Life's a Party

It is safe to say that the boys getting their singing voice from me...poor boys. But that doesn't stop any of us from belting a song out.

Today, James wanted to put on some party hats and sing Happy Birthday...over and over again. Every time he sang, Blu would howl. I am pretty sure that's not a good sign. Hehe.

 

Park Visit

We made our way back to one of our favorite parks this weekend. All of the kiddos were wearing blue:) I took about 15,000 to get one picture of all three looking/smiling at me.
 

The twins loved feeding the ducks. If you are wondering why there are not any pictures of James near the ducks....well, he did not quite grasp the concept. He would run, charging at them and then pout when they ran away. Next time...

Blink.

I close my eyes and can feel you nestled up in my neck. As a newborn, it was your favorite place to be. Early to bed and early to rise; even at a couple weeks old.

I blink and you are four....crawling in my bed every morning and letting me hug you tight. You can do everything by yourself but you still like to crawl in my lap and play with the cowlick in your hair.

I blink and you are eight...flashing me a peace sign at dinner. You have so many excellent questions. Always trying to find the exception to the rule. You find comfort when there isn't one. You put your head down and let me kiss your forehead at night. I still hug you tight even though you pretend to hate it.

I try not to blink.

My Stella

This Kid.

Bunny is Back

This little girl has had a pretty scary eye infection all week and she has not been herself. After a couple of doctors appointments we finally saw some improvement. The best part is the Stella is acting like herself again. For example, when I check on her at night, I find this:



Surfer Ken keeping watch over the pets. No big deal.

 This is what my bunny does when she should be sleeping. She reads and she journals and she takes care of each one of her stuffed and plastic animals.

And it makes me happy that my bunny is back:)

James and Jossybean

New Recipes

It can be a challenge to cook for five. I am on a low carb diet, Tony is a meat and potato kinda guy, Thomas likes plain, Stella likes spicy and James only eats peanut butter sandwiches and hot dogs. No easy feat.... But I have made three recipes this week that were all hits!

The first I actually made before. It is the Buffalo Chicken Lettuce Wraps from Skinny Taste. These are so deelish! I make them on a weekly basis. Sometimes we add BBQ sauce instead of the wing sauce but this recipe is so easy and good. I always keep chicken for Thomas and James plain, but that is easy to do. It's easy to serve with lettuce or on rolls. Easy peasy.



With the leftover chicken from the night before, I made Chicken Enchilada Soup from All Recipes.com. This soup turned out so good too. It was rainy and gloomy all day which always makes for a good soup day.



The last new recipe was Zucchini Lasagna from Skinny Taste again. Thomas initially wondered why there were pickles in his lasagna, but the whole family ate it. We didn't miss the noodles at all!



Of course, all these can be found on my Pinterest food board;)

School?

There has been a lot of school talk around here lately. School begins next month. James didn't love school last year (ahem, understatement of the year) but we are trying it again. When ever we bring up school, James informs us that he is not going. I actually feel the same way. I don't think he is going to go. The thing is, he has to go....he is ready.

He needs to be around some other three year olds who don't say the eff word. He needs to be able to sit in a circle and line up for playground time. He needs to go! We went to the library and brought back books about going to school. We read them. We talk about it. We practice eating from his lunchbox. We talk about his teacher. We are prepping!

I still don't think he is going to go.

Bro's

Beautiful Weekend

We have been so busy lately that we needed a weekend filled with down time. This past weekend we did just that. We took it easy. I had a small list of things to get done, but it felt very relaxed. One of the stops was the Dollar Store. The kids each picked out three things. Stella picked a notebook and two sets of pencils, James...three cars and Thomas found three sets of army men.

The next morning there was sleeping in and setting up for war.



Planning world dominance:


My sleepy bedhead monkey butt.


We also carved out some time to check out a new beach. Well, new to us. No rushing, no whining, just some family time. My favorite!



It was a beautiful weekend with my beautiful family!