Dinner Z

We have reached the end! A little bittersweet, but I'm sure we'll come up with other fun projects to do in the future. To finish off the alphabet, we were planning on having zoodles, but after I did a little more research I realized there were more interesting and healthy options for Z, so we ended up having:

zinfandel

zesty ziti with
zucchini
chorizo

zabaglione
(an Italian custard-type dessert made with orange zest and we used zinfandel in it, too)

Not bad. It was noted at dinner tonight that in the beginning, there were cute crafts pictured to highlight the letter of the meal, and now... well, now there is just wine. ;)
We had a lot of fun doing this and expanding our palette (and comfort zones!) Thanks for the idea, Erin! :)

Dinner Y

We're nearing the end! This dinner was a lot of work, but pretty yummy!


I roasted a beef roast and we had with it:

yams
yukon gold potatoes
yellow beans
yorkshire pudding

yule log

Happy Hallowe'en!

     Almost two years ago, we were given the movie Wreck-It Ralph (for Christmas from our friends with children the same age as ours), and we loved it. Since then Laura had wanted to be Vanellope Von Schweetz for Halloween. (We didn't do it last year because I wanted to do Monsters Inc. while Rachel was still a toddler).  I thought it would be cute if Josh went with her as Ralph, and he was into that idea, so we ran with it. A few weeks before Halloween rolled in, we had yet to decide on a costume for Rachel. Normally we like to do family costumes, so I was hoping she would be okay with being someone from Wreck-It Ralph too. She had at one point said she wanted to be Pluto, and for me to be Mickey, but I guess she forgot about that. Anyway, we finally settled that she would be Taffyta Muttonfudge, one of the antagonists from the movie, since she looked just like her. :)

     Laura's costume was pretty easy; I found the right colour hoodie and leggings at Target before it went out of business, and grabbed a clearance pleated uniform skirt from OshKosh at some point. They've been waiting in the closet for about a year ;). I also found her some inexpensive black boots to wear, which she can wear for every-day use, too. I wrapped medical tape around the leggings for Vanellope's mismatched stripes, and we sprayed Laura's hair with black hair spray. We already had some candy barrettes, and we supplemented with some sticky jewels. I was worried the hairspray would stain her hair (it said not for light hair on the can), but it came out in two washings (made a big mess in the tub, though!). We also tried to use real licorice for her hair tie, but it didn't work out, so we just used some red pipe cleaners. Pretty easy.


     Rachel's costume was a bit trickier (probably since we left it to the last minute), so we recruited Grandma's help. We had trouble finding the right jacket for her outfit, so we bought a pink sweater/ jacket thing at the thrift store and modified it to look like Taffyta's. Grandma made her the little tunic. I used an old pair of pink leggings that we were going to get rid of anyway and painted the white part on them. We had hand-me-down pink sneakers already (although I did see some fabulous pink sparkly sneakers for sale that I would have bought if we didn't already have footwear - she would have loved those!) I cut the brim down from an old baseball hat that would have otherwise been garbage, and painted it with green and pink paint. To top off her outfit, we made sure she had a lollipop to complete her sassy look.

     Josh's costume seemed easy in theory, but I couldn't find a an orange plaid shirt at the thrift store big enough to fit with the padding underneath, or any overalls. Not even denim ones. So I bought a plain orange shirt and decided to paint the plaid on. That took much longer than expected, so I ended up only painting the front of the shirt (shh). It literally took me probably 5 or 6 hours. Ridiculous. I ended up buying some brown corduroy and winging it myself with the overalls. They turned out not bad considering I had never made overalls before and definitely wasn't using a pattern of any sort. Ahh the gloriousness of costumes. ;) Luckily I got some giant fists last year on Halloween clearance, since we already knew what costumes we were doing this year. ;) We also got him a wig, and convinced him to shave his beard, too. Laura had a medal picked out for him from the dress up trunk, but we forgot to put it on. We had toyed with the idea of going to Josh's parents' house for Halloween this year since it was on the weekend, mainly because we needed to borrow his dad's hockey pads for his costume, but we realized we couldn't really do that because we have swimming lessons on Saturday morning, so we convinced them to come here instead. They're the best. :)

We had also thought about making the girls go carts, but I procrastinated too long with the rest of the costumes, so we ditched that idea. They still turned out cute, though, I think. Fun, fun. 

     We didn't carve the pumpkins until the day of Halloween, because we need a few hours (aka a weekend), and they would have rotted if we did them the weekend before. So Grandma got to help with that. We had trouble deciding what to carve this year. Not a lot of people know the movie Wreck-It Ralph, and usually we keep the pumpkins in the theme of the costumes. We ended up deciding on a portrait of Ralph wrecking a wall which we hoped was the most recognizable image, and a creepy cybug (a good choice because the girls had fun helping paint it.) 

   

     I made mummies and veggie skeletons for dinner before we went out trick or treating. The girls enjoyed them. :)

Hope everyone had a happy and safe Halloween!

Dinner X

So, its been over a month since we've done a letter dinner, mostly because X sux and I was putting it off. But tonight we bit the bullet and had a light dinner of :

Xigua (watermelon)

Xavier soup

The Best Way to Wake Up

     This morning Josh and I awoke a little earlier than usual (we had gone to bed earlier, too), which meant we had extra time for snuggling up together. Drifting in and out of sleep together like this is my favourite to begin with, and then the cutest little blonde-haired kid with yesterday's now lopsided pigtails came in with her footie pajamas on and started telling us about the dreams she'd had of reindeers and pixie dust. She asked us about our dreams, offering ideas of what she thought we should have been dreaming of. And after all sharing a night's worth of dreams, Josh got out of bed she climbed in beside me and we snuggled some more.
"Mommy? Smell my lips."
*smell lips* .... "They don't really smell like anything..."
"They're fresh!"

Rachel's Readathon!

   Rachel's nursery school is doing a readathon for their fundraiser this year, which is good, because I could use the encouragement to read to Rachel. I read with Laura a lot, but Rachel doesn't have much of an attention span for reading, so this is good motivation for us to try a little harder!
It's called the 2-4-6 Fundraiser because the readathon lasts two weeks, where you read with your child for a total of four hours (24 minutes each day), and you need to get six sponsors to donate a dollar per hour of reading (so four dollars from each sponsor).

I'm going to try not to repeat books with her (though she definitely has her favourites!) and I'll be keeping track of our reading log here:

Monday, October 5th    0:15
This Little Piggy Went Dancing
Crankenstein
Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes
Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons

Tuesday, October 6th    0:33 (+ 0:12 at school)
Tumble Bumble
Strawberry Shortcake The Berry Bitty Princess Pageant
Pete the Cat Big Easter Advendture
Pete the Cat Valentine's Day is Cool
Pumpkins
Harold and the Purple Crayon
Alligator Pie

Wednesday, October 7th     0:30
The Kissing Hand
We're Going On a Bear Hunt
There Was an Old Lady
Are You There, Bear?
Posy
Hairy Mclary's Rumpus at the Vet
Dora Goes to School
Little White Dog

(When I was putting Rachel to bed, she said her favourite part of the day was reading!)

Thursday, October 8th  (0:12 at school)

Friday, October 9th 0:25
The Very Fairy Princess
The Longest Hair in the World
Pete the Cat and His Magic Sunglasses

Saturday, October 10th 0:24
Boo Hoo Bird
I love You For You
Big Bad Wolf is Good
The Longest Hair in the World

Sunday, October 11th 0:12
The Giant Next Door
Curious George and the Pizza Party

Monday, October 12th

Tuesday, October 13th  0:11 (+ 0:12 at school)
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

Wednesday, October 14th 0:23
Pumpkin Light
Kindergarten Count to 100
Fancy Nancy Explorer Extraordinaire

Thursday, October 15th  0:17 (+ 0:12 at school)
The Giving Tree
In A People House
Dora: Tale of the Unicorn King
Alligator Pie

Friday, October 16th    0:16
Alligator Baby
Boo Hoo Bird
Pajama Time
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

Apparently Josh has also read to her over the course of the last two weeks, but he didn't record what he read or for how long. So our grand total is 4:14 and with only a couple of repeats!

School on Sunday

     We have recently started reading the modern Amelia Bedelia novelette series, and the second book is all about Amelia's adventures with dogs. This has sparked an interest in Laura about different breeds of dogs. We were googling images of different dog breeds, and Laura was especially interested in Bloodhounds because they were featured in the book (she may or may not have pretended to be a Bloodhound on our walk to and from the library story/ craft time, complete with pretend peeing on people's lawns!). She is also now lobbying for us to get a Teacup Pomeranian (the 'teddy bear' dogs). I told her I don't like little dogs, but that she can get whatever kind of dog she likes when she moves out. (She has not accepted this as an answer, but I think we have compromised that if she saves up her allowance she can get one.) ;)

doggy's blurry because no flash allowed

     I was telling my mom about Laura's interest in different dog breeds and asking for suggestions on how we could explore it further. She suggested we go to a dog show. We looked up where we could go watch a dog show locally, and found there was an agility competition close by today. So we took the girls to go watch the different dog breeds run the agility course, and some of them even got ribbons, just like the dogs in the book!  There wasn't actually a huge variety of breeds there, and we definitely didn't see any Bloodhounds or Pomeranians, but who knows, maybe we will still get a chance to see them someplace else. Perhaps we should take a trip to the dog park? We also went to the mall and visited the calendar store, which had an entire wall of different dog breed calendars, so we spent a long time discussing and looking at those. Its so fascinating to me how many subject areas you can incorporate into these discussions (genetics re: my mom's mixed breed pup, math re: how long will you have to save your allowance to afford a puppy, economics re: supply and demand pricing, etc.). Mom also lent us her huge encyclopedia of dogs, and suggested making a matching game with pictures of different dog breeds so Laura will be able to learn their names if she wants. I'll probably work on that tonight. We also are planning to visit the pound this week (Amelia Bedelia ends up getting a pound puppy at the end of the book.) Who knows, maybe we will buy her the Teacup Pomeranian.... calendar. For Christmas. ;)

    I just adore being able to have our village educate my children; having my mom be an active participant in Laura's schooling is so great. I can't imagine Laura being in school all day and not having the time or resources to fully dive into her interests as they arise - I love being able to educate her this way. Even (especially?) on a Sunday.