So We Went Camping....Next Time Can I Get A Hotel? Please??

So we all went camping this past weekend, all 7 of us.  Wow, for 2 nights I never thought I'd need to pack so much stuff for my little family of three.  Plus I was also surprised at how much it cost for our little camping excursion. 

Pros of Camping:

Lots of Fresh Air
No TV's, Computers, Video Games, etc.
Swimming
Exercise
Good 'Ole Fashion Fun
Eating "camping" food

Cons of Camping:

Bugs
Bugs
Bugs
Oh, and Bugs
Dirty Laundry that never ends when you get home
Oh yeah and Bears too, yay

The bugs didn't care if we had a fire going or bug sprayed ourselves every 5 minutes, I swear they ate through our tents and screen houses because they are that determined to suck our blood....them and the leaches...but we only had one of those. 

We didn't actually see the bear, but the park ranger came by and said they saw the bear back at the office and warned everyone to take extra care of their food so we didn't attract the bears.  One might ask, "what do you do if you see a bear"?  The general consensus of the group was to make a lot of noise and scare the bear.  Milly was my secret weapon she makes a great bear sound that I'm sure would scare any bear off....unless said bear was peer pressured from the darn bugs to come and get us. 


Right now I've been home for 9 hours and I'm exhausted and dreading work tomorrow, but very much looking forward to sleeping in my bed tonight.  I'm in need of at least 12 months to recoup from the camping...maybe more.

~Jessie

Breakfast Anyone?

Like any morning, I wake up like a bear coming out of hibernation. I am starving, and must.get.food.now! I would like to blame the fact I am nursing my 10 month old, but really, I just love food. I digress.

I decided I would be fancy and make myself a egg and cheese breakfast sandwich. I started toasting the english muffin and fried the egg. Inbetwen that, I balanced getting orange juice, yogurt and vitamins to Tall Boy, and tried to entertain the baby who likes to try to scale my legs like I am some sort of climbing apparatus. Meanwhile the dogs are tap dancing at my feet, hoping for something to fall onto the floor for them to eat, because you know, we never feed them. Apparently.

Keep in mind our kitchen isn't really that big to accommodate all that, so I am always shuffle-walking to minimize any crushing I may do to all the bodies that make it their job to be up my butt.

Finally my food is done cooking. I spread butter on the english muffins, place cheese on one half of it and flip the fried egg ontop of that. I start to turn and put the rest of the ingredients back in the fridge, when out of the corner of my eye I saw something black.

I sort of did a double take, like "Whuck? Something black? Eggs should not have anything black."

I look closer. Then I saw it. 4 little legs sticking out of the eggy goodness. Legs?? Now there DEFINITELY should not be any legs involved.

Yup. There was a tiny dead spider sticking out of the fried egg. My first thought was, "Are you kidding me?!"

Followed by the feelings of vomiting at any moment.

So I woke up thinking it was a good egg sandwich day, but really it was a cereal type morning.

The kicker is, where did sir Eggy Spider come from? Was he already in the pan and I just drowned him in egg? Or was he waiting on the ceiliing, readying himself to attack my face. Either way, he met his demise. And now I am a little scared to make breakfast in the morning.

The Teenage Babysitter

I don't know how parents of more than one child find babysitters.  Being the parent of an only child is sometimes hard enough to find adequate sitters.  My #1 sitter for the past few years is a teenage family member.  She does a good job of making sure my little man is fed, out of harm and occupied when she's in charge of him.  But that's it. 

I don't know if it's the times now or what, but when I was a babysitter I had a bag of things with me to do with the kids, we went outside to play, I made food, picked up the house (espcially any messes made when I was on duty), took care of the dogs, gave baths to the kids, put them to bed, etc.

Oh, I would also know in advance whether or not I was free to babysit.

In the past week I've tried to arrange babysitting for a few things:

1.  We have an 80's themed 30th Birthday Party for my Sister In Law & Brother In Law in July.  When we first got the invite the party was 2 months away.  Every week since then I've been asking "the teenager" if she can babysit for the 2-3 hours we'll be going to the party.  Which is now 2 weeks away.  And her answer is still "I don't know if I will have plans with my friends that day yet.  Ask me when it's closer".  This translates to, "Ask me that day and if I don't have anything else better to do I'll come over and babysit otherwise you'll have to beg find someone else in a few hours or not go".

2.  I needed a sitter for a few days this week while we had some changes in our schedules for work.  I had the option of sending my little man to pre-K for the week but they were closing for vacation the following week and "the teenager" was off from school so she said she would help out for a few days (Monday & Tuesday, the days of the week least likely for her to have other "plans").  So, I changed my schedule at work, found other plans for my little man on the other days (because I wouldn't want to over do it, and have her babysit for a whole week, that would just be crazy) and we were all set to go. 

So I thought.

Sunday afternoon came and I checked in with "the teenager" just to remind her of the hours for Monday & Tuesday, and what did I find out?  What?  She can't do Tuesday now?  And has known for a week that she wouldn't be able to do Tuesday but just decided it wasn't that important to tell me, cause you know "her friend can watch him instead". 

Great, just what I want, another random teenager that hasn't baby sat for me before to come to my house and babysit all day.  Not happening.

So she just babysat on Monday.  I left her a huge list of things to do during the day, how long he should be allowed to watch TV & play video games.  I even made both of them lunch before leaving for work.

So at the end of the day I come home to find out my little man has watched 2 movies (Tangled & Finding Nemo), played way too many hours of video games.  Didn't eat breakfast.   Didn't do any of the other multiple things I put out for them to do during the day (crafts, coloring, flash cards, work books, play doh).  Oh, and the house was messy, the dog aparrently thought it was a good idea to eat the stuffing out of a chair and she thought it was aparrently a good idea to let it happen, and not pick up the stuffing that was now all over the floors.

I guess I should just be happy that she did babysit, and he was fed (lunch) and kept out of harms way. 

~Jessie

Menu Plan Monday

Milly's Meal Plan:


Monday: Steak tips, rice pilaf, asparagus
Tuesday: Chicken and Black Bean burritos
Wednesday: Baked Ziti with salad
Thursday: Soup with biscuits
Friday: Pizza night with family

Jessie's Meal Plan:

Monday:  Pizza & Salad
Tuesday:  Pork Chops, Rice & Zucchini
Wednesday:  Bean & Rice Burritos w/ Sweet Potato Fries
Thursday:  Soup, Bread & Salad
Friday:  Tortellini w/feta, tomatoes, black beans

Over the weekend we ate the BEST pizza I've ever had.  It was Chicken Cordon Blue pizza.  I've had cordon blue pizza before but it had mushrooms on it (which I don't particularly care for) and was OK.  But Milly introduced me to this guilty pleasure.  It had chicken nuggets on it, Alfredo sauce and ham that tasted like bacon!  Wow, it was amazing.  Of course this was after the great Minecraft party she threw for Tall Boy the cake and cupcakes were AMAZING and tasted sooo good. 

For more great menu ideas check out I'm an Organizing Junkie's Menu Plan Monday Page!

Minecraft Cake and Cupcakes

I have been having so much fun doing the Minecraft theme birthday for Tall Boy! Yesterday we made the cake and cupcakes, and I have to say they turned out even better than expected! I started baking the two cakes and two batches of cupcakes yesterday at 9 am, and finished at 4 pm. My oven certainly got a workout! Decorating started at 5:30 after my sister-in-law, and mother-in-law got here to help. We were finally finished at 11:30 pm, we were all so tired, but had SO much fun in the process. Here is our work:

 Getting ready to decorate! The white stuff is homemade buttercream frosting oh, even yesser!

 "Coal" cake

 

Here are the animal cupcakes with the cake

 

 Pigs and Chickens!

Sheep and Cows!

Octopus in the water

 Overview of the whole cake

Close up with the coal pieces and the blue pick and axe

Lava over a castle

Shovel and tool chest

How-To: Make Your Own Pinata

Trying to plan for Tall Boy's 4th birthday has made me realize how expensive everything is these days. I really don't like feeling as if I need to take out a mortgage just so my kid can have a great party. So, one of the things I did for his Minecraft-themed birthday party, was to make our own pinata. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had a whole lot of fun making it! Here's what I did!

Step 1) Found a box that was the size and shape of what I was looking for. I was lucky in that the Creeper I was making is just a rectangle. Then I spray-painted the box so it was a uniform color and so the wording and pictures didn't show through.

Step 2) Get rolls of crepe paper at the store, and the take measurements around the box so you know what lengths you will need. Then cut strips of the crepe paper the lengths you need. I would cut several to length, the stack on top of each other, the cut slits every half inch or so through half the crepe paper.

Step 3) Glue the strips of crepe paper onto the box, starting at the top and bottom, so that the loose ends will be covered by the rest of the crepe paper when you glue the rest of the paper onto the box. Kind of like shingling a house, you want to layer over the bottom pieces, so start at the bottom of the box.

Step 4) Once the crepe paper is covering the entire box, I glued the face of the creeper on. You can still see the glue drying, but you get the idea.

Step 5) When the glue is dry, turn the box upside down and cut a 3x3 inch hole on the bottom of the box. Only cut three sides, so that it hinges. I just used a serrated steak knife for that. Then I glued some crepe paper around the edges of the cut of the trap door, so that it looked finished.

Step 6) Poke a hole through the middle of the trap door, and take a ribbon and pass it through. Tie a knot at the end of the ribbon large enough so that one end cannot go through the hole. I used green for the "real ribbon" and then glued the "fake ribbons" around it. Tall Boy will get the green ribbon, of course!

Step 7) Wait for the glue to dry and then add the candy! Push the trap door closed, it should close very well with the added crepe paper around the edges of the trap door. Voila, done!

Hole In The Wall

So yesterday I came home from work and ran around like my crazy self to pickup, cook dinner, do a load of laundry blah blah blah.  Then on one of the trips back from the laundry to check on dinner I stopped dead in the middle of the hallway and said WHAT THE HECK IS THIS?!  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!?!

So my husband said maybe something fell off the wall and made this horribleness.  How can no one know what happened? What happened to the paint and sheet rock?  Did anyone pick it up?  It drives me crazy that there weren't any answers to my questions.

But wait, the super sleuth that I am have found the answer to at least one of my questions.  It was the dog.  Yep, later at night as I'm settling down to watch the Bachelorette and trying to figure out the best way to fix the wall what do my wondering eyes should appear?  But a dog gnawing at the wall!  What the heck would possess the dog to do such a thing?  Did my son smear his pb&j sandwich in this spot or something? 

So I grabbed my bitter spray that is supposed to stop the dog from chewing things...but so far in my experience all it does is make my mouth taste like I've been chewing on the wall since it gets in the air and and on my taste buds without my consent (or chewing the wall).

Wish me luck this weekend as I attempt to fix this mess.

~Jessie