My To Do Lists...

Since it is Monday and I am in the office, I usually write a to do list of all the things I have to get done this week. I did it today and this is what it looks like...
I don't know if you can see it, but the left column is School stuff, the middle column is Home, and the right column is Work. OH MAN THAT IS A LOT OF STUFF.
And even though the school one has only 3 things they include a final exam, putting together a resource notebook, and an entire presentation on Japan's involvement in WW2!! All due by next Tuesday.

Yet, here I am, blogging for the second time in a week.

GET TO WORK, SELF!

A Day at Eden Park

On the 24th I am taking (so far) 14 preteens downtown for a convention and for two hours of that weekend our group has a play time. For our play time I am sending them on a picture taking scavenger hunt around Eden Park (It is going to be AWESOME). To prepare for the hunt, the family and I went to Eden Park Saturday and I took 118 pictures. Some of them were for the hunt and some of them just for fun. Here are the ones that are my favorite. I hope you enjoy them.




Also, I think I am going to start working really hard to blog at least once a week.

The Adventures of the Tooth Fairy

As promised here is what happened last weekend.

Sydney lost her third tooth. She had been working on loosing it for about a month and then in the middle of eating spaghetti at Skyline out it popped. And for your information, having someone's tooth fall out while you are eating, is DISGUSTING.

Earlier in the evening Sydney came into the kitchen and explained, aloud, that the Tooth Fairy was not to take her tooth, and how Sydney was going to write the Tooth Fairy a letter. I asked her why she was telling us this again. Her reply was "Well, the Tooth Fairy cannot read minds. So in order for her to know what to do you have to say it out loud." I just loved this, because of all the fictional characters that come and visit your house, the Tooth Fairy is the only one we do in our house. (well really its the only one I do in our house, Rob thinks the whole things is silly) Then after we made got home from Skyline, with the tooth securely in a baggie, Sydney comes out of her bedroom with a homemade envelope with a letter inside. I asked her what it was and she said that it was a letter to the Tooth Fairy.

Fast forward to Tooth Fairy time. In comes the Tooth Fairy and picks up the tooth and a letter. She opens it and this is what the letter said:

"Dear Tooth Fairy
Leave me a note Thank you
And be careful if you go on the toy box"
(which by the way was a total mess)

Needless to say the Tooth Fairy found some note cards just for this occasion and left a reply.

In the morning, the note was the talk of the house. You see, Henry had whispered to me before he went to bed that I should leave Sydney a note, so Henry said that I had left Sydney the note. Sydney's reply was, Mom doesn't have these note cards!

Maybe it is wrong to lie to my children about the existence of a fairy that comes in and "takes" your teeth (in Sydney's case it is just placing them in my jewelery box) and leaves you money instead. But I think that it is so exciting to see my children's minds just make up a whole world beyond theirs made up of teeth and fairies and American currency. And to my defense the Tooth Fairy is not affiliated with any Christian holiday.

Here is a picture of Sydney's letter. Notice the Tooth Fairy, I love her and her wings and her crown.

Yet again, I need your help.

If you ask Rob he will tell you this same thing, but I am the most indecisive person, EVER. I just had to call him to make a decision about which hotel to reserve for my youth group. And now I need another decision to be made and I need help, so who better to ask than the people who read my blog (which I think is just about 4 people, but I'm linking this to my facebook page so maybe more people will respond).

First a little bit of background, on April 24 and 25 I am taking a group of 4th-6th graders downtown for a convention and part of that convention is a "Plug 'N' Play" thing where our group goes out for about 3 hours to hang out together and do really fun stuff. My dilemma is where should I take them? I like to think that I know a few things about the city and where we can go, but I want to take them somewhere that is REALLY neat and someplace they wouldn't usually go if they were downtown. Also, it has to be inexpensive. OH, and there is going to be 16 kids and 4 adults. I was thinking something like going to Eden Park, but what would we do there for 3 hours. Right now it just dawned on me, what about a scavenger hunt... that would be really fun!!

Well, if anyone out there has any ideas feel free to reply to this message.

And, if you are tired of helping me with my indecisiveness I'm going to blog tonight about an amazing thing that happened last weekend when Syd lost her tooth.

Needed: Creative Help

In the preschool rooms of my Children's Ministries all the kids have their own name tags. This creates a problems because there is NO place to put all these tags in an organized manner and, for the life of me, I cannot think of anyway to accomplish something that would work. What I want is something where the tags can be visible and easily accessible. For my toddlers and my preschoolers I want something where they can get their own tags by themselves and for my babies, something that is easy for the moms to get when they are bringing all the baby stuff in.

The reason I am writing about this is, because two (or more) heads are better than one. Would anyone reading this have any ideas about what I can do to help organized the name tags? They look like this... (that's about 3.5 inches wide and 2.5 inches tall)

To start your mind juices bubbling I was thinking of something with hooks on a board where each tag could hang, but then I realized that the tags have nothing to hang on the hooks with....

So, maybe you can help, maybe you just like to read my posts, maybe I bore you to death and the only reason you read this is because your life is very dull (which I hope is not the case). Whichever the case, let me know what you think.

Thanks

Dinner Time

Tonight I made dinner, which usually isn't anything to write a blog about, but tonight is special because the meal I made I semi invented it all by myself. I am not really a big experimenter in the kitchen, which is to say that I don't just start throwing stuff together and watch what happens. I always have a recipe and I follow it exactly (at least the first time). Tonight though was not the case and I wanted to share the amazing recipe with my readers (which I think is only about 2, so Chris and Kelly if you try it I hope you like it too).

A side note before I begin: When I said "semi" a minute ago what I meant was that I found a recipe on allrecipes.com which gave me the idea for what I made, and I went from there.

My Recipe (Maybe we should call it, Pasta-Chicken-Vegi Goodness)

1ish pound of chicken
A smidge bit of vegetable oil (or other type of oil) for cooking chicken
Pepper
1lb box of rotini pasta
1 bag of mixed vegetables, frozen(We used broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots since my kids like all of those)
1 can of Cream of Chicken Soup
1/2 ish can of milk (by can I mean use the soup can)
2 cups of cheese

Instructions for Cooking
1. Thaw chicken; While the chicken is thawing cook the pasta as directed on the box.
2. When the chicken is thawed cut chicken into cubes and cook in a skillet until about 3/4 of the chicken is cooked on the outside. Sprinkle pepper on the cooking chicken (as much as you want).
2.5 When the pasta has about 3 minutes left to cook pour the whole bag of mixed, frozen vegetables in to the pot with the pasta. Obviously stir. When the pasta is finished cooking drain the whole thing and set aside until the chicken is finished.
3. When 3/4 of the chicken is cooked on the outside pour the soup and milk in with it, into the skillet. (When I made mine I didn't drain any of the water out of the pan, so I just let it boil a little longer. Also, I mixed the soup and milk together before I poured it into the chicken)
4. Let the chicken/soup continue to cook for about 5 minutes on Med/High heat; until the chicken is finished or the soup isn't as thin. Stir regularly.
5. At 5 minutes dump the cheese into the chicken and stir until it is melted and mixed thoroughly. (Be careful here, the cheese might burn if you are stirring consistently)
6. When the chicken is finished and the cheese is melted pour the whole pan over the pasta and vegetables and mix together.
7. Serve.

The whole dish from start to finish maybe took 30 minutes and what is even better my kids LOVED it. (I don't know about Rob though he was out tonight)

Well, I am just so proud of my accomplishment tonight I had to tell someone. I hope that you think it sounds as yummy as I think it is and that you try it too. Enjoy!

Exciting stuff!

This is my second'ish blog about things that I have found online and i am not making it a trend or anything it just has happened. But I wanted to share this picture, which I am sure everyone has seen, anyway. When I see the picture it kind of makes me really happy. Which isn't to say that I think that everything is going to be better because Barack Obama is our soon-to-be president, its just to say that how exciting is it that instead of 5 old, white guys standing in a line smiling it 4 old, white guys and 1 tall, youngish, black guy. Just thought I would share that thought, even though I don't think my words are saying all that the picture means to me.