Weekend Update

Life has been busy around here {surprise, surprise}.  Nothing super exciting or out of the ordinary has occurred since last time I blogged, but I figured everyone is just dying for an update on all of the ordinary little nitty gritties of our everyday life.  Hahahaha.  This is what life looks like for us these days:

• Teen Beach Movie

Since Disney's World Premiere of it's brand-new movie, my children have probably watched it, lived it and loved it at least a hundred times.  Possibly more.  They've learned the choreography, they've learned the music, and they've learned every key line they'll need for the remake they plan on taping with their cousins the next time we're all together.  I kid you not.  Even ALEX has certain songs and dance moves memorized.  Hahahaha.  It is HILARIOUS.  There is nothing funnier than watching your 2 year old sing about "when you meet the girl you like."  I taped a snippet of him singing and dancing with the girls, but I can't find it which means it's probably been erased from my phone.  I will have to see if I can get an encore at some point.

• Breakfast Time

Mornings have been HARD.  Mostly because I am not a morning person.   Ideally, I would get up half an hour before the kids in order to get a jump start on breakfast and the morning, but that has never once happened.  Instead, I set my alarm for 6:15 and then hit snooze for as long as I possibly can before I absolutely HAVE to start getting the kids up for school.  Which is usually around 6:45.  In my ongoing efforts to try and do a better job at feeding my family, I have been making a concerted effort since school started to provide something that is hardy and filling enough to last them through the morning.  To aid in this goal, it's been helpful to set out a breakfast "menu" schedule so I'm not scrambling to decide what to make every morning.  Sounds super sophisticated, right?  Hahaha.  It's not.  Monday and Wednesday are pancake days, Tuesday and Thursday are eggs or oatmeal days, and Friday is Free Space meaning cereal or anything else that is easy enough that they can do themselves.  For the pancakes, I try to power pack them with as much goodness as I can and have been using my blender to make whole wheat/oatmeal pancakes.  Having a dairy and egg allergy is a bit of a nuisance, and since Sophie's really are kind of gross and no one else will eat them, I end up making two separate batches every single time.  Here is the basic "recipe" in case anyone cares to try them out:

Blender Pancakes {using a Blendtec blender}
2 c. milk
2 heaping spoonfuls of greek yogurt (more protein) or regular yogurt
2 eggs
1 tsp salt  (surprisingly important -- it only takes forgetting it once to make you never forget again)
2 T. oil (I use sunflower oil -- it tastes a little more "buttery")
2 T. maple syrup (the real deal, not the fake stuff)
1 c. Wheat berries (I've been using Hard White Wheat) {you can substitute about 1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour if you don't have wheat}
1 c. Steel Cut Oats (more protein) or regular oatmeal if I'm all out of the other kind
1 T. baking powder
Blend on high for a few minutes until you've got a pancake batter.  If it's a little runny you can add a bit more of the wheat or oats.  It's kind of an estimate.  If it's too thick, you can always add a little milk or water to it.  Makes about 18 pancakes.

Sophie's Blender Pancakes
1 1/2 c. water
2 T. oil
2 T. maple syrup
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. vinegar
1 T. baking powder
1/2 to 3/4 cup Wheat berries
1/2 to 3/4 cup Steel cut oats
2 T. arrowroot powder {egg substitute}
Same blending directions.  Makes about 12 pancakes.  I made waffles for her last Saturday using some key substitutions and additions and I actually thought they were really good.  Instead of water I used apple cider, I added another couple of T. of oil to make them work as waffles, and I added a tsp. of cinnamon.  They were really good.

• Lunches

Lunches.  Sigh.  Here is part of the real reason why I feel the need to provide a substantive breakfast.  Part of getting their "morning check" on their economy charts is that the kids have to make their own lunches for school.  I don't think this is a super hard thing, but my kids can be REALLY lazy.  And particular.  And have odd issues with all kinds of things.  For instance, Ethan no longer likes my homemade bread to be used for actual sandwiches, Grace has jumped on that bandwagon as well, and Sophie never really packed sandwiches to begin with since she can't have peanut butter which is the easiest thing to make.  She brought turkey roll-ups for lunch almost everyday last year, but perhaps has OD'd on them, because she refuses to ever pack that anymore.  The result is that on any given day, I am just waiting for the school to call me and tell me that my kids are not bringing enough food for lunch.  "I'm not hungry at school!" claims Ethan, "My class eats lunch at 10:40 and that's too early!" says Grace, and "This is all I need!" screams Sophie on an almost daily basis.  After realizing that Ethan had only packed a can of oranges for school one day, I now try to make a point each day of making sure they have at least more than that.  In the end, though, they are usually only bringing a slice of bread {sometimes with butter, sometimes not} and one or two other "extras" from the pantry such as applesauce or pretzels with the occasional cheese stick thrown in for Ethan and Grace.  I have no idea if this is really enough, but on the days when I make Sophie's lunch for her in order to force her to pack some turkey and other filling things instead, she comes home from school with the food uneaten anyway.  Ethan, on the other hand, raves on a daily basis about the "share bin" in the cafeteria where kids can put school lunch items that are uneaten and untouched.  Apparently he's been getting milk out of there daily, and who knows what else.  Oh well, I guess we'll just see how the year progresses.

•  After School Snacks

 As a result of the lunch issues, I have been making a point of trying to have a "real" snack waiting for them when they come home from school.  It has been a HUGE hit!  And has the added bonus of really staving off a lot of the craziness that begins to emerge when all the kids are home and bordering on the red zone because they're tired, hungry, and grumpy. 
 

 Yesterday's snack -- a vegetable platter with homemade ranch dip.  And I promise they really did love it and eat it up before moving on to a preview of the s'mores we were planning on making after dinner.

• Dinner

 While we're talking about all of our meals, I thought I'd document that -- for the most part -- the dinner hour is actually one of our more pleasant parts of the day.  Hahaha.  At least once everyone is sitting down and food is being shoveled into their faces.  Getting to that point, however, is almost always an ordeal.  Which makes it that much more interesting when they all start clamoring for their "compliments" during dinner time.  I don't know when exactly we started that tradition, but it's something that they really like to do.  And I like it, too.  Even if it is kind of hard sometimes to rack my brain for a sincere and legitimate compliment for each child in the family.  Hahahaha. 

• Family Economy

Our Family Economy has been running pretty smoothly!  There are definitely a few weak spots in the system {the Kitchen is the Achille's Heel of the whole operation}, but for the most part the kids have been pretty good about getting their checks done each day.  Okay scratch that.  Ethan and Grace have been pretty good about getting their checks done each day.  Poor Sophie has struggled.  Mostly because she just finished her second turn with the kitchen which resulted in her second time of getting no allowance for the week.  The Entitlement Trap recommends children joining in on the family economy once they are 8 and since Sophie is only 6, I definitely think that is part of her problem.  I don't know if the new system is quite motivational enough for her just yet.  The only reason we decided to let her join in with the older kids, anyway, was because she had been getting allowance in our old system and we didn't think she'd like the idea of being cut off completely.  Haha. The funny thing about Sophie is that when she's on, she's actually a really good little worker.  Especially when it comes to cleaning bathrooms which are her specialty.  I kid you not -- she begs to clean the bathroom every Saturday.  Hahaha.




 

• Pluggies

Kind of random, but Alex is cutting his back molars right now and has been a bit of a cranky mess.  He has also taken to chomping on his pacifiers so hard that he has now bit holes in all of them except for one.  And as luck would have it, we couldn't find it at bedtime tonight, so that was really fun.  Not.  Hahaha.  After listening to him cry for his pluggie for half an hour, I finally just gave in and gave him one of the hole-y ones.  And since it seems to cruel to deprive him of a comforting item in the midst of his teething trauma, I'm sure I will break down and buy him some more when I can run to the store tomorrow.  What can I say?  I'm a softie.

• Library Fines

In the short month and a half that we've belonged to our local library here, we have managed to rack up almost 50 dollars in fines.  What what say what?????  Unlike our St. Louis library, THIS library charges a dollar a day for overdue DVDs.  Having 7 checked out at once was not a good idea.  We will not be doing that ever again.

• Bedtime Routines

I totally jinxed myself by deciding to include this category, because after a couple of weeks of relatively smooth sailing, Grace decided to have a meltdown at bedtime tonight.  Thankfully, even that only lasted an hour and she went to sleep just fine right after.  Our typical routine these days involves putting Alex and Jane down between 6:30 and 7, with me reading to Jane before tucking her in.  Sophie's bedtime is 7:30 and Ethan and Grace are at 8.  Scott usually reads to Sophie and Ethan, and I  read to Grace.  Since school has started, I have successfully put a time limit on my reading of 5 minutes, which is why neither Sophie nor Ethan want me to do their reading.  {Scott is a much bigger softie than I am when it comes to reading aloud.  Hahaha.}

Since I know you're all dying to know what we've been reading, I'll fill you right in.  This summer we have delved into all things Harry Potter.  Ethan just finished the final book {he really took off with the 6th one and couldn't get through the last one fast enough} and Sophie has finished reading the 1st one and is halfway through the second.  Grace, however, has always been a tough sell on the series.  Perhaps because I love them so much and have tried to push her into reading them, or perhaps because she has already seen the first few movies and gets bored reading the books when she already know what's going to happen, but for whatever reason, she just has never gotten bit by the bug.  I bought the audio recording of Book One to listen to in the car this summer during some of our trips with the hopes that it would finally catch her interest and I was semi-successful in luring her in!  We are now in the third book, and she listens to the audio recording of the first book every single night to help her go to sleep.  However, we also have a battle almost every day with her wanting to just watch all the movies instead.   We've stuck to our guns, though, that if she wants to watch the movies she has to read the books first.  This is the deal we made with Ethan a few years ago when he started the series, and even though Grace has actually convinced us to let her watch the first 4 movies without having read the books first, we're holding fast for the last 3 in the series. 

• Bear Hunts

In the munchkin league, Alex has been OBSESSED with the book "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" and begs to read it all day long.  He is kind of hilarious.  He has the book practically memorized at this point and chants along with most of the text as we go on our bear hunts every single day.  I just love how my kids fixate on things.  Hahaha.

 

• Movie Night

Friday night is typically Movie Night in our household, but after a particularly horrendous day LAST Saturday, we told the kids their consequence was no movie night for this past Friday.  They were not too happy about that, but I think they also recognized how abominable their behavior had been and didn't put up that much of a fight. 

• Marshmallow Roasts

Since we didn't do Movie Night this week, I thought I'd come up with a replacement activity that would still allow the kids to have a fun night.  Mostly because I thought it sounded fun, too, but also because the kids were actually REALLY well behaved this past week.  No joke.  It was pretty awesome.  While I was out grocery shopping on Friday, I picked up a couple bags of marshmallows and some graham crackers and chocolate bars to christen our backyard fire pit with the making of some s'mores. The kids were SOOOOOO excited when I let them know after school.  The end result was a super fun night without any issues!  

Ethan enjoyed making the fire a little too much.  Hahaha.

I was a little nervous with this little guys near the fire pit, but he ended up being pretty good about staying out of harm's way.  And of course, I was right there beside him the whole time.

Scott made the kids' day by jumping on the tramp with them and performing some back flips.

Alex LOVED it on the sidelines.

• Running

I have been torturing myself with another go-round of training for a half marathon this fall.  Haha.  I've had more issues this time around with shin splints and other pains, but I've managed to mostly stick it out and finished a 9 mile run yesterday morning.  I was so lucky to find a running buddy almost as soon as we moved here, because there is NO way I could be doing these long runs on my own!

• Dividend Day   

Okay, so perhaps this is the one event that actually is out of the ordinary of our lives.  The kids have been looking forward to P&G's Dividend Day at King's Island ever since we've been back.  Walking around an amusement park for over 3 hours in the evening after running 9 miles in the morning probably wasn't at the top of my list of things I wanted to do yesterday, but I took one for the team and accompanied Scott and all the kids on our super fun outing.  The kids HAD A BLAST.  It was probably the funnest night of their lives in all actuality.  Ethan and Grace were both tall enough to ride the "real" rides this time around, and Scott took them while I stayed with the little ones and puttered around Planet Snoopy.  Even though I can't look at a roller coaster without experiencing a mini panic attack, and riding on the carousel makes me want to puke, I still had a great time seeing how much fun the kids were having and knowing that we are making memories for a life time.

 We ran into some friends right as we were about to leave, and ended up staying for another hour.  Alex is sitting next to his friend Claire.  :)

• Company

And finally, {another out of the ordinary event}, we were lucky to have company today in the form of Scott's family.  His parents drove up this morning with Adam and Susi along with Kristin and Hannah and Jonah.  When we told the kids this morning that cousins would be coming as well, you would have thought it was Christmas morning!  Even though the visit was short, it was still so fun to be with family.  We'll have to plan a family reunion again sometime soon.  :)


And THAT is that.  Our weekend/life update.  And just for the record, it took me all weekend long to finally finish it!  Until next time...