Picnic

N2 decided they were going to have a picnic the other day.  Can you guess where?

Yes, you guessed it.  On the stairs.  They are fascinated by the stairs and I often find them playing on the landing.  It's not the best place to play but the picnic was harmless enough.  And you may notice Noah's outfit.  We got bags of clothes from a friend of mine and he found all those pieces in the bag and put them on. His pants are on backwards.  He's kind of obsessed with sweater vests.

Food I've made

I was going to do separate posts for each food I made but I haven't changed the recipes much so I'll just direct you to where I found the recipes and tell you what I thought of it.

First up Parmesan crusted Tilapia by Rachael Ray. This was good and very simple and easy to make.  I did not use lemon wedges to juice on the fish after cooking.  I would also recommend spraying the bottom of your baking pan with Pam.  My fish stuck to the pan even with first dredging the fish in oil.

Next I made Mini Mexican Pizzas.  Not sure why they are called pizzas.  They were very tasty-I think my kids each ate one.  They taste very much like bean dip in a tortilla.  I used the tortillas from Costco and could only get about 3 shells out of each tortilla and there were quite a few pieces leftover.  So I would use larger tortillas so there would be less waste.  I used my homemade refried beans for this recipe.

I made Garlicky Baked Fries.  These were yummy but they took much longer to make than I expected.  I thought I could make them as a side dish for my next recipe but I should have started the fries first!  Just a note, I omitted the cayenne pepper.

With the fries, I made Crispy Cheddar Chicken. This was delicious!  My kids did not want to eat it even though I thought they would like it.  I will definitely make it again and see if it was just a mood they were in.  I did not make the sauce and it didn't need a sauce.  You really can taste the cheese.  I did read a lot of the comments and people said you have to have your chicken all the way thawed before trying to bread it.

I'll post more food pictures tomorrow.  I realize it's been a while since I posted food I've made!

I'm such a mean mom

I don't let my kids sleep in beds.

Crocuses

So the crocuses are blooming around here.  I have no crocuses in my garden because the squirrels dug up all the bulbs years ago right after I planted them.  The lot next door to me (which is just an empty lot owned by the people kiddy corner behind me) has crocuses all over the yard.  I bet those are my crocuses!  N2 discovered the flowers in the yard and love to pick them!  I don't feel bad about it because I'm pretty sure they are my crocuses and I don't think the neighbor even knows that they are there.  N2 were so excited to see flowers (even though in the first picture they don't seem so excited)!

I have tons of greenery in my garden right now.  I think it's kind of early but I can't do much about it!  Brian raked off all the leaves today not knowing that I wanted to keep things covered because it could still get cold. Oh well.  My daffodils are coming up as are my hyacinths and irises.  Some of my other perennials have green leaves on them already-I wish I could tell you which ones but I can't remember their names.  I did have one snowdrop in my back garden.  My pussy willow is completely in bloom now (if that's how you say it).  I sure hope that it stays warm after this!

The pictures do not do it justice

I guess I should have gotten a movie of this instead of pictures but it was just so cute!  As I was fixing lunch, I heard "waddle, waddle, waddle" "I'm a daddy penguin" and see 2 kids with blocks between their feet transporting their "eggs" from one place to another.  They waddled around the dining room with their eggs.  Clearly we must watch a lot of Happy Feet because they know that penguins carry their eggs on their feet and that daddy penguins are the ones who take care of the eggs or maybe we can pretend they learned it when they studied penguins at school.

Here's "Daddy penguin" Natalie and her "egg"

(see I told you the pictures do not do it justice, it just looks like she is standing over a block holding a flashlight-I'm not sure why the penguin needs the flashlight but what do I know?)

Interview Questions

I've been meaning to scrap a page about N2 at 3 and ask them questions about themselves.  I've decided that I want to make a kit with the questions.  So I'm going to start working on that soon!  In the car on Tuesday (before Marcie asked Amelia her questions, ha!) I asked N2 some questions about themselves and I thought their answers were amusing!  Here they are:

What's your favorite color?
Natalie: pink
Noah: blue
(No surprise there!)

What's your favorite clothes to wear?
Natalie: a pink shirt and pink pants (which she has never worn!)
Noah: my puppy shirt and blue jeans (what he was currently wearing)

What's your favorite animal?
Natalie: a lion
Noah: giraffe

What's your favorite food?
Both: I don't know
Finally after much prodding, they both answered quesadillas (we were on our way to have quesadillas for lunch).

Who's your best friend?
Noah: Natalie
Natalie: Miss Amy (one of their teachers at school)

What do you like to do with daddy?
Noah: kiss him
Natalie: hit him
Noah: no, hit him and jump on him

What do you like to do with mommy?
Natalie: kiss her
Noah: kiss her

What is your favorite book?
Noah: the ones with all the animals (we figured out he meant Noah's Ark books)
Natalie: a zoo book

What is your favorite song?
Noah: Down By the Station
Natalie: God is Great

What do you want to do when you get older?
Noah: a train engineer.  I want a blue engine.
Natalie: a train engineer.  I want a green engine.

My Door

This really has nothing to do with N2 but I wanted to show you anyways :)  We recently (right before N2's birthday) had a door decorating contest at school.  The theme was Dr. Seuss and it was to get everyone excited about Family Reading Night (which I was going to take N2 to but it was a night that we got snow so I didn't go).  It was the last thing I needed to do-I was already stressed out because of N2's birthday and I really didn't want to go to the extra effort of decorating my door because it's not like my students could help.  Luckily I found an easy idea on Pinterest!  Here's our project:

Can you tell?  It's One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.  I think this looked cuter on Pinterest because they used toddler hands.  I think my students had a little too large of hands to make cute fish but I still like it.  I will not paint with my students again though-that was just too messy for me!