Tuesday Dinner

Bryan works late or has meetings with the law school, United Way, Family Tree, etc. almost every week night. My new schedule helps with handling the night routine as getting home at 5 is way better than 6 for getting dinner on the table, playing with the kids, and getting them in bed at a reasonable hour. But eating dinner as a family of three gets lonely sometimes. Enter Tuesday night mom dinners. A group of about 5 or 6 moms and their kids gets together almost every Tuesday for a kid-friendly dinner. Everyone brings something, we make something the kids will eat like pizza or tacos or pasta, and we eat together, chat, and let the kids play.

Last night we hosted grilled cheese night at our house. Somehow Marisa ended up at the table surrounded with 9 of the 11 kids in attendance. I'd like to say the rest of us were off drinking beers in the other room but I think we were finishing up the cooking while she supervised the kids (who were remarkably well behaved!) for the eating.

Tuesday night dinners make me happy. My kids, my husband, my friends make me happy. Thanks ladies, for making Tuesday evenings a little more fun for me and the kids!

Tapas Mom Night

Our most recent mom's night was a themed tapas night by country. Like always we had quite a spread and ate, drank, and talked our way through the evening.

Our courses for the night included spring rolls from Vietnam, a potato square Spanish dish, Greek pasta salad, brie and bread from France, Thai meatballs, Moroccan msemen bread, Italian meatballs, and a Mexican quesadilla and chili casserole. Everything was excellent!

Our themed dinners, really all of our mommy nights, make me happy. I love that I found this supportive group of women who are going through similar daily struggles and smiles with their families and their work. And I am already looking forward to our next themed dinner in early January!

Thursday Morning Fun

Generally I advocate that mornings in our house are easier than evenings. This might be because I only have to do 3 of the 7 mornings each week and have to do 7 evenings, but I argue that my children are more pleasant when they are well rested. Sure they have their moments in the morning, particularly with dragging their feet on things. But the full fledged tantrums generally come with dinner (for my son) and exhaustion (for both). This week I have been helping with mornings since I was out of town last week and Bryan is trying to catch up at work. And before today, my evenings are harder than mornings thing held true. Not today, my friends. Not today.

The highlights of the morning:

1. Our water heater is on the fritz. About every third day we have to reset it to get hot water. This really sucked for Bryan as his shower was luke warm at best. My shower was warm, but only because I reset and then waited for it to get hot again. 45 minutes later I was in the warm shower. Unfortunately, running 45 minutes late all morning though does not lead to roses and butterflies.

2. My daughter told me she hoped I don't die soon. I asked her why she was worried that would happen and she responded that I am getting pretty old. Sure, I know I have been looking a little rougher than normal this week. Neither of my children sleeping through the night for the last 5 nights will do that. But really? I am hardly the ancient woman my daughter clearly thinks I am.

3. Kellen was awake for about 27 minutes before we left this morning. He cried for about 11 of them. He tantrumed for 7. That isn't a great happiness to sadness ratio. My favorite moment of the morning was as I was trying to get the kids in to the car (already at least 20 minutes late by my most generous estimates) and Kellen did this:

Nice one buddy. Next time, get yourself fully wedged under the car for your tantrum. The reason for this? I told Kellen he needed to share either the helicopter or the car with Noelle or else I was taking  both. He choose poorly.

In the end, we made it. Let's hope dinner and bath time go better tonight!

Piles of Fun

The sun goes down early now and that is sort of a bummer, although my kids do get in to bed early since it is dark by 5:15! I also enjoy that it is not pitch black when I am driving to work (at least for a few more weeks). But it does make me sad that it is basically dark when we get home at night. Last week I took a few pictures of the kids at dusk as they played in a pile of leaves. They were having a great time, despite me stressing that the huge rake my son had brought out was going to kill us all since he kept burying it out of sight under the leaves and then diving in the piles after it! I had mixed success with the camera as I played with the settings but here are a few pictures of the fun.

Sunday we played outside in and around the leaves again. Noelle had gotten some bulbs at Sunday school she wanted to plant and got out her sand shovel and small rake to dig through the ground. Yeah, that didn't exactly work but close enough. She and Kellen enjoyed their time outside despite the chilly temperature in the shade and wind. I was just happy that Kellen was chilling with a rake the size of his hand instead of his whole body!

I love fall and these crazy kids of mine! 

Choo Choo

As is customary for when I leave town, one of my family members got sick while I was in Indianapolis. This time it was Bryan with a stomach bug of some sort. So far everyone else is fine so I am hoping it is his weak stomach combined with something he ate. Since the kids were trapped inside on Saturday while I was away, after church I took them to see the miniature trains at Leakin Park for their final day of the 2013 season. We had never been but friends had gone and it sounded great. And it was, except it was crazy busy and hard to do with one adult for two kids!

We stood in line for about 30 minutes for our ride. Kellen shared with those around us how eager he was to ride the trains for the entire time we waited. Noelle was good as gold. The trains were actually really cool though and well worth the wait. Who wouldn't want to ride on one of these little guys?

When it was finally our turn, I got Noelle set up on a seat, put Kellen between me on the ground, and hoped that they would follow the directions of staying seated with their hands and arms in for the entire ride. Thankfully they loved every second of the ride and were on their best behavior for once.

Since the line was still 30 minutes when we got off the train and it was getting cold and close to nap time, we hit the bathroom and then began the walk to our car which was parked forever away. Kellen did not like this plan, and demonstrated his displeasure with his shrieks of wanting to get back on the train and this position if I put him down for more than 3 seconds of our 1/2 mile jaunt:

So the end of our outing was less than enjoyable but the fun was had before then. We'll definitely be back, just with daddy in tow!

The Butterfly and the Lamb

Last Thursday was Halloween. I had to work so afterwards I flew home as fast as Thursday traffic would allow and got dinner ready for the kids and our guests, the Hollywood's, Adam, and Christopher. Thank goodness for the crockpot! The kids played and we feasted on beef bbq, sweet potato fries, veggies, and this awesome fruit creation Adam put together!

After dinner we got the costumes on (we had my butterfly and lamb, as well as Tinkerbell and an elephant) and got a few pictures taking as it was getting dark. Two two year olds, a one year old, and a four year old didn't make for great picture taking but here are a few of the attempts:

And then it was time for Tick or Treating. The three big kids did awesome and Christopher got a cool light at one house so he was golden too!

I am sort of dreading next year as I am pretty sure our days of convincing our daughter that our one street is enough Halloween fun will be over but I sure do like to see how cute the kids look even if Halloween is  my least favorite of the holidays. Hope everyone had a happy and safe Halloween! And that you got some good candy!

Disney on Ice

Last Friday I experienced Noelle's first ever school field trip. Her class went to Disney on Ice, and since Kellen and I didn't have plans and the tickets were really reasonable, we signed up to take her on the trip.  It was pretty low key with all the parents with their kids, but it was a nice way to spend a Friday morning.

We took daddy to work that morning so that we could use his parking pass for the show. Then Caitlin and Will picked us up in their minivan and Caitlin expertly drove us to town and maneuvered her huge van into one of the tiny parking places in Bryan's garage. I was thankful that Caitlin volunteered to do this as the arena was about 1/2 mile from the garage and I didn't know if strollers were allowed. Carrying or dragging Kellen down Howard Street, sometimes against his will, meant I didn't have a lot of attention left to give Ellie on the walk to the show. Thanks Caitlin and Will for helping get us to and from the arena in one piece!

Kellen refused to cooperate for pictures before the show but warmed up to the outing once it started. Noelle and Will got in to the picture action although none of the shots I got were good of both of them. Oh well! Here they are proudly wearing their Ravens shirts for a Purple Friday!

I had never been to any shows like this growing up so I had low expectations. They were easily surpassed. The show was almost 2 hours including the intermission and was a nice mix of Mickey and friends, the princesses, and Disney villains. We really enjoyed the show, and my personal favorite part was a bit with the mops based on Fantasia. It was pretty cool seeing how they did stuff. My kids were oblivious to the fact that this was all going on using ice skates and was actually quite technically hard at times, but they still were enthralled for the show.

We'll definitely check out Disney on Ice again in the future. It was a great first field trip!