Welcome to Tasty Tuesday here at The Young'ns!
There’s a recipe index under the food tab above if you’re ever looking for a recipe I’ve already blogged.
I’m going to try embedding a recipe that I have entered into Kitchen Monki, which is a resource that I love! Let’s see if it will work…
~SSunday we celebrated Shane’s birthday with a party. Good thing too, because he got sick with some fever bug on Monday and has yet to get better, poor boy.(This was today when his fever was 103.9)
(There are a few deets I need to add, but I really really want to get this posted tonight!)
The theme: MONKEYS!
The invitation: Will try to get a picture up of it soon. It was pretty awesome.
The menu:
The venue: gym at church. Where else can I let 20 little monkeys run free?
The décor: I went all out, at least for me, this time.
I bought monkey plates, napkins, etc, at Party City
Using my cricut and paper that I already had at home, I made him a birthday banner (letters from ZooBalloo, squares from XXX)
Kahlen talked me into getting streamers while we were at the dollar store, so I let her direct me as to where we should hang them.
The guests: trying to keep it small when I have so many awesome friends was hard! I invited mostly just our current fellowship team and our families that live in Loveland. I still ended up with around 40 people, half of which were kids.
The presents: A Silly Monkey pillow pet, of course! He also got great presents from our friends. He thought opening them was pretty awesome. His brother and sister have since used his new toys more than he has, I think, except for the pillow pet, which he is quite attached to.
The video. A birthday party for one of mine wouldn’t be complete without one :-)
Some other pictures from the par-tay:
Look, ma, I’m standing!
The progression of the birthday cake. He was not particularly a fan. Oh well, I think it’s probably a good thing that he doesn’t dig the sweets, right?
I’m all done, mommy! I want to go home!
I gave him another piece of cake the next day, he thought it was mmm, mmm, good!
And in case anyone cares, he’s 21 pounds (25th percentile) and 32” tall (95th percentile).
~S
While I work on a long involved post about Shane’s birthday and party, here’s a picture of what Kahlen has been working on. She’s taking handicraft classes with my stepmom once a week. She’s learning sewing, embroidery, and crocheting so far, with more to come as she progresses. This week, she made a vest for her beloved kitty to add to the skirt that she made a few weeks ago. Now her kitty is all dressed and ready to go! Kahlen titled this picture “Pretty Kitty”
~S
Linking up at:
What a lovely January day! After tot school / co-op, we went to the park for a picnic and play date with friends.
Shane and his buddy Oliver being pushed by O’s big sister.
Kahlen and EJ up a tree. My rule on tree climbing: If you can climb it, you may climb it, but I’m not helping you get down :-)
~S
Linking up at:
So I’m still menu planning by the month, which is why my Menu Plan Monday posts have dropped off, oops. And here we are almost the end of January…but I thought now is better than never, right? I’m going to post what I’ve already made for this month as well as the rest of the month’s plan.
I came across a new idea (new to me, at least) about a month and a half ago, and I’m slowly integrating it into our meals. Here’s the idea: instead of making freezer meals, preparing them to the very last step and then freezing them, freeze the raw ingredients for crockpot meals instead! Freezer Crock Pot meals, so easy! I tend to make double batches of food that freezes well and freeze one pan anyway, so this isn’t really all that different in concept, but much better in terms of time needed! I have found several good resources for recipes, one being this great e-cookbook that I got for Christmas. Ring Around the Rosies has many posts that are about freezer cooking, with a bunch of crock pot meals thrown in. I also have a pinterest board going for all the other ones I find that sound good to me.
A few things to note about this method and us: I have two very picky eaters here (my husband and my daughter), so rather than jump into prepping a dozen recipes only to find out that no one will eat them, I’m starting out by just making a single batch on the day I want to eat it. If it goes well, I’ll add it to the list of ones we actually like. Hopefully by March or so, I’ll have enough of these tried out that I can actually do once a month cooking with it and pop out 20+ meals to have for later. The other thing of note is that we mostly eat chicken around here with the occasional beef or pork. Nothing philosophically or morally wrong with other meat, it’s just what we all prefer. Lastly, I am not a spicy foods person and I’m cooking for three little people too, so I didn’t pick many of the recipes that included much “flavor”. Just know that if you choose to buy the ebook I mentioned above (which I’m not at all getting compensated to promote, I just think it’s great), there are a lot more choices than the ones I’m choosing to make for my family.
Okay, enough talking! What are we eating (or have already eaten) this month:
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 12 | ||
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | |
| 23 | 25 | |||||
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 2 |
The only thing that I should have made already and haven’t is the Polish Pierogies. They seem like such a good idea, and they’re so yummy, but they’re also a ton of work. Making dough, filling them, boiling them, frying them. Yeah. Haven’t wanted to do all that yet. I’m hoping to make them still, though, so maybe that will be the kick off of February’s menu.
The Cilantro Lime Chicken and Crockpot Parmesan Chicken were both very tasty and I’ll definitely be making them again! Now I’m off to start the Healthy Mama BBQ Chicken for dinner and start working on the lasagna that I’m making for this Sunday. My baby boy is turning one next week, so I’m feeding 30+ of our closest friends dinner :-)
~S
Nate got a set of PVC pipes and connectors for Christmas. What kid wouldn’t want that, right? Daddy showed them you can make a tent out of them; they now think he’s the coolest person ever.
~S
Nathanael is currently 42 months.
I finished our tot school co-op that I was teaching at my house. Yep, I have all the pictures and plan sheets. Maybe someday I’ll get them all posted, it just didn’t seem like a priority at the time. We had a blast, but I’m glad to be done with it for now.
The new semester brings a new plan and new ideas for tot school. I am still co-oping first grade hands-on projects with a friend of mine, so I have her three year old once a week for two hours while she takes Kahlen to do the fun hands-on parts of Tapestry of Grace. I debated a really long time about what I should do with Nate and Tilly during this time, and finally settled on B4FIAR without actually using the book. I wanted something that requires very little planning time for me, and this fit perfectly because there are so many great resources available. I am mostly using Homeschool Creations and Homeschool Share as resources with a bit of Pinterest thrown in for good measure. We’ll be doing lap journals, kind of a cross between lapbooking and notebooking as explained at Delightful Learning.
This week was our first week back after winter break. Since we’re starting in the middle of winter, I decided to start with The Mitten. Here’s a few of the activities we did for co-op:
Roll and graph from 1+1+1=1 (Who was also doing The Mitten this week!)
Coloring mini books “This Mitten is…” I love the look on Tilly’s face while Nate vigorously scribbles away
Making snowball cookies from Totally Tots (Vanilla Wafers, Cream Cheese, and Coconut)
Mitten Lacing
They also did a puppet show with the story props from 1+1+1=1, but I didn’t get pictures since I was helping them.
Also this week, I introduced calendar time notebooks as a way to start off school each day. I got the printables from 1+1+1=1 here and here.
We’re doing tot trays with mild success. The main problem is that I want him to be an independent worker, and he’s really just not. I am working on some ideas to help him with this, but in the meantime, he just gets frustrated and has an extremely short attention span for each tray activity.
That’s what we’re working on so far. Next week, we’re going to read The Snowy Day and do activities around that book. What did you do with your tots this week?
~S
