What we've been up to lately....

I have been trying to post this entry all week long. It's been a crazy week. Not the best week ever either, but at the end of the day, I just tell myself that I'm going home to what really matters and it seems to put everything into perspective.
Some pictures from the last week/weekend....

Em & Drew were busy coloring on their art easel. Emma is actually getting really good at staying in the lines when she's coloring in a coloring book - and she can draw perfect circles, a sun, a rainbow, balloons... She's our artistic one. Drew likes to color or do crafts occasionally, (and usually only when Emma is doing it) but he's more of our logical thinker. He likes to take the tires off of all of his little cars and trucks and put them back on, take things apart and put them back together. He LOVES cars and trucks, and likes to build ramps for them and make them drive off of tables and crash. One of his favorite things to do is look at the car section of the newspaper and he tells you exactly what make each car is. It's incredible... for a 2 year old.

Emma pretty much hung out in her sleep sack all day on Saturday. She wouldn't let me take it off. She hates blankets when she sleeps, so this was the only solution to keeping her warm in bed at night. It's a blanket with arm and feet holes. It's pretty funny how opposite they can be. Blankets drive her crazy (especially if they are covering her feet. She has a complete meltdown if her feet are tangled in a blanket.) Drew on the other hand loves his blankets and is absolutely adamant that his feet are covered by the blanket. They're funny.

I am absolutely not an advocate of jumping on the beds. I never let the kids jump on beds. But, I let them this day for some reason.

Saturday night we went to family friends for a get together. The kids had fun playing, the guys watched football on the big movie screen, we ate a lot of good food and had fun.

Drew was totally into the drum set

And Emma & Alanna really enjoyed playing and running around with each other

Both of the girls actually wound up crying when it was time to go home to go to bed. It was cute, but a little sad at the same time.

And then the girls joined Drew on the drums! (Can you even imagine what our ears felt like after a while?!)

Drew sitting on the bear chair.

They both crashed after a night of playing hard.

Emma likes to help make her quesadillas. (The burner is not on. don't worry.) She just puts the shredded cheese on and spreads it around - and then I take over from there.



She would eat a quesadilla or a peanut butter & jelly sandwich for every single meal of her life if you let her. So she does end up having them quite a bit... but we've been able to hide shredded chicken in her quesadillas, I get healthy tortillas and then her pb&j's are on whole wheat with natural peanut butter as much as possible. She's also our fruit eater. She will eat anything from bananas, apples, pears, grapes, blueberries, strawberries.... So that's good.

Drew is willing to try much, much more than our girl. He is more likely to eat meats and veggies.... but his all time, ultimate fave is mac & cheese. So.... I found the veggie pasta mac & cheese that I guess is made out of cauliflower? Something like that. I'll also make a home made macaroni & cheese for him with one of the healthier pastas and real cheese. That Orange powder cheese just kinda grosses me out. We found out recently that he's a really big fan of rotisserie chicken also. I was making a pot of my chicken noodle soup and I had taken all of the chicken off of a rotisserie chicken and cut it all up to prep for making the soup - and by the time I had to actually put it in the soup.... he had eaten about half of it by just walking by the counter and swiping a piece at a time.

They are both good yogurt eaters...

I guess it's just tough feeding toddlers. You constantly worry that they are getting the nutrients (and all of the veggies/fruits/protien/whole grains they need. Although my fall back is that they have vitamins daily, and they actually like the fruit flavored V8 juice, which has veggie & fruit servings in it. I'm also slightly paranoid about getting them used to eating anything terribly unhealthy (this is going to sound horrible and I know it, forgive me) but for their own sake, I don't want them to be chubby little kids. =/

Speaking of yogurt, I've been really good about working on one of my 'health' goals, which is to eat something for breakfast in the morning. (I'm just usually not hungry in the morning, not to mention the lack of time. But I know it's not good to go without eating all day until lunch or dinner or whatever it ends up being.)

I've been pre-making yogurt/berry/granola's and have them ready to go to grab on the way out the door in the morning. (I even put the plastic spoons IN the fridge next to them to make sure there are no additional steps necessary as I'm frantically rushing out the door.)

no fat vanilla yogurt, big bag of frozen berries from Costco (we had them from making smoothies. they are really good for that!) and vanilla almond granola. I sprinkle a little vanilla sugar on top. I also did a few with honey, granola and pumpkin spice.

Check out what else we have been up to this week!!! Woohooo!!!

We are on a roll!!!

So, I came home from work on Monday to find this. Brianne's new approach. I admire her patience... she has tried multiple times to potty train these kids and it just wasn't working (long-term anyway.) Probably because of the inconsistency between her having them and getting on track, and then weekends with us, not being on regular schedule, and a day a week at my parents house with my mom... But anyway, I think it's really working with Drew right now! Emma, has zero interest whatsoever. We have always had the 'potty prize' box with fruit snacks and other small prizes (match box cars, etc...) But now that he can also see his own progress, and he gets excited to put the stickers on the chart.. but don't even think about skipping the potty prize. He will call you out on that. This also holds me accountable because I want to make sure the stickers don't totally stop the second Brianne walks out the door - so it helps me too in a way. And god knows I'm ready for them to be out of diapers, it's just such a challenge. I think Emma has actually made it a little easier for us though, because trying to potty train two kids at the same time is somewhat discouraging (and intimidating to be honest) but approaching it one at a time may be a lot easier on us.

Something I love to do in the fall and winter is make a really good homemade chicken noodle soup.

(I have combined a few different recipes together, after the search for the 'Best' chicken noodle soup recipe... and I also double the amount of 'stuff' that goes in it to make it an actual filling meal.

I prefer to use a rotisserie chicken for this (I rarely use rotisserie chicken but it's just easier for this.)

Slice & dice carrots, celery, onion & garlic - and saute in butter until they start to get a little soft - before adding the chicken stock & broth & all of the seasoning.

Once I add the chicken stock & chicken broth, I add a chicken bullion cube, a packet of the dry chicken noodle soup mix, poultry seasoning, salt & pepper, parsley, thyme, basil and a bay leaf.

I used to use wide egg noodles and recently found these suckers that are the BEST noodles for chicken noodle soup!!! They are like Amish made noodles or something like that. They are really thick.

Yumm!!

And then, I put it in all different size containers, for take-to-work soup or at home for lunches, or whatever. It definitely beats Campbell's chicken noodle in a can any day.

I was home today with the munchkins. Drew and I made roads for his cars on construction paper

That's actually a little one compared to what we have done in the past - but I had a conference call I had to jump onto so I whipped it up real quick to keep him occupied for a bit.

For the record - I know I told this story but I want to make sure to keep this one in our notes for a later date. We are sitting down having dinner the other night, and Emma is having her dinner of apples and grapes, because she didn't want whatever else was made...

Andrew: Hey Em, why don't you take a bite of potato, if you don't like it you don't have to have any more.

Emma: No, I don't like it.

Andrew: But you didn't even try!

Emma: (Holding her hand up at him like a stop sign motion) Dad. Listen. To. My. Words. I said no. I don't like it.

It was definitely one of those moments that we both had to just bite our lip and try really really hard not to laugh.

They are definitely at that age... It's really funny to hear them talk, and what they come out with. They both  speak very well for their age.

When Andrew was getting Drew into his jammies the other night before bed, Drew said he had to get out of his work clothes and into his cozies. I liked that one. He also told my mom the other day that she needed to do something with her hair!!

Aren't these cute?! I think the kids and I will be making these:

They are the little Nilla wafers with banana slices in between and rolled in sprinkles. I thought it was a cute idea!