What's For Dinner? October Week 1

Veggie bag from September 27th:

Contents: 1 butternut squash, 1 bunch kale, 1 head green cabbage, 1 kohlrabi, 1 bunch green leaf lettuce, 1 bunch basil, 2 potatoes, 2 green peppers, 1 onion and 2 tomatoes.

Menu for the week of September 30 - October 7...

1) can't remember Saturday...

2) ordered pizza on our anniversary

3) steak and green salads on karate night 'cause Craig could grill while I took Will to class

4) Kale and Cannellini Soup again using our CSA kale on Tuesday night:

We ate outside this night and it was just a gorgeous evening.

(They are always making scrunchy faces at each other.)

For dessert: Ultimate Brownies.

I made them not too long ago and they were a huge hit with Craig, so I made them again... this time, with the marshmallows they called for on top and he loved them. Did I post that recipe last time?

Mmm... chocolate.

5) Cabbage Roll Casserole from our CSA newsletter on Wednesday night:

(basically pigs in the blanket without the rolling of the "pigs"... cabbage gets chopped instead and everything gets tossed together and baked in a 13x9)

Fruit & cheese plate along side (to share) plus bread and butter.

I've learned this year that I really do like cabbage! I ALWAYS rejected pigs in the blanket growing up, but I've really wanted to give it another chance. Especially because I have loved raw cabbage in various recipes (or plain) all summer long. And this recipe was SO easy and SO good! The kids ate it very well without complaints and it tasted even better the second day, as expected with cabbage.

Cabbage Roll Casserole

1# ground beef

1/2 cup chopped onion

1 (14oz) can tomato sauce

1 3/4# chopped cabbage

1/2 cup uncooked white rice

1/2 tsp salt

1 (14oz) can beef broth

Preheat oven to 350. In a large skillet, brown beef until done and drain fat. In a large mixing bowl, combine onion, tomato sauce, cabbage, rice and salt. Add meat and mix all together. Pour into a 13x9 baking dish. Pour broth over meat mixture and bake, covered, for 1 hour. Stir, replace cover and bake for another 30 minutes. (I don't think mine ever got stirred and it was just fine.)

These past two recipes provided plenty of leftovers for Thursday and Friday too.

6) Weelicious homemade Granola...

...and later Chewy Granola Balls for treats and lunch packing.

7) And finally, another frosted zucchini cake (recipe posted earlier) for our sitter's birthday on Friday! Happy Birthday, Lisa!!!

An Active Anniversary

Sunday, October 2nd was our 7th wedding anniversary.

Haven't I heard that the 7th year is supposed to be one of the hardest for some statistical reason? Hmm... Well, I would definitely say we've had more challenges and hardships this past year than we've ever had to deal with before (job loss, financial strain, on-going family tension)... testing our relationship more than in the past. But that is the stuff that really shows you what you're made of. We are still in love - but I don't think it's the "in love" part that cements the relationship for the long haul. It's seeing how each other responds - separately and together - when the going gets tough. Keeping the foundation stable and building upward anyway, in good times and in bad. I've learned a lot about myself and about life this past year and I'm stronger for it.

Happy Anniversary, Craig! Here's to an easier 8th year and many more to come. I LOVE YOU!

So our anniversary day was VERY low key. Nothing fancy or romantic - just casual and fun. And at no point during this whole day, did I look remotely attractive. LOL Just a pony tail, a make up free face and clothes to be active in. ;-)

I was up with the kids in the morning, had breakfast and took a walk through the neighborhood with them (Will rode his bike, Soph rode in the stroller). Then, around lunch time, Craig took over daddy duty while I went with my mom and grandma to meet up with a huge group of friends and family for the ALS fundraiser walk. We were walking in honor of Tim Brooks, and in honor and memory of several other members of the Brooks family who have suffered from this horrible, debilitating, neurodegenerative disease. Tim (pushed in a wheelchair by his daughter) lead our group of ~150 people on our 2.5 mile walk. There were lots of other organized groups like ours on this walk, but we were the "Brooks' Crew".

The walk started at 1:00, so I left the kids home with Craig for a nap, but my sister and cousin brought their little ones out for the event and they were troopers! Left to right: me holding Stella, Casey holding Mya, my cousin Andrea holding Kate, my cousin Brianne holding Archie the dog and my cousin Brittany carrying Baby Surprise in her belly!
Andrea and I are 2nd cousins and just a few months apart in age. She, however, looks like she actually had a shower this morning... unlike me. :) Don't worry - I did take a shower at the end of this active day before snuggling up with Craig to watch a movie that night.

After the walk, my cousin Brianne rode home with me and stayed with the kids while Craig and I drove out to Jermaine Park in Toledo to ride their new-ish mountain bike trail. Mountain biking is something we used to do together a lot more before we had kids and now it's almost never that we get out to do it. It's nice that it's something active we can do on a semi-equal skill level. He's still better than me, but I can mostly keep up with him and I love the challenge. :) There's not many sports that I can say that about... besides running, but Craig is just not a distance runner.

Hmm... not sure why this one is still side ways?

Craig - unloading his Cannondale and my Trek. Did I mention he sold his Jeep and bought this truck? It's a GMC Sierra and he loves having a truck again. Plus, it's so nice for transporting our bikes instead of a bike rack.

The trail is nearly 4 miles with several up and downhills, lots of tree roots, rocks and other obstacles in the way, a few optional jumps and sharp turns at awkward angles... on an up or downhill. It's awesome. This trail was enough of a challenge without being too hard for riders out of practice for so long.

It was a beautiful day for a ride.

Pausing after a long stretch of zig-zagging uphill... getting ready to head down.

I miss doing this! I want to go again soon!

It felt great to be out there and it was an awesome workout.

Getting loaded back up again.

Craig really wanted to order pizza for dinner. So romantic - huh? Haha. But it was a nice cap off to our active day. We ate with the kids and then did bedtime as usual before settling in (post shower) to watch Bridesmaids and laugh our butts off.

Good times. :)

Welcome Fall!

I keep forgetting to post this, but this is the sign we made using the things we found on our "nature walk" awhile back. (Idea from Family Fun.) I love how it turned out!

Sophie's Turn At Tot School

A week ago Monday (the 26th), Craig took Will to karate and I stayed home to play with Miss Sophia. I've decided I'm going to make sure I already have dinner ready on these nights when it's Craig turn to take Will and use this rare alone time with her to do some Tot School activities. We only have about 45 minutes, but it's also the only guaranteed time I have alone with her. I've found it's much harder to do with Sophie the things I did with Will because it's much trickier to get one-on-one with her like I did with him. Will and I used to do most of our activities while Sophie napped. But now, he always wants to be included if I try to do something with just Soph. And although I can still find some simple activities that are appropriate for both kids, I'm really longing for some quiet time alone with my girl where I can give her my undivided attention and help her learn a new concept/skill.

We only did a few things this first night, but we had fun and I'm looking forward to planning more.

I remembered Will really loved this first activity. It helps a child key into their sense of sound to determine the properties of an object and identify it without seeing it. For Sophie, I just used two objects: a block and a ball. But I would like to try this again with a ball and a bean bag. I think that would have been a better combo to start with. To begin, I show her each object and we place them, one at a time, into a box and take turns gently turning/shaking the box to listen to what kind of sound it makes. I pointed out that the ball makes a rolling sound and the block makes a "thud" sound. Then I ask her to close her eyes while I stick just one object in the box and hide the other behind my back. I tilt the box back and forth gently and put a really curious look on my face and she LOVED it. She'd get a huge smile on her face and, though she didn't always guess correctly, she did get better as we went on. Then I let her reverse rolls and she got to pick what went in the box and have me guess.

The next day, I found a sturdier box since this one was kinda' flimsy.

Next, we did some water color mixing with food-colored water in an ice cube tray. I gave her a small spoon and a medicine dropper to transfer and blend the colored waters. She hasn't quite got the medicine dropper figured out yet.

I've mentioned before that she loves sequencing things. Here, I gave her my measuring cups and she helped me place them in order, biggest to smallest.

Then nesting them together is fun practice too. (P.S. sorry for the crotch shot, Soph!)

This is actually why I selected the Matryoshka doll set for her when we were in Traverse City. I knew it would be perfect for her. So we lined them up like this and practiced saying "smallest... bigger... bigger... bigger... ... biggest!" and "biggest... smaller... smaller... ... smallest!"

Here she was looking out the window for "Slippers" the cat. Have I mentioned him (her?) yet? We've adopted a new outdoor cat. Haha - not really. But there's this cat that comes around just about every day to eat the food scraps that we throw into the field. (We don't have a garbage disposal and we burn our garbage, so food scraps just go into the field to "compost".) It is black with white feet, so Will named him "Slippers". He's fattened up a good deal since we first started seeing him a few months ago! :) And we're pretty sure he sometimes sleeps on our front or back porch. So the kids have a good time looking out for him each day... usually around dinner time.

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Also, here are a bunch of random old pics of Tot School type activities this year.

February: pinching clothes pins around an empty plastic container. (This is tricky for Sophie yet.)

March: counting bubbles (marbles) above each numbered fish.

Summer: Phonics game from Rethman family. First letter sounds are far too easy anymore. He breezes through these in no time. But he still enjoys them, so I'm sure it's still good practice.

Transferring marbles into a silicone star-mold tray using a melon baller.

Threading like colored pony beads onto pipe cleaners, which have been poked into a Styrofoam disc. Reeeally good fine motor work!

Can you see the wetness below her right eye? She was crying about something unnecessary and this is often what I do to redirect her. She instantly stops her tears and begins to focus. ;)

Color matching (very similar colors!) using two sets of the same paint samples and some clothes pins. One set of paint samples gets clipped apart and glued to a clothes pin and then they can practice pinching clothes pins while keeping a good eye for subtle color differences.

Again, the pinching part is still tricky for Sophie, but she'll line up the colors beside their appropriate match and then Will clips them on for her. She does try though.

Another old favorite activity: "Which is different?" Strips of colored cardstock and LOTS of stickers. All stickers are the same on each strip, except for one. "Which is different?"

Will liked playing teacher and explaining this to Sophie.

Fall: threading ditalini pasta (teeny tiny rings) onto a piece of uncooked spaghetti. I used a tiny pot of play dough to hold the spaghetti upright.

Will has more patience with this type of work than Sophie. He filled his spaghetti to the top!