Sunday Funday

Today was a day filled with awesome family fun.  I didn't document much so I could focus on enjoying rather than taking pictures.

The whole family slept in- Tony and I woke up in our bed, because we woke up NOT because someone else came in...and it was 9:30!  I want to say for the record that this is the latest Ada has ever slept in.  We had a loungy nice breakfast all together.  We played and were silly.  We went on a nice bike ride (girls in the trailer) to a park a couple miles from our house.  We had lunch and naps (well, Ada didn't but it was totally worth it to sleep in).  We went to a dinosaur exhibit at the nature center near us to "show papa the 'ceratops" that we saw last week.  Went for a walk around the nature center and saw some ducks.  The two males were putting on quite a display to woo the female and Emma was keen to say hello.

Everyone was happy.  It was a good day.  Came home for dinner.  Burgers on the grill...for 2 minutes until we ran out of propane and moved it inside, but we all rolled with it.  After dinner we went outside and made a fire just for fun.

Evidence of the very good day you ask?

Sitting by the fire watching papa burn stuff.  Moments later Ada moved her chair next to Emma and the girls held hands.  Sorry, but the battery ran out on the camera.  Trust me it was awesome.  Love these people.

Robin Work

I had seen this idea on Pinterest a while back and decided it would make a nice spring work.  I cut a piece from our basement carpet scraps and put it in a tray with a small "nest" and some pieces of brown yarn (worms).  We've been noticing all the robins around our yard and Ada can identify them from other birds so I printed off a few google images to reinforce her knowledge- and she loves to "teach" her sister, so it was perfect.  For the record, this is more of a loose interpretation of Montessori, but it works for us.  I love the pictures of the chicks and the eggs.

Sorry- couldn't get this one to rotate.

She pretends she is the mama bird delivering worms to her baby chicks.  We extended this to pretend that we were mama and baby birds.  I got to be the mama, then I was the baby and she would fly around the living room and bring back worms for me.  The best was when Emma joined in but instead of making her beak with her hands over her mouth, she made little clasping hands over her little eyes.  Too cute!  It was a fun time.

I would describe my self as someone who is striving to have a simple, prepared environment for the girls.  But we do not have one of those neat little organized spaces like you will see on some of the Montessori or Waldorf blogs.  But I try.  Another thing that I saw at Ada's school that I loved was the mats used to do work on.  It's a nice visual cue to others that you are doing work, it's contained and I just like it.  The girls do too.  We have one of those little rag rugs that we use (from back in the day of our Maynard house) and a beautiful quilt that was made by a dear Aunt when Ada was born.  They work perfectly.  Emma will pull out a mat and I help her get it layed out.  Sometimes she works just like Ada and does her work, puts it back on the tray and shelf.  Sometimes I help her put it away.  I figure it's all good practice for school.

Here's the beauty in action...

This particular time the mats stopped a serious session of "NO EMMA, THIS IS MY WORK" I sometimes let them work it out on their own.  Sometimes I intervene, and this time I simply put out the other mat and put the stacking blocks on top.  Then, instant quiet and play.  LOVE!

Happy Spring!

We've been struggling with the domino head/chest cold around here so this is a little delayed.  The unseasonably warm weather has been a nice way to enjoy the change of season.  We've been able to spend loads of time outside in the past couple of weeks.  Mostly we hang in the back yard.  Emma's favorite is to get in and out of the cozy coupe and occasionally steer her car.  She scouts for birds and dogs and just generally loves being outside- who doesn't?  Ada loves being pushed high on the swing and running around playing "crab"- someone runs around chasing the other clasping hands like crab claws.  Then she will change to another animal (shark, dolphin, turtle, whale) and we will pretend to be that animal and on and on.  It's fun, but tiring if you're not 3.

Thanks to the Trader Joe's 1.49 daffodils, we did a nice little flower arranging work.  After her nap Ada poured the water into the vase and trimmed the stems.  Being Ada, she was curious about the flower and wanted to know what was inside.  It was a natural opportunity to talk about the parts of a flower and we got out the magnifying glass and even compared it to another flower (Christmas cactus).  Fun stuff!

*** I forgot to add this to the original post- I blame the fever***

I wanted to put in a plug for this awesome book.  A dear friend gave us another book by Carin Berger when Ada was born and we fell in love with it immediately.  I have since purchased another by the same author.  The artwork is unique and beautiful.  Forever Friends is an excellent book for spring telling the story of a bunny and a migrating bird reunited after the long lonely winter.  I simply adore this book.  Definitely worth checking out of the library this season!!

Puddle Hunt

Ada wearing her ballerina, raincoat, rain boots...searching for puddles to splash after dinner.

Freezer Meals

 If you're on Pinterest, you know that freezer meals are all the rage.  With good reason as far as I'm concerned.  I first saw the idea of cooking once a month on MamaBabyLove and fell in love with it.  I was intimidated at first then I remembered that I used to put together shopping lists for 100+kids to cook every week, shop, organize, and actually cook with them- for my job.  So I decided I had to decide what to make, make a list and shop- no excuses.

The first go went well.  And it was one of those magical times when Tony was home and Ada actually came with me to the grocery store and shopped with me and Em stayed home.  I let her use one of the children's carriages (sorry no pic, but you can imagine how cute) and she got to decide what she pushed and what I did.  She helped me pick out all sorts of things- really fun for mama.  We got home I stashed stuff away and got cooking after bedtime.  I cooked during naptime and after bed, so it's hard to determine exact cooking time, but a good 4 hours would be my best guess.  Here are the recipes I made for the freezer:

Healthy Mama BBQ Chicken (slow cooker)- 2 batches
Chicken Curry (slow cooker)- 2 batches
Pot roast (slow cooker)- just threw carrots, taters, beef, onions and spices in a bag
Baked Ziti- just thrown together- don't use a recipe
Stuffed pesto chicken shells
Meatloaf- 4 minis (I used the Nourishing Traditions recipe like MamaBaby love)
Chicken Parm Meatloaf
Chicken stir fry- just cut up the leftover veggies (mushroom, boc choi, peppers, carrots, onions, snow peas) and included separate bag of chicken in homemade teriyaki sauce)
Beef, bean, corn empanadas- 8 empanadas (I used pie crust b/c it was all I could find and made 4 per shell.  I had extra filling and stored that in ziplocks to add to nachos or burritos)
Twice Baked Potato- this isn't the recipe I used, but I can't remember where it is...sorry.
Chicken Tikka Masala- this was a time consuming preparation but it was yummy.  It made a ton so we ate some right away and I froze some for another time.

Here are a couple pictures- I didn't document everything along the way.

Chicken Tikka Masala

Empanadas

I wanted to add some kiddo pictures to this post, so here's Ada helping make some "Cookie Monster" ice cream.  We used the ice cream maker that goes with our kitchen aid and added blue food coloring to the vanilla base.  She crushed up some oreos and we added them in- YUM!

When in doubt, be a ballerina

Enjoy!

We are almost through with those meals.  I wish we liked the texture of the crock pot freezer meals more because they are SO SIMPLE and nice to be able to throw in the crock pot (which I refer to as my wife) and have dinner done when we are ready to eat.  I find I am more likely to get down and play more in the afternoon, or make a playdate, if I don't have to get home to get dinner on.

We were up in the cities over the weekend and had a little extra time so we went to Whole Foods.  It was awesome, but made me SO miss being in Eastern Mass where WFM is everywhere.  Mostly I bought a ton of meat (chicken and ground beef) to process and have for easy meals.

I made a big batch of burgers (I add steak seasoning, shredded onion, and worchestire sauce) hand form and wrap individually in saran.  Throw them all in a ziplock and they are ready for the freezer.  I made another batch of empanadas because they were AWESOME, plus extra of the mix- I might mix some in with noodles for cheesey tex-mex mac.  And froze some just as is.  Then I made some Crock Pot chicken fajitas.  We had some for dinner and I made another batch for the freezer.  I didn't shred the chicken, I just sliced it up before I put it in.  They were pretty good.  Not as good as on the stove, but good and EASY!  Then just cut up the rest of the chicken and froze it in easy to use portions. Some with Italian dressing to just throw on the grill.

Rainbows

After having an awesome outdoor playdate this afternoon the girls came in and Ada was chomping at the bit to do the new work that I had put out today.  It had been a while.  Emma found this when she woke up from her nap and was excited to try out the tongs again.  It's meant as a 1:1 correspondence work and I did my best to find some different colors.  This was inspired by dinner 2 nights ago.  We had those yummy frozen arancini from Trader Joe's and I was so excited about the plastic container they came in so I could make a work- I have officially lost my mind.

I also changed up are art bins to have rainbow crafts in them.  Honestly, I've looked at a gazillion of these things on Pinterest but ultimately I just went into the craft room and grabbed what I had that I thought the girls would like and that was easy to put together.  There were some white paper plates handy so I cut them in half added a rainbow of markers, a glue stick and a small bowl of cotton balls for clouds.  I cut some office paper in 1/4 and added a freehand rainbow and rainbow of crayons and shiny star stickers in another bin.  I put the rainbow stacker on the table for "inspiration" and called myself done.

I struggle with trowing away the artwork the girls make.  I try to photograph and throw away, keep my favorites and display some too.  Sometimes there is a large stack of artwork on the kitchen counter that I haven't sorted and today was that day.  I decided to quickly throw up a string on some random screws that were left in the hallway from the previous owners.  I put some clothespins on and hung a few things.  My apologies for the poor quality picture, but the finished rainbows are up.  Emma's on the left (Ada helped her with the glue) and Ada's on the right. 

And on a brighter note, Emma exists