I loved it)
1/2 c Monterey Jack cheese, grated
1/2 c plain yogurt (or sour cream - our yogurt was moldy...)
2 Tbsp salsa
1/2 c lettuce, chopped (I don't remember lettuce being in it. Hmmm)

Warm a heavy pan over medium heat. Place a tortilla in pan and warm one side, then flip tortilla over. Place a fourth of the ingredients on one side of tortilla and fold other half over the filling. Cook about 3 minutes or until cheese is melted. Repeat and then eat! Yield: 4 quesadillas

Standing on her own two feet!

Hitting another milestone - standing on her own!

These are cute videos I can't get to work yet...(dear?)

Playing in our 8 foot shelves that were headed for the garage sale

Slide fun