Our Annual Trip

Twelve Years ago, My husband and I got engaged at a Metro Beach.  Yes, we went to a beach in March. In Michigan.  It's fitting since we both love the beach and the water.  Every year we head back to the beach sometime in March as a time to just go back to where it started and relive that fun memory.  It is even more fun now to take the kids.  Now, lets keep it real.  Some years it is so frigid we spend about 10 minutes there (Last year it was so unbelievably cold that we didn't even make it all the way down the boardwalk to the beach!).  This year, though, the weather was pretty nice - so nice that we spent about 1 and 1/2 hours playing there.  We have a basic "routine" that we do every year!

This year, we drove to my parents on Friday and stayed the weekend which was nice since it brought us an hour closer to the park. 

We always start out by eating lunch at National Coney Island - it is a resturant that is only in the Metro Detroit area and I just love one thing there - a Hani (and . .chili cheese fries!!).  From there, we head to the beach. 

 We always bundle up as we get ready to walk to the beach but, as we were putting on layers both Darryl and I said, "Wow, it is pretty nice out here today."

 My boys are really into making funny faces when I get the camera out lately.  Yes, Nate's tongue is blue - they boys got blue (gross) suckers at Coney Island.

 Isn't this an awesome photo - I want to blow it up into a canvas and hang it on my wall I love it so much!!!  I told Darryl that every year we will have to take this photo!

 It is in this spot that Darryl actually proposed so we always try to get a photo here.  It's fun to see how we have changed and how our family has grown.

 Another tradition - Darryl does a chin-up.  Some day he will have some competition I think :-)

 For the first time ever the boys were able to play in the huge playground area.  Nate even made a friend who he played soccer with and then played in the play-scape with also.  He is still talking about his new friend.

 When we got engaged, Darryl took a photo of me with my ring by the car so now, we always try to take the same photo but include Darryl with his wedding ring too!

Once we leave the park, we head to Morley Candy Factory to pick out chocolate.  Usually I take photos of us with our chocolate but, since it was the week before Easter, the store was a ZOO!!!!!  Wow!  It took all of our patience to help the boys pick out two types of candy, to pick out our own, and then get out of that store!!! 

Finally, we always do a third fun thing but it changes each year.  This year we decided to take the boys to see "The Croods".  It was the perfect choice - they, especially Josh, loved the movie and has already asked to see it again. Considering the fact that he always says he doesn't like movies :-)  We decided that it would be easier to eat dinner at the Mall (where the theatre was) but, boy, were we wrong.  First, we walked by Jeepers - which is like a Chuck-E-Cheese - we HAD to stop and play  . . .wow.  The food court was a zoo too.  Not to mention the Easter Bunny.  Next time we will leave the mall for dinner (lesson learned!) . 

Really, it was a great day with so much family fun.  Both boys were exhausted when we got back to Papa and Nana's house :-) 

Too Cute Not To Toot

The first idea comes from Two Little Banshees and is a great artwork piece.

My kids have seen some seatbelt "critters" on TV and "want them".  I feel bad for them when they fall asleep in the car and their heads roll around . .. . this idea from Simple Dimples might be just perfect.

I'm planning to start going to the library on the Wednesday's that Darryl works so we need library bags.  I love this simple idea from Literacy Launchpad.

One of the ideas I want to do in my laundry room is putting up favorite photos and just building a huge wall of photos.  How great would it be for a kid to go into the laundry room - a room no one else sees - and find it covered with their photos?  Well, I love this simple (and inexpensive) idea from literally inspired.

One last idea for this week - I'm always looking for creative storage especially for the boys room.  I love this idea from Upcycle 101 for putting a crate on wheels.

Happy Crafting!

March Preschool - The Kidless Version

So, this past week my boys were at Papa and Nana's again.  I'm taking full advantage of not babysitting right now and actually sending my kids "away" to give me some time "off".  Last month it was a very busy week and I really didn't get a chance to get things done here.  This time, I have fun AND work planned.

This is my plan (this was written a week ago as my plan):
Monday - Meet my mom for lunch to give her the kids :-); and then cleaning the boys room, doing a summer clothes inventory and moving Nate's clothes so he can reach them (they boys like to pick out their own clothes now) and make a quick run to the grocery store.
Tuesday - Scrapbooking; Clean the classroom - The closet is out of control as is my scrapbooking crafting stuff.  I want to finalize this project today.
Wednesday - Clean the living room and Steam Clean the carpets, head to town to do some shopping, and go furniture shopping with my husband
Thursday - Clean, Clean . . .print . . scrapbook :-)  The basement is on my hit list.  The plan is 30 minutes in the basement, 30 minutes working on lessons for the next few weeks, and then 30 minutes scrapbooking. (I only want 2 weeks worth of lessons so once done, I will just do the basement and scrapbook)
Friday - Scrapbook.  For real.  I do have to pack up some stuff for our weekend but for the most part I will just be Scrapbooking until my husband gets home. Oh, I also need to go to the store but without kids I can get that done in about an hour.

Now- here is what I accomplished (with photos this time!)

Monday - I met my mom at about noon with the boys for lunch then headed back towards home, stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things before heading home.  I'll be honest, I sat down and played facebook games for about an hour.  Darryl got home around 3:45 and we headed out to our favorite restaurant for dinner ( a rare treat!) .  I decided that when we got home I WOULD actually do a few things so I cleaned up the kitchen and then spent some time in the boys room.  Here is a before photos:

Let me note,  this is not normal. This morning, the boys decided to emptied every living toy onto Nate's bed.  I was not happy with them . . .So my first task was resorting toys.  I'll finish up this project on Tuesday.  Also, I included a picture from the living room on purpose since cleaning the boys room involves rearranging :-)

Tuesday - Despite some nasty winter weather, I went scrapbooking from 9-2 today and completed a goal - I finished October 2012 and actually almost finished November 2012.  When I got home I took time to switch my outside flag from St Patrick's Day to Easter since both Holidays fall in the same month this year.  And yes, I finished the boys room today as well.  I got out all of their summer clothes and I'm glad I did because Josh had a few pairs of summer PJ's I had forgotten about.  :-)

 I moved the rod that holds Nate's clothes to the left so it is now hanging low enough that he can pick out his own clothes. 

Everything is all nice and neat for a few days :-) 

Wednesday: I had decided that Tuesday and Wednesday were "alarm days". So I set my alarm for 8:00, got up, ate breakfast, took a shower and got busy.  I cleaned the living room (including move the couch to find the 3 million toys that got shoved under there HA) and steam cleaned the main traffic area carpet.  It always looks and smells so nice after cleaning them!  Then I tackled the classroom/my crafting space and finally really organized the bookshelf and closet areas so they are useful instead of a bunch of piles.  All of my scrapbooking stuff is organized and, thanks to some stuff my mom gave me, I was able to downsize a bag to reduce some clutter!.  Plus I finally have all of the kids activity books/coloring pages organized so each week I can grab something new to incorporate into our day.  Here are some before and after photos for you!

 One of the biggest thing I needed to conquer was that shelf!!!

Oh, and this bookshelf!!

 These two photos above show my crafting space.  The bookshelf holds only my stuff now and my lovely table is just perfect!!

The closet is awesome!  I picked up a couple more black bins to store school stuff, added a hanging rack (on the left hand side of the closet) to hold games and just really cleaned up the whole space.

Now, plans changed slightly back on Tuesday.  My husband said, "Check out priceline and see if you can get a room on Wednesday night for $40.00".  Why?  Because he has band practice on Wednesday - I had planned to drive him into work at 3:30 AM so that I could meet him in town for dinner and go to practice with him. . .instead we WERE able to get a room for that price and it saved us a trip so that saved $20.00 in gas.  I left home around 2:00 to run a couple of errands and then met him for dinner at Red Lobster.  We still had gift card money to use so that was a nice bonus.  Then, we headed to hotel (since we still had 3 hours before practice.  This is what we did:  1)Went to the pool area and sat in the hot tub, swam in the pool, got back in the hot tub and said "We need one of these.".  2) Went back to our room and each picked a bed (our room had 2 doubles) and promptly fell asleep HA!  WOW we are party animals, aren't we?  Luckily we woke up at 6:20 so had time to make it to practice. Staying in a hotel is one of my favorite things - if I'm at home there is ALWAYS something for me to do but when I go away to a hotel, I can finally relax. The best part?  I got to sleep in  . .. it was fabulous!

 Thursday: I totally slept in and enjoyed the hotel room (My husband actually got up at 4:00 am to go to work!!).  It was so nice to not be at home :-)  I did finally pack up and headed out to lunch at Culvers.  Do you know what I did next?  I shopped.  In a relaxed, take my time, no kids with me way :-)  I meandered my way through Target for a good hour, took my sweet time in Hobby Lobby, and then actually sat on a couch and read my Kindle while eating an Auntie Anne's pretzel in the mall.  Not to mentioned I stopped at the Christian Book Store to do some Easter shopping.  Oh, and I remembered that it was Happy Hour at Steak and Shake so I treated myself to a fantastic Chocolate Shake as I headed home HA!  What a great day!!

Friday: My main goal today was to scrapbook but before I could do that I did do a quick run through in the house to put everything away that was out of place.  THEN I scrapbooked.  I completed all of my goals for this month and then some - it was so fun.  Once my husband got home we headed out of town.

You may noticed that I did not get to the basement - no big surprise HA! 

It was a great week but, I'm glad my kids are back home :-)

One Last "Snow" Post

Last December I posted an idea on a "Too Cute" Post for a great craft idea from Ten Kids and a Dog.  I planned to do it during out Christmas activities but then . .. the dreaded sickness hit our house and everything stopped.  My mom even was the one to pick up the supplies for me and mailed them since we were down to one vehicle and I couldn't get to town.  I was glad to finally be able to get this done and it was fun!

 The project was very simple.  Using Masking Tape, I created a simple snowflake on the canvas. Depending on the size of the canvas and the age of the child, you could get more creative and/or let your child create the snowflake.

 Then the boys got to paint . .. and paint . . and paint!  I had two different shades of blue and white for them to use.  Now, my kids love paint so by the time they were done I figured these would never dry HA!  (I will admit that when they weren't looking I spooned brushed some of the excess paint off !!)

The finish projects!!!  Once the paint had basically dried, I pulled the masking tape off the canvas - it came off super easy and left behind the awesome snowflakes. 

Weekly Menu

Wow, it is Easter.  And April. Seriously, where is 2013 going?  As we start moving toward spring . . .and summer, I'm throwing in some of my "High Heat" recipes that we love to have one last time until fall.  We will start leaning more towards grilling, crock-pot and easy stove top recipes.

So, where's the menu, right?  Well, I'm making some changes around here.  I'm moving grocery shopping day to Thursday (Thrilling, I know).  The reasoning is once I am babysitting again, I will not be taking kids with me shopping - sure a lot of people do it, but I don't want to :-)  Taking a newborn, 2, 3, and 4 year old to the store is just not fun HA!  By moving it to Thursday, I can will be able to go during the day every other week (since my husband has every other Thursday off).  I will then go in the evening on the other Thursday. 

I'll be posting the next menu plan on Thursday - that is when you will start seeing that post.  That will mean that Saturday will now see posts about projects, topics, and other fun stuff (like Wednesday and and Sunday!).  Monday will still be the homeschool post and Tuesday will always be Too Cute Not to Toot!!  And, of course, Food Friday :-)

I really don't even have a menu planned for Monday-Wednesday this week - just going to pick out a meat from the freezer and cook dinner :-) 

Have a great weekend!

Food Friday - Chicken Tacos (In the Crock Pot!)

Chicken Tacos
Adapted from Confessions of a Homeschooler

This is such a great, easy dinner!  There really isn't much else to say about it: 

Ingredients:

• 6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, or 6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
• 16 oz. jar of your favorite salsa
• Crockpot/Slow Cooker
• Tortillas & toppings of your choice (I used light sour cream, cheese, guacamole, and tomato)

Directions:
Place thawed chicken into your slow cooker, and cover with 1 whole jar of salsa. Cook on high for 4-6 hours, or low for 7-8. About 6 hours in, use a fork to shred chicken and stir it around to coat in the salsa. Keep on warm until you are ready to serve!
For tacos, I just put all of the toppings out in little bowls and let everyone make their own! You can also use this mixture for burritos, just wrap in tortillas, cover with green chili and bake 30 minutes @ 350 degrees. Top with cheese, sour cream, and guacamole!
 

A great post

Every once in awhile I read a post that is too good not to share.  This post is from a friend of mine on her blog called Our Beautiful Mess.

The post is titled "Why my kids and I need TV".  It's something I've been thinking about writing but, why write it when my friend hit the nail on the head.  Yes, my kids watch TV -they have actually learned a lot from "Preschool On TV".  In the heat of summer, it is our life saver and, since my kids don't take naps, it is a great way to take a rest in the afternoon.  We turn it off during preschool and it often stays off until late afternoon when we are all ready for a break! Kudo's to those parents who never turn on the TV - but I need my sanity (and about 2 hours in the morning to be awake enough to play HA) so we enjoy fun cartoons.

Enjoy!