Thursday, January 28, 2010

Home behavior vs. School behavoir

I've been wanting to write this post for the past few days, but due to sick kids and a busy week I haven't had time. My kids got their report cards last week... one was very good, and the other could have been better.

My husband was quite surprised by the comment that Ryan's kindergarten teacher wrote. "Ryan is a joy!" He thought she hadn't met Ryan and was talking about some other kid. LOL. It's funny because I remember going to Lucas first confrence in Kindergarten wondering if the teacher had confused him for someone else. She told me how quiet and shy Lucas was, and I was just thinking in my head 'are you sure you're talking about MY child?'. Lucas is the kid who started talking in sentances when he was 12mos. old and hasn't stopped talking ever since!

My boys are both very well behaved at school, which is great, but I wish they were so well behaved at home too. I remember my mom telling me when I was younger that if your kids are well behaved at school, you're doing something right. It's true that often our kids are better for others than they are for us. It means that they trust us, and can be their worst for us and know that we will still love them. So... I must be doing something right.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Mommy Confessions

I read a post on another blog - http://chasingcheerios.blogspot.com/ and I could relate to a lot of what she posted! She started a confessions post that she got from another blog too. Years ago I started a blog called Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Mom but unfortunatley I didn't keep it up. Here is a link to it - http://confessionsofastayathomemom.blogspot.com/

Soo... my mommy confessions for today:
- I hate, hate, hate cleaning, and my house gets messy super fast. Sometimes I let it go all week and then just do a big cleaning on the weekends.
- My older kids still use sippy cups just so they won't spill on the furniture and carpets. (Yes, they eat in the living room!)
- My kids watch too much tv and play too many video games. They also eat too much junk food.
- I hate the cold and my husband hates the outdoors so we bascially 'hybernate' all winter long. We force ourselves to take them out once or twice to go sledding or something but that's about it. I do enjoy taking them out when the weather is nice though.
- Since I found out I was pregnant I have lived in pj pants and I'm just now finally getting back into wearing my jeans.
- On weekends, my oldest will wear his same clothes from friday all the way until sunday night when he takes a shower. Bad I know!

That's it for now! Feel free to share your confessions too!

Friday, January 15, 2010

Meal Plan for week of 1/17

Got my meal plan for next week done!

Mexican Pasta Skillet
S & S meatballs - we didn't end up having these this week (we had Arby's instead), so I'll make them next week!
Creamy Chicken Pasta bake
Baked Potato Soup
Cheesy Beef and Macaroni
Parmesan Chicken
Tacos

Thursday, January 14, 2010

6 Weeks




Wow! It's hard to believe that Katy is six weeks old today. My baby girl is growing so fast already. She now weighs over 9lbs. and has grown 2in. since she was born. She's now fitting quite nicely into 0-3 clothes and size 1 diapers. She just started smiling at me this week too! I love those baby smiles! She hasn't been feeling well, and she still has a fussy period in the evenings but hopefully those things will be getting better soon. Some people think she looks like me and others say she looks just like my boys (who look a lot like my husband). I just think she's pretty cute! ;)

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

What's for lunch?

I always seem to get in a terrible 'lunch rut' with the kids, so I could always use some ideas for cheap, easy, relatively healthy, kid-friendly lunches! Typically, we have grilled cheese sandwiches, soup, cheese pizza or mini-pizzas on english muffins, cheese quesadillas, or macaroni and cheese... that's a lot of cheese! LOL. Occasionally we have chicken nuggets, fish sticks, corn dogs, or hotdogs. They sometimes will eat a meat sandwich or a pb sandwich, but they don't like mayo, tuna, hard boiled eggs, or jelly. I give them cut up apples, grapes, or applesauce w/ lunch. Sometimes we have peas, carrots, or corn for veggies if it goes with what else we are having.

Last week we were running low on groceries and I came up with a neat easy lunch idea - a "dipping" lunch. They had cheese quesadillas with salsa to dip, cut-up apples with peanut butter to dip, and baby carrots with ranch to dip. Anyone have any other fun lunch ideas?

Friday, January 8, 2010

Meal Plan for week of 1/10

Here is next week's meal plan to get me started on my New Year's Resolutions!

Homemade Chicken pot pie
Lasagna w/ salad
Sweet & Sour meatballs in the crockpot, w/ rice and stirfry veggies
Easy Southwestern Soup w/ dinner rolls
Farmhouse chicken dinner w/ rice and carrots
Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and peas
Pizza (either frozen or delivery)

So that's my plan for next week's dinners/suppers, whatever you want to call them. I never plan certain meals for certain days because I decide what to make based on what I'm in the mood for that day, considering I'm the one who has to cook it! :)

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

New Years Resolutions

I've sat down to make this post about 3 times now, but every time I try the baby wakes up! :) So, last year I made a list of about 10 goals for the year and I've done okay on about half of them and the other half... not so much! So this year I'm just going to start with a few goals and really work on them until they become habits! So, my New Years Resolutions are:

1. Clean House. I often get behind w/ the house cleaning and things can get very messy very quickly! So, my goal is to do 2 loads of dishes, and 2 loads of laundry every day - one in the morning, and one in the afternoon/evening. To be sure and get the laundry folded and put away each time! I don't mind laundry, but I never like folding it all and putting it away and we end up living out of laundry baskets, so I need to work on doing it right away! The kids and I are also going to do a "10 minute tidy' each day when they get home from school and the whole family each night before bed! I'm going to start following this plan: http://www.justmommies.com/articles/home-organization-plan.php for home organization and cleaning today! I have tried flylady twice in the past and failed, but I think this plan is much more 'doable' for me.

2. Meal Planning. This I tend to go in spurts with... I'll do really good for a while and then I slack on it. I think that by keeping up w/ the menu planning I can be sure and get all the groceries that we need when we are at the store, and avoid multiple trips. Tied into this is eating out less and eating better... it's way to easy to have my husband pick up something on his way home from work when I don't feel like making anything. Plus, we could all stand to eat better all the time! So, hopefully this will save us a little money and get us to eat healthier too!

3. Figure out bedtime routine. This is something that I need to get figured out still... I haven't been able to read the kids bedtime stories much since the baby was born. Also, we do baths/showers every other night which has always worked just fine but then sometimes on the non-bath nights I forget to remind the kids to brush their teeth! So I want to make sure they are doing that every night, and find a way to read books again w/ out the baby crying. Our bedtime has just been soo rushed and stressed and I want that to change.

4. Friday Night Family Nights. This was something we started a few years ago, and actually we do pretty good w/ it but I wanted to list it here as a goal so that I can make sure we keep up with it. I know soon enough the big kids won't want to spend much time w/ us as a family, and certainly not on Friday nights! LOL. But what we do is on Wed. evening at supper we plan out what we will do for family night on Friday. We all get to make suggestions for what we will eat that night and what we will do. We usually will do something like play board games, rent movies, play cards, or go bowling. We will order pizza or I make tacos or something that everyone likes. It's fun once we are all participating, but its just the getting everyone to want to participate that doesn't always happen. The kids love it though!

Okay, so I'm starting my resolutions a few days into the new year but today is the kids first day back at school and so I'm hoping that will help me to get into more of a routine. Wish me luck!