Friday Favorites: Magnolia Market, Conversations, Breakfast, Swimming, & Everly

ONE

This past Saturday, we took our first official "Family of Five" outing. We took a day trip to Waco to see Magnolia Market and to go to the Mayborn Children's Museum on Baylor's campus. As we had been told, the area around Magnolia Market was super packed and we had to pay to park close. But, we put Everly in my wrap, held little hands and off we went to check it out. 

Honestly, it is a really neat place. The shopping is great and the prices were not as expensive as I was expecting for the Fixer Upper's store. The outside has a big turf area with balls, cornhole games, and hula hoops for kids to play. There are two shaded areas to sit and eat and there are food trucks for lunch. They just opened a garden store and are working on a bakery. If it was just me and Vic, we would have shopped, eaten, and hung out awhile. But, the one problem for our little family that day? It was SO HOT. It was ok inside in the a/c, but I was worried about Everly getting too hot in my wrap and getting sunburned outside when I tried to give her some air. And Atticus and Grace were doing the best they could, but they were just so hot too. So, after 45 minutes of checking everything out, we got back in the car and headed to lunch at Torchy's Tacos. After that, we surprised the kids with the Mayborn Museum. It was great! The bottom floor has normal museum rooms where we learned that Waco was grounds for many Plesiosaurus's and Woolly Mammoths at one time. The top floor is all for kids and had great rooms for kids to play and explore; they had a pioneer room, a dress up room, science rooms with bubbles and magnets, a room with old phones and typewriters, a weather room where you could stand in front of a green screen and see yourself doing the weather, and best of all for Grace....they had a Tea Party room. Grace is really into tea parties lately and this room was so cute. She was enthralled and she and I stayed there at least 25 minutes just letting her setup her tea party and then move it and set it up again. We were there 3 and 1/2 hours but we would go again! It was a great first outing for our family!

TWO

This is my new favorite breakfast to eat and it's healthy, so I have to share! First, scramble 2 eggs. Then, cut an English muffin in half. Split the eggs and place on top of each muffin. Add a little shredded cheese on top. Then, place a slice of tomato on top of the cheese and top with a little more cheese. Put in the oven on 450 degrees for 5 minutes to toast and melt. Oh my goodness! This is so delicious!

THREE

A couple funny things Atticus has said:

Atticus: "Hey mom look! That is the place you and Daddy used to eat when you were falling in love!" as we drove by a Taco Cabana recently. Technically, we used to go to Casa Ole, but it was cute that Vic had told him that story and he remembered it.

When he was setting up his dinosaurs and had me come check out his amazing setup:

Me: "Atticus, this is the best setup you've ever done! I don't even know what to say!"

Atticus: "It's ok Mom; you can just say 'good job Atticus!'

He and Grace both love Everly. Atticus will constantly ask me where "my sweet baby" is and tell me he wants to eat her toes for breakfast or give her a million kisses. And, he really does love to kiss her all the time or ask to look at her. Grace also loves to check on her, but mostly she wants to touch her. I have to constantly remind her to be gentle. But, the funniest thing she will do is say "coochy, coochy, coo Evewee!" all the time!

Oh and a couple other kids things: So, Atticus has told me he loves sorting and has been sorting toys all week. He has also been into watching American Ninja Warrior with Vic! As for Grace, she has been memorizing Doc McStuffins songs on the Disney app on my Iphone. She will try to sing the songs and the moves and is so proud. She has had her microphone out a lot more lately too to practice her singing!  

FOUR

We finished our 2 weeks of swim lessons yesterday. This is our 4th year to do them with the City of College Station. This year, Atticus and Grace were in the same age group of 3-5. When they get in the pool the first day, the teachers have them do a few things to determine what level they go into. So, Grace went to the youngest, least experienced group and Atticus was in the middle group. They have 1-2 teachers per 3-4 kids so they get lots of attention. The first day, Grace got scared and cried the entire time and would not stay in the water. But, the next day, they sucked her in when they gave the little kids tiny pitchers to pour water onto their teachers' heads. Grace loved this so she was happy to go each day. She did good, although she would NOT even try to blow bubbles in the water. They would ask her to try and she would just shake her head politely "no". By the last day, she would get down and blow on top of the water and that was it.

Atticus, however, thrived this year! He still cannot swim on his own yet, but from day one, he put his head in the water and was so proud! He did it anytime they asked and sometimes just for fun. He worked on floating and swimming with help and I was so proud of him. However, let me tell you the funniest part. Although I was proud of his excitement to put his head under the water, he had me laughing so much when he did it. He has a very dramatic, choreographed method to do this. He starts out standing up high with his arms flexed and in the air and then he squeezes his eyes shut, holds his breath, squats up and down a couple of times and then maybe repeats this whole method again until he gets his courage up to go under and THEN he finally goes under the water. He comes back up and rubs all of the water out of his eyes. It really is hilarious in person because when the teacher asks them to do 5 bobs in the water, (which should take about 10 seconds), he goes through this entire process which takes longer. It's no big deal but it's cute and funny! 

 

Also, the last 3 days of swim lessons, his class put on life jackets and got into the big pool to practice. On the last day, they let all the kids go down the big log slide. Again Atticus surprised me with not hesitating at all to do it. However, I did notice that he let all the other kids go first and then when it was his turn, he took a few seconds before he would slide down. His face was hilarious though! And he was so proud!

FIVE

And last but not least, Everly turned 2 months this week!

Happy Friday everyone!!

Friday Favorites: Neighborhood kids

ONE

First, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Pop! 

TWO

Conversations with Atticus:

The kids have been playing outside a lot the last couple of weeks with the neighborhood kids. We have some great kids on our cul-de-sac, but we have one that is a little more to handle. Generally, when the kids are in the front yard, at least one parent is sitting out to watch them. This tends to give the other parents a chance to go in and out to check on them and not have to stay every second which is really nice! Well, this one particular kid is a few houses down and his parents are NEVER out to watch him. He's almost 6 and he has two older siblings so maybe his parents are less cautious. So, basically we have an extra kid to keep an eye on while they play. This should not be a huge deal, but this kid makes us and our neighbors a little crazy. A few things that have made us question and/or laugh/cringe about him:

• He comes down at least 2 times a day and will even come as soon as you pull in the driveway to ask if Atticus can play. It's almost always a no until Vic comes home because with 3 kids, I can't sit out there the entire time. But, he is persistent and I've even had to send him home from my porch where he sat, for at least 30 minutes, to wait on us. 
• He will look through the little skinny windows on each side of our front door whether he is waiting for us to come to the door OR to see if we are home. One day, he knocked, looked through the windows and made eye contact with me while he waited. I was nursing, so Vic went to the door but by the time he got there, the kid was gone. Vic thought he heard the gate open. He went back to the backyard where he and the kids were playing and sure enough, this kid comes into the backyard and said he saw Atticus in the backyard playing! He could see through the front windows to the back and just came on around! Vic sent him right back out.
• He comes into the house to make himself at home in our toy selection. We have a rule among our other two neighbors that kids need to play outside and not in and out of our houses. But, again, this kid's parents are NOT around.
• He hangs on the small branches of our smaller tree. We've told the kids not to do this because it they will break...but he has to be told a lot.
• He uses language that is not nice. I'll explain in one of the conversations below.
• He has a pocket knife. Seriously. It's been taken away since the first few times we saw him with it, so I'm thinking his parents must not have approved it.
• He gets mad and throws toys at kids...hard toys. This has happened more than once, but it was happening A LOT one day while I was watching them in my front yard. I had to get onto him pretty good after trying to nicely ask him not to throw toys. He told me "You're the meanest one!" ha!
• I honestly feel kind of bad for him. I know he wants to play and while I'm sure his parents are not bad people, they just let him roam free and our neighbors and us have to deal with him. It's not a really big deal yet because most of the time, the group of kids have fun together. And, Atticus has even come in on his own when he thinks the kid isn't playing nicely. And, Atticus and Grace are not always perfect when playing with other kids, but it's almost comical to wait and see what will happen when this boy comes down to play! And, he's just not a kid I will invite to come over for a play date!

So, while the kids were setting up to play "camping" one day, I see this kid get a pocketknife out to work on a stick for their pretend fire. As I realize it is a REAL knife, we have this conversation:

Me: "Is that a knife? Do your parents know you have that knife?"
The kid doesn't say anything as he is working on his firewood.
Atticus: "It's OK Mom. His mom and dad said he's ready for it."
Me: "Okay, but Atticus, you are not ready for a knife yet so I do not want you to hold it."
Atticus, states proudly: "No, but I can use a spreader!"
Me: "A spreader?" as I wonder if he is talking about a butter knife.....
Atticus: "A spreader can cut things too and I can use it."

Yes, he was perfectly happy and content knowing that he was old enough to use a "spreader". Ah; I love that he is no naive.

Another day, only he and this kid were playing outside when all of a sudden, Atticus comes into the house with all of his guns he takes outside to play with the group each time. He doesn't look very happy.

Us: "Atticus, are you done playing?"
Atticus: "Yes; but Aaron didn't want me to come inside."
Us: "Well, what happened?"
Atticus: "Aaron was saying things that that the devil made him say!"
Us: "He did? Well, what did he say?"
Atticus wouldn't tell us at first but we told him we needed to know. It looked like he was afraid to repeat them, but he said "He said stupid and dumb and words that the devil made him say. Why did the devil make him say those?"

Whew. But, after, Vic and I couldn't stop laughing at how serious he was when he told us this. We were so proud of him for walking away from something that made him uncomfortable! And while sometime in the past, we have discussed that the devil tempts you to do things you shouldn't, we thought it was so funny that it stuck with him and he said it! This same type of incident happened again last night, when the kid called him a "stupid dumb face". So, it may be awhile before we let him play one-on-one with this kid again.

THREE

Checkups with Grace have been a constant this week. She sings the Doc McStuffins song to me while she uses all of her doctor tools to check on me and tells me "it's time to get a "diag-nos-ees". She tells me what to say and how to react whether I should be sad or cry or tell her the medicine is yucky. She's hilarious!

So, that's about it for this week! We've had swim lessons, playdates, gymnastics and even naps. And Everly even slept from 9:15 pm to 5:30 this morning! We are ready for the weekend!

Family Book Club: The Day The Crayons Quit

On Thursday morning, we had our first Family Book Club. Following Andrea at Momfessionals blog, we copied her exact set of reading and activities. It was great because 1) I didn't have to dream up any ideas and 2) the kids liked it and it took 3 hours of our day! Here is what we did:

First, we ate donuts with sprinkles and read our book. Grace just ate the sprinkles.

Then, we watched a you tube video on how crayons are made in factories. Side note: I love mass production and love videos like this. The kids were not that impressed. We were supposed to take duplo legos and build a factory after this, but since they didn't care for the video, I decided to move on.

Next, we took white card stock and drew pictures with a white crayon. It was kind of hard for them because Atticus kept telling me he couldn't see the white. ha! But, I drew some pictures too. Then, we water colored over the paper and the white pictures showed up! Atticus liked this, but Grace REALLY liked this. This girl loves to paint.

Then, while Grace continued to work on her water coloring, Atticus and I drew giant crayons and colored them to prepare for our next activity. When we were done, the three of us went through our stock of stickers and matched the stickers to the right color on our poster. This was a hit.

 

 

Then, we went through our large bags of crayons and sorted through them to separate the broken crayons from the good ones. First, we took the wrappers off the broken ones and the kids kept telling me their crayons were naked and laughing hysterically. Oh my. And, surprisingly, they didn't get bored with this part until we were almost done. And, it took awhile. I didn't realize the glue on the crayon papers was so tough to get off. But, they both concentrated and worked on them for a long time. I think I was tired of doing it before they were! Then, we put liners in a mini muffin pan, broke up our crayons into smaller pieces and filled our muffin pan. We cooked them at 250 degrees for 10 minutes and they melted into multi-colored, muffin shaped crayons! We haven't gotten a chance to color with them yet, but they look cool!

 

 

Then, we ate lunch because our next activity included skittles and M&M's. After lunch, we opened a bag of skittles and a bag of M&M's and split them up between both kids. They could eat some and then they had to sort the rest by color and count them and color in their graph to match. I bought skittles also for the color purple since M&M's don't have purple, but the purple ones really look brown. So, next time I would just buy M&M's. Anyways, Grace only wanted her ponies to play and eat the candy and while she liked sorting and counting them, she was not interested in coloring in the rectangles. Atticus only wanted to eat them, ha! So, when I told him he could eat them after he counted and graphed them, then he got busy.

 

 

So, overall this was a great day and idea! I already have 4 other books to do Family Book Club activities and the blogger I follow is going to do some more of these this summer. So, I'm looking forward to it! Oh and the main reason this was probably such a success was because this girl decided to sleep all morning!

Friday Favorites: Weather, Recipe, Gymnastics, Conversations, and more!

Here are some of my favorite things from this past week:

ONE

After an afternoon of thunderstorms and tornadoes and watching the news constantly on the computer, Atticus and Grace decided to make a shelter for their legos and princesses and ponies. The next day:

Atticus: "Daddy are the storms over yet?"
Vic: "I think so, why?"
Atticus: "I need to know if my legos can go back to legoland or if they need to stay in their shelter."

During the storm, out of the blue, I hear:

Atticus: "Mommy, we have two options: we can take shelter or we can panic. I choose panic!" and then he runs around like a crazy 5 year old.

And a couple other funny, non-weather related statements:

Atticus (talking about Everly): "She's just so cute I can't keep my eye off her." (note that it is a singular eye; not both. Every time, he says it this way.)

Atticus talking to Everly from a few feet away: "Oh Everly; look over here." (as Everly bobbles her head around and doesn't look at him)
Me: "Everly probably can't see you very well. Babies can't see very far away when they are little."
Atticus: "Yeah, but they do have their instincts."
**um...what?"
 

TWO

These kids are really into using their imaginations lately. They will play so well together or apart and I haven't heard too many phrases of "What can I do? I don't know what to do." The funny thing is that sometimes they are SO proud of how well they are using their imaginations and will tell me. And Grace will say "ima-ination". And sometimes when they know is having fun, the other will tell me so sadly that they do not have ANY imaginations and the other one does...as if it's a tangible object.

THREE

This week, we started gymnastics for the kids at Power Sports in College Station. Or as Atticus sometimes calls it "Nim-gastics" and Grace calls it "Nim-Nastics". I get it; it's a tough word. So, we attend at 4:15 for 50 minutes every Wednesday for 6 weeks. They start out stretching together and then they break up each year (2 thru 5) into groups. This week they rotated and did trampolines, balance beams, somersaults, and hopscotch. The kids had a great time! And while Atticus isn't very limber, I was SO proud of him for trying something new, although at the end he told me "Balance beams aren't really my thing." ha! But, he really liked the trampoline. The only bad part...we were soaked through with rain when we arrived. It started POURING a few minutes before we left our house and even after trying to wait it out in the parking lot, the rain didn't stop. And, Grace fell asleep on the way over. So, after I get Atticus out and have him holding an umbrella, I get sleepy Grace out. And keep in mind it is not just raining, but POURING! Then, I tell them to start walking the long sidewalk to the covered area. I grab Everly in her carseat and thankfully have a carseat cover that kept her completely dry. So, I start walking and the kids have barely moved. Grace is getting wet and doesn't want to walk and when I do get them walking, they must think that you have to walk slower under an umbrella. Oh my goodness! I was getting drenched because I didn't have an umbrella and thought "oh I don't mind getting a little wet as long as the kids stay dry". I didn't think we would ever get to that covered area and door. Then, we get inside the door, dry off and I ask where we are supposed to go and they tell me it's the second building for their classes. Oh my. So, back under the umbrella, walking slowly, with carseat in hand, we head to the second building. At this point, I'm nervous Grace is so overwhelmed because she just woke up and is wet and cold and confused, that she may not easily go into the gym class. But, thankfully, she and Atticus were together and Atticus put his little hand on her back and led her in there. By that point, he was excited, so she was fine too. And, then the class was great! The building is two story so you have lots of windows to look through to see them in each area of the class and even on a TV monitor upstairs. So, when Atticus spotted me, he smiled and waved. But, when Grace spotted me, she smiled really big and then put her fingers in her mouth and gave me her "token silly face". It was so funny because the other kids were doing their thing and she is looking like a crazy kid! Hopefully there will be no rain next week because this week was really fun for the kids!

 Here they are stretching in their class.

 Here is Atticus on the trampoline.

 Here is Grace on the balance beam; we could watch her on the TV screen.

FOUR

We started Family Book Club this week. We read the book The Day The Crayons Quit and did a bunch of activities associated with it. I copied this exact idea and every activity from a blog I follow. I plan to do some more this summer and just copy her ideas. I have these grand ideas to get on pinterest and dream these up on my own, but let's be honest here....3 kids. Anyways, I am going to blog about Family Book Club in a separate post. But, it took 3 hours of our day and was a success!

FIVE

One of my favorite things this week involved conversations with Grace. She is hilarious. The other day, while she and Atticus were playing, I heard them calling each other "Sweetie" and "honey". And, yesterday while I went to check on Everly, who was crying and up from her nap, Grace followed me in there and said "Evva-wee, sweetie, what's wrong?"  

Everything she can try lately is said with pride: "I do it myseff!"

She also knows what a selfie is. And yesterday she brought me her toy makeup mirror and said "Mom, wetts take a seffie". 

SIX

The kids have been playing outside a lot lately with neighborhood friends. So, yesterday, I took a photo of Vic in front of our house. Check out the difference in both trees. The tree on the bottom is the same tree as in the top picture on the right. We moved into our house 7 years ago in July and this is how much it has grown. Vic loves his trees and really does a great job trimming them each year and helping them grow!

SEVEN

Meals. We had 13 people bring us food after we had Everly. I was shocked. We got evening meals, breakfast muffins, desserts, and some even brought Atticus and Grace gifts as well. And, it was amazing! Knowing that dinner was coming or having a sweet or treat for the kids was just so fun. If you know someone who is having a baby, do something for them. They will appreciate it so much! Anyways, this recipe is my favorite this week. Someone brought it to us as one of our evening meals and it was so tasty. I even made it for a friend this week who had a baby. It's easy and still filling for an evening meal...especially if you eat as many in one sitting as Vic and I can eat. Plus, the kids liked it! Here it is:

Hawaiian Ham and Swiss Sliders

Ingredients:

1 large packages Hawaiian Sweet Dinner Rolls 

1 package deli sandwich ham (or about 3/4 pound)

12 Swiss cheese slices (we also have used provolone)

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 Tbsp. poppy seeds

1 1/2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

1 1/2 tsp. brown or dijon mustard

1 tsp. onion powder

Slice tops from rolls and place bottoms in baking pan. Layer ham and cheese on rolls. Replace tops. Combine butter, poppy seeds, Worcestershire, mustard and onion powder and mix well. Drizzle over rolls. Refrigerate until butter is firm or overnight. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Uncover and cook 2 additional minutes. Serve warm or cold. 

EIGHT

And, finally, my last favorite of the week is this little 7 week old girl, who by the way, has slept 12 to 13 hours in a row starting at about midnight to about 1 the next day and only waking for about an hour and a half in the middle to nurse. Amazing! The other two did NOT do this. Fingers crossed that it will last! However, the not so easy side...from about 6 to midnight, she is only happy when held, eating or asleep in your arms and if she's awake, she prefers that you are walking her around. She knows it's the end of the day and we have two other kids, right?