because it is SO boring at night without john here. and because i’ve gotten a few emails about it. not quite as cute as the first day – but still food! she ate like 10% of her lunch the first day. i knew it was too much as i packed it, but i filled the box anyway. luckily it never goes to waste – our little scavenger (norah), finishes off her lunch when she gets home. worked out well all last year, too!
thursday’s lunch. half an orange, pirate booty, peperoni & cheese sandwich, two newman’s own newtons, and raisins and cashews.
snack, in a lock & lock container. other half of orange and organic grammy sammy. (i usually don’t buy that kinda stuff, but bought some “first week of school treats” – she didn’t like anyway. gave it to a friend :/)
friday’s lunch. sassy container – veggie pasta salad, grapes, dried cherries, and chocorooms. home-made frozen yogurt pop (basically a frozen smoothie. yogurt and frz berries {strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries}, blended). LINK to the pop molds.
for snack she just had a cascadian farms granola bar. i’m going to make some more granola bars this weekend for next week. i want to try a new recipe, though. mine is a little too heavy.
i’ve been making the middle two snack boxes, too, when i put together kayleigh’s lunch the night before. it’s worked out well, because it makes it easier to give them good choices, instead of grabbing whatever is easiest for me when the “i’m huuuuungy” ’s start.
this is the dr. sears nibble tray. it has a snap off section on the end that can be put in the freezer for dips, ect. we don’t do many dips, though. i swear, the carrots aren’t rotten. i hate when they start to dry out. :/
this cute little box is from border’s (bookstore)
the top
of course i can’t make a post without a picture of one of my goofballs.
here is charlotte’s mohawk the day she was born, and this morning. both were accomplished with no styling from mom or dad. gotta love bedhead!
so after dinner last night we had some wild weather. lots of rain – fast. some hail, and a ton of wind. once it started to calm down, kayleigh asked if they could go get their rain stuff on & go splash. i told them once the kitchen was clean – and man – that got done quick! norah kept asking, and did not stop until she got out there! it was a blast, and i’m glad i let them do it. kids are supposed to get dirty. but sometimes after a long day, adding a pile of wet clothes to the list of things to do, doesn’t sound too thrilling – but it’s always worth it in the end!
ethan cracks me up. he NEEDED john’s goggles. and he kept them on the whole time!
poor charlotte hung out in the garage so i didn’t look like a total crazy mom! she was really confused as to what all the hub-bub was about!
here is my second grader! she had a great day, i am glad! her friend across the street is in her class this year, along with a few other old friends! here is the first day of first grade, and the first day of kindergarten to compare (so happy we don’t do the bus anymore)!
and just for fun … her lunch and snack, minus water. i waaay over packed her lunch, lol!
i made her a veggie wrap ((what she asked for), with a little bottle of dressing next to it, strawberries, some weird fruit dip i made, grapes, pep/cheese skewer, panda snacks, & an archer farms fruit leather cut into flowers.
snack was a checkered 1/2 apple with pb and two fig newman’s.
ethan’s first day is in a week. what will i do all day with only two kids at home??
just a side note – it is super hard to nail focus in a pitch black room, lol! so they love the dolls. i am glad. they were a gift from my family – and i hoped they wouldn’t be an expensive flop! the only negative so far has been rolling into charlotte’s daddy doll at night and getting totally freaked out hearing it talk. i get way too spooked out sleeping in the house without john, let alone hearing voices in my bed at 2am! tomorrow is the first day of school for kayleigh. she told me she has school-itis, ha! she said she is so excited, but so scared, too. thankfully she’s already met her teacher a few times, so i think that will help it be a little easier for her. stay tuned for first day of school pics!
well, the big day was today. the start of our first desert deployment. it’s a little weird for all of us, because we’re used to big ship deployments with a lot of flair. today john got on a commercial plane, and flew out to california, alone. he will be in the country until after halloween, so i feel okay & not worried. yet. he may even get two weeks of leave before he flies into kuwait, so we are hopeful today was not goodbye for long. we had a meeting friday morning with his bosses and some other guys who’ve been there for an IA deployment, and it was really nice. they are actually a lot more thoughtful of the deployed member’s family. they call and check in, there are monthly functions. it was a really nerve-calming lunch.
today we tried to have a nice relaxing day. we went out to breakfast (my favorite meal to eat out!), and to our fav. park in the city for a bit after.
it was so nice out this morning, we were done at the diner by 9:30. the thing i have learned with having 4 kids is that you have to get everywhere early, while everyone is happy! plus, the smaller crowds help a lot. i don’t dare hit the mall after noon!
john picked up a small gift for each of the kids to open after he got on the plane. they were waiting at home along with the daddy dolls we got last month.. it really was a nice “lift” for an otherwise sad afternoon. ethan got a small lego set, kayleigh a baby zhuzhu, and nora a monchichi (squee!) it was a big hit, and norah is OBSESSED with her daddy doll. the minute she got it in her cute little hands, she started running around the yard with it, stopping to hug it and make it talk (there is a voice recorder in the bottom that john recorded his good nights to the kids on).
here she was saying “daddy run with me! it hard work!” oh, these kids are cute. poor johnny is going to miss so much. i hope i can keep a good record of our year without him so he doesn’t feel as far.
oh no. kayleigh just got out of bed teary eyed saying “i already miss daddy.” …. oh this is going to be one long year. :/
John and I were watching videos off the computer through the Playstation the other night. We noticed that there are less and less videos lately, compared to the dozens each month when the big kids were little. I am trying to change that, and we have a Flip HD on the way to help with it since i STINK with manual focusing the videos on the D90.
Just a quickie of Charlotte pulling up. Notice how her helpful big sis takes her toy & replaces it with a pretzel rod? lol!
i am slackin’ here! john leaves in a week (actually 8 days – yes i’m counting!), and then our count down starts. 369 days. what a long year this is going to be. i hope the kids deal with it okay, it’s been a long time since he’s been gone. we were totally spoiled by having him around so long on shore duty. will will miss him a lot. it is good for his career, though, so we’re just trying to look at the silver linings. i haven’t been taking too many pictures, we’ve just been busy and enjoying our time together, but here are a few. can’t have a post without pictures!
oh – and i have to mention these things! i am not normally a gimicky kinda gal. buut these caught my eye at target the other day, so we picked them up and let the kids try them after dinner one night. they are little straws filled with chocolate beads. you drink white milk with it, which turns into chocolate milk as you drink it- ha! i might buy them again once to pack with lunch as a treat, but they were too funny not to share!
She turned 8 months two days ago, and we finally had some time to take pictures today. it is getting harder and harder! with john’s help, i still had to do a head swap in one picture, and a ton of cloning in the other. don’t look too closely – it’s sloppy!
SO! charlotte is eight months old now. she looooves pulling up, crawling all over the house, and up the steps (the gates went up last week!). she’s started eating some food the past couple weeks. she loves bananas and peas. and she is great at getting the skin off grapes (i cut them up in like 16 pieces and she eats them, but spits out the skin). she’s napping in bed more and more, and her red hair is getting these wild curls – just like her gene twin, ethan, did at this age. happy 8 months charlie girl!
remember, click the “month birthday” tag at the end to see ‘em all!
a few months ago, we went to this awesome little cupcake shop in parker,Nomélie Cupcakes. there is a super fun park right down the street, so we stopped in one day after the park and the c-cakes were YUMMY! In usual mamarazzi fashion, i had camera in hand. The owner, Selah, asked if I wouldn’t mind sending her some of the pictures for her site. Here is a link to that blogpost -sunny days and cupcakes!. I sent them to her and not only is john’s hand on her homepage, but she used a pic in a print ad, also! For thanks, she told us to come by for a dozen cupcakes on the house. We finally got down there yesterday. Yum, yum. I may or may not have eaten 4 yesterday alone, & may or may not have been full until 9am this morning. OMG. lol they are good! but we did make the mistake of going to get cupcakes, THEN the park. on a 97 degree day.
before
after, lol!! hey – how’d that half eaten one get in there? darn prairie dogs ….
guess they aren’t joking.
good news, though. they still taste good all melty.
they were good, but i don’t know if i’ll be able to eat another one for a good long while! i think i od’d on cupcakes. whew.
on a totally different note…. i took some really cruddy pics of the adorable “daddy and me” board book i had printed at pint size productions. the pictures do it no justice, though, and i meant to take some more … but we’re all crazy busy around here again! so just note that the book is ADORABLE! and looks nothing like my crappy pictures. I think this will be a great way for charlotte to remember john while he’s gone. They also have personalized Sandra Boynton book whick would have been killer when Kayleigh was little (now we own almost all of them it might be overkill!).
it will definitely be able to take a beating!! and it helps that charlotte totally loves it, too! i kept all the files in case I need an emergency backup book while he’s gone!
that is it for now! trying to catch up on housework tonight. trying to clean while the kids are awake is impossible.
not quite as cute as the first day – but still food! she ate like 10% of her lunch the first day. i knew it was too much as i packed it, but i filled the box anyway. luckily it never goes to waste – our little scavenger (norah), finishes off her lunch when she gets home. worked out well all last year, too!
