What's For Dinner? Week 3

{Week of March 17-23}

But first! Here's a not-so-impressive picture of the salted caramel chocolate chip cookie bars from last week. I'm blaming the camera again. They were really good and really rich!

On the menu this week:

-olive bread from Pinterest
-"melt in your mouth chicken breast" also from Pinterest (mine didn't brown up like the picture?)

{Served with a side salad, I thought this was sooooo good! And my kitchen smelled amazing while the chicken and bread were cooking. However, neither Craig nor the kids liked these recipes at all. Well, Soph did eat the bread, I guess. :( }

-chicken panini with arugula (I used spinach), provolone and chipotle mayo... also from Pinterest

{Kids were excited to taste these but ultimately thought the chipotle peppers were too hot. Craig liked them.}

-cheeseburgers on the grill

-baked potato soup

{I think I saw this on Pinterest, but apparently I didn't pin it 'cause it's not on my board!}

{Tasted so yummy with a glass of Pinot!}

It was a yummy week!

What We've Been Reading

I know these posts are probably SUPER boring unless you're a library regular with your own children of similar age to mine... but I do them as much for my own reference (and I refer back a lot, actually!) as I do for the small chance that others may want some new childrens book ideas. I am constantly on the look out for new book recommendations or blogs that review weekly book lists.

For awhile, when I began writing these posts, I was actually giving a description of what each book we read was about. And I DO realize that that would probably be most helpful to you if you are reading for ideas. But I'm sorry to tell you, that takes far too long anymore. I don't have the time for that. I do, however, still look back at our previous lists for several reasons, the biggest being for gift ideas. Whenever a holiday or birthday is approaching, I always go back to our book lists to remember the favorites that we enjoyed and might want to add to our own personal library at home. I use the lists when buying gifts for my nieces as well!

Another reason is to help me build new book lists for our upcoming library trips. If I haven't found any real inspiration recently for new titles/authors, I'll just browse my book posts and jot down authors of books that we especially enjoyed in the past. Then I'll search that particular author on the library's online catalog for new title ideas. I've used this search method a lot lately. Right now, my biggest resources are the Scholastic order forms that come home from preschool, and the pages of childrens books available for order (to build classroom libraries) in the huge Lakeshore catalog I received a couple months ago. Otherwise, we've been focusing on a couple specific authors and reading anything they've written that sounds interesting.

So, now that you've heard the big justification for the purpose of this post...

Here's what we've been reading for the past few weeks. I'll probably just jot notes on our favorites or ones that stood out.

I adore Amy Krouse Rosenthal's books. This is a new one that came out just in time for Valentine's Day!

Here's another one of hers:

Sophie liked this one a lot. About the anxiety and intimidation of the first day of school. And shoot! I just deleted the picture of A Child's Goodnight Prayer. She loved that one too.

Lots of animal books.
Just cute.

Love Tana Hoban. Enough said.
Reading...

A HUGE favorite this week. Sophie adores this song and this book's expanded version of the song.

We love Bread and Jam for Frances, so these were an easy must.

I LOVED this book! "Baby, come away..." on adventures with the bird, the fish, the cat and the dog. And then, at the end, come back home to mama's arms. So sweet. I'd like to own this one.

Hehe. :-) Love this title. Cute, rhymey story.

This one's a little slow... but Will found it funny.

Eat Your Peas, Ivy Louise! is just fun to say! :-) Both kids loved it and giggled through the whole thing... about 80 times. It was requested daily. Sophie also liked the counting part of the Planting Seeds book.

Still love Tana Hoban. Enough said.

Whoops. Forgot we kept this book for two weeks. Anyway, Follow Me is just very dreamy and colorful with illustrations. The concept of the story is similar to Baby, Come Away but without animals.

Cute titles. Cute stories.

I'm so tired of dinorsaur books. They're usually just a bunch of facts and not easy to read like a story at bedtime. But Will ALWAYS requests them. And now that he's reading independently, I oblige him simply because I don't have to read them to him! This one, however, was pretty good and I may consider buying it as a reference for him... even though he already has a million dinosaur books. Working on shapes with Sophie. Ehhh... didn't like it as much as I thought I would.

Mo Willems books. Easily our #1 favorite author lately. Both kids ADORE his books.

More reading...

Demolition is by the author of Roadwork, which we own and love. And the Jeff Foxworthy book is a fun I Spy type book.

Silly tales.

I enjoyed these books and so did Will. I only read them to him - not Sophie - because they're a little more advanced and require a longer attention span. Very Earthy. And The Raft reminds me of Saturdays and Teacakes. It's that sort of heart-warming feeling.

Is it planting season yet? We can't wait! Sophie and I went out and just dug in the dirt of our garden with the gardening tools this week. For no reason. Oh wait... Yes, there was a reason. She wanted to see some worms. :-)

These were selected for Sophie's entertainment while I searched for books during our last visit. We ended up just bringing them home too.

Gail Gibbons is fantastic for specific topics and information books.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

The end! :)

Will-isms

1) (Feb) Will to Lisa (our babysitter) at nap time: "Every time I close my eyes, they just keep popping open!"
2) (Feb) Walking out to the garage, the rain is sprinkling lightly. Will says "If only I had my dinosaur umbrella". If only... haha!
3) (Feb) Will to Sophie at the dinner table: "Let me explain something to you, Sophie..." Haha!
And later, when she was refusing to eat the rest of her plate: "Sophie, look at my face... Do I look happy?" [Makes a disappointed face as Sophie says "no".] "Then you better eat your food so I can look happy."
4) (Feb) Getting dressed by himself in the morning, Will pulled a buttoned henley shirt over his head without unbuttoning it. (No easy task given his head circumference!) Craig asked Will if that was difficult. Will said: "No, it wasn't that hard... I just used my might." LOL :-)
5) (Feb) I asked Will what I should put in his lunch tomorrow. He taps his lip with one finger and says "hmm..." Then he lists a bunch of fruits and vegetables and says: "And what should I have for my grain? Maybe cereal? Ooh! And for my protein, I want peanuts!" I heart that kid. :-) Covering all his bases! Makes mama proud.
6) (Feb) Will has recently become sensitive to the way his... um... penis feels in his underwear. As in, how it's positioned. He says he wants it pointing up. ;-) Anyway, he's been frequently sticking his hand down his pants to adjust himself and we are constantly telling him he needs to do that from the outside of his clothes and try to do it more privately. Once, after Craig corrected him again, he told Craig: "But this is kind of my thing... It's what I do." Haha!
7) (Feb) Will doesn't want to sleep alone all of a sudden. For the past couple months, he has been expressing a genuine feeling of loneliness at bedtime and he gets really upset about the idea of having no one with him throughout the night. I've contemplated putting the kids together on occasion, but I really think that would backfire. Some nights are better than others. When I'm able, I will lay with him briefly while he's falling asleep. One night in particular, I was reading my book by flashlight beside him in his bed and told him to close his eyes and try to sleep. He told me: "If you see my eyes blink, it's just because I'm trying to make my eyelashes comfortable." :-)
8) (Mar) Another night after kids were in bed, Craig and I were watching a movie in our room (which is upstairs). We could hear will sneaking up the steps so we paused the movie and asked: "Will, what are you doing?" He replied: "I heard a noise and I followed the trail of sound. I ran very quick to the bottom of the steps and then I came up the first few very medium so you wouldn't hear me."
9) (Mar) Will, confused at something that I absentmindedly said wrong, asked: "Is that an expression?" LOL
We'd been discussing expressions ever since he questioned my instructing him to "hop" in the tub or tell him I was going to "run" to the store.
10) (Mar) Will got some highly complicated Transformers for Christmas. It took Craig a LONG time, but he can finally transform them for Will in about 5-10 minutes a piece. I haven't a clue where to even begin with them, but Will will sometimes start and get stuck with one. So one day, when Craig was not home, Will got as far as he could and then asked me to finish it. I told him I didn't know how, which is an answer I like to conveniently hold on to simply because I don't really like doing that kind of thing. And, being the Riedeman spawn that he is, and once again proving that he is sooooo much like his daddy... Will said: "Why don't you just learn?" Dang. My cover has been blown. :(
11) (Mar) Sunday morning, I'm getting breakfast started while Will is watching a show in the living room. Without knowing what I'm doing, Wills calls to me: "Mom... could you get me a BIG stack of pancakes?" :-) I had a flash of Will Ferrell in Wedding Crashers demanding a meatloaf, although MY Will asked a lot nicer than him. But it was just funny - he must have been really hungry - that he asked for a big stack as though I would just deliver it to the living room.

A Perfect Weekend

This weekend was one of the best ever!!! The weather was absolutely perfect - I didn't even mind the storm - and I enjoyed a little bit of all my favorite things: girls night in with Nichole, date night with Craig including free babysitting, lots of family time (long bike rides, picnic lunch outside, library trip, pancake breakfast, etc), a run on Saturday, some cleaning and relaxing time on Sunday... It doesn't get any better than that! I'm closing out the weekend feeling VERY fulfilled.

Here are a bunch of pictures from our long bike ride and playground visit at Maumee Bay on Saturday morning. Will is doing so well with longer bike rides. He listens to directions very well and his endurance has improved immensely! I would guess we probably rode three miles all in all this morning. Now we just have to ditch those training wheels! Soon. Very soon. And Sophie still loves the bike trailer, which is so helpful.

Getting ready to head out on our way. We rode the loop behind the sledding hill, then wound around beside the beach to the playground on the other side of the resort, and then back to the truck.
So nice to ride leisurely without the fear of traffic. We just had to be aware of other bikers/walkers.

Still sucking her thumb. Sigh.

Don't think I ever mentioned that Craig sprained his ankle playing basketball a few weeks ago. It's still healing - and taking forEVER - but we decided a bike ride would be something we could get out and do as a family without a lot of weight-bearing strain on the ankle.

Beautiful, cloudless, blue sky. And a lighthouse in the distance.

I got my Trek bike while in college and still love it.

Chatting while riding. :-)

Love this kid... "bigger than 10,000 size seismosauruses". :)

Both kids loved the hang glider.

And the monkey bars!

Will and I attempting a piggy back hang glide. :-) We made it, but I wasn't sure he'd be able to hang on.

Heading back to the truck and then home for lunch.

We broke out the picnic table for lunch outside on the porch!

We did a second bike ride through the neighborhood on Sunday morning too.

This week is the official beginning of spring and it's freakishly going to reach 80's the next two days!!! Weee!!