S is for Snow - Penguins

S is for Snow.
We are a little lacking here in the desert when it comes to snow.
I have mixed feelings about that...
Anywho, snow reminds me of penguins & I just couldn't skip penguin week.
That would be devastating.
For me.
For the kids.
For everyone, everywhere.
Especially for the penguins.

and we just couldn't have that,

because I love penguins.

THIS WEEK...
Church Theme: Samuel the Lamanite

Primary/Church Songs: 'Samuel Tells of Baby Jesus' & 'Once There Was A Snowman'

Preschool Song: 'Oh, It Snowed Last Night'

Book: The Emperor's Egg by Martin Jenkins

Movies we watched:
Surf's Up
The Adventures of Scamper the Penguin
Happy Feet 1 & 2
The Pebble & the Penguin
Penguins of Madagascar - Operation: DVD Premiere
March of the Penguins

We decided to do a Surf's Up lunch this time around because S stands for Snow, Surf, Sand, Sun, & Shiverpool.

We ate shell pasta, a penguin pb&j, a surfboard sandwich w/ a gummy penguin, Chicken Joe's chicken sticks (they taste like... chicken.), olives (I was going to make olive penguins but realized I had no carrots), a one-of-a-kind Big Z necklace, a blue icee (representing icy cold Shiverpool, the blue ocean water, & a cool treat for a hot sunny day at the beach), penguin crackers, & swedish fish.

Tumbling Tuesday:
We waddled around like daddy penguins protecting our egg from the freezing cold snow.
I thought it was ridiculously difficult.
Kudos to daddy penguins everywhere...
It takes some major talent & dedication to keep those chicks alive!

Yep, it's a reversible egg/penguin.
Nifty huh?

Word Wednesday:

S letter sheets
We made a shape penguin

Think About It Thursday:

S math sheets
We 'waterproofed' a paper penguin using a crayon

Field Trip Friday:

I would love to go to Big Bear & play in the snow...
I knew Hubby wouldn't want me to drive up there alone with the kids though,
and all of our weekends are super busy right now, so that was out of the question.
If our kids were older & we had decent hills around here I would take them ice blocking, but that's not the case.
So what did we do?
We took a few ice cubes outside to see how long it would take them to melt on our sidewalk.
(It took about 20 minutes at 80 degrees in case you were wondering)
Not terribly exciting, but we had fun anyway (:
We should have tried it last week when it got up to 102 degrees here...
It would have been interesting to see how much faster they would have melted.
My sisters had a snow day in Minnesota a couple weeks ago & got even more snow last week!
I don't think the ice cubes would do a whole lot of melting out there.

Here's my uncle chilling with some penguins in Antarctica...

How awesome is that?!

I am so going there someday!

Oh, just in case you wanted to celebrate...
Penguin Awareness Day is January 20th
World Penguin Day is April 25th

As far as I know, Disney hasn't come out with any full-length penguin movies.
There are a few classic animated shorts or cameos in movies though...
Peculiar Penguins (1934)
Donald's Penguin (1939)
The Cold-Blooded Penguin (1945 in The Three Caballeros)
Mary Poppins also has adorable animated penguins it it

(Update: If you want to stick to the Disney theme for S is for Snow, you could always use Frozen.
I didn't use it because it wasn't out when I made this!)

Check out other awesome muffin tin meals @ Another Lunch

Ladybug Picnic

Our Little Princess turned one today!

Where did the time go?

We had a birthday party for her last Saturday and invited some friends from church...

It was a ladybug picnic party at a park in Palm Springs.

Wanna hear something funny?

{Almost} everyone that came brought Wendy's.

True story.

Wanna hear something funnier?

It was super windy so all the hours I spent pinning cute decoration ideas on pinterest was a complete waste!

If you want to check out my ladybug birthday board for inspiration feel free.

Okay, so it's not that funny, and it wasn't a complete waste...

I wasn't planning on doing much food-wise anyway since it was going to be picnic style for easy clean-up.

Luckily most of the red & black decorations (balloons, streamers, etc...) will work for Little Dudeman's Cars party so I don't need to return everything, just a few 'ladybug' things.

Here's the invites...

This was the first time that I got to use my Silhouette Cameo...

It was 1000 times easier than cutting them out by hand

like I did last year with Little Dudeman's Mickey Mouse party invites.

A huge thanks to Hubby for getting it for me!

I love it (:

Note to self:
Next time, use craft glue instead of cheap dollar store glue.
The sequins kept falling off!

I made polka dot cupcakes to keep it somewhat simple, yet jazz it up a bit.

I was a little worried about the frosting melting since earlier in the week it got over 100 degrees here in the desert, but the wind cooled it off enough that it wasn't a problem at all...
I used candy melts for the red ones which saved me a ton of time,
& I used Strawberry Mist frosting with a little red food coloring for the pink ones.
I think they turned out pretty cute!

Sheltering the candle from the wind

We didn't want to get her new outfit dirty so we changed her clothes to let her enjoy her cupcake.
She just stared at it & didn't want to eat it, so we gave her options...

Daddy even tried shoving it in her face or making her lick the frosting...

Still no.

Little Dudeman enjoying a cupcake

Yep, he's pretty adorable!

The party still was pretty fun despite the wind (:

St Patrick's Day Food

 Hope everyone had a wonderful St Patrick's Day!

Ours was great, but really busy...

We got ready & made sure to wear plenty of green all day long.

We had church, then I stayed after a couple hours for choir.

What can I say... I love to sing!

Then we went to see Gram (Hubby's Mom) at her house for dinner.

We told her we would take care of food & made a green dinner for St Patrick's Day.

It's tradition.

This is what we had...

Green pasta with a 'creamy' green sauce, green jello, garlic toast, & green 7up.

If I had a clover cookie cutter, I probably would have cut the toast into shamrocks.

'Cause that would have rocked.

It tasted delicious though, & that's all that really mattered.

We also were going to have peas, but I forgot to cook them & everything else was ready to eat.

Oh well...

I found this recipe for Halloween Pasta & figured that we could just make green sauce instead of orange.

Well, our sauce didn't turn out nearly as creamy & that's probably because I didn't follow the directions...

Whoops!

We used 1% milk instead of whole milk (which I'm sure made a HUGE difference),

we used monterey jack instead of cheddar (I figured white cheese would look better with green food coloring),

I skipped the pepper (because I don't like pepper),

& we didn't use any black sesame seeds (although I'm sure that made no difference whatsoever).

Anywho, it was super thin so we added an extra tsp of flour to hopefully thicken it a bit.

No such luck.

You can barely even see the sauce in the picture.

It still tasted yummy though, & after tasting it I realized it tasted an awful lot like Welsh Rarebit...

So although Hubby thought I was crazy, I took the leftover sauce home & had Welsh Rarebit for breakfast this morning!

Yes, it's green Welsh Rarebit because of St Patrick's Day...

I'm aware that it doesn't look very appetizing, but I sure enjoyed it!

My Gramma used to make this for us all the time for breakfast (:

If you can get past the slightly different texture of the sauce & the soggy toast, the flavor is really yummy!

Not for everyone, but I love it!

After dinner last night was Oswald, but I'm not going to get into that right now.

No need to be mixing holidays & confusing you guys!

Let's just say I still have a sugar hangover of sorts...

Since we were so crammed for time yesterday, our St Patrick's Day lunch was postponed until today...

We had peas, a clover sandwich, green applesauce (not to be confused with green apple applesauce), green jello, gold coins, a jellybean rainbow, a cotton candy cloud, & lucky charms.

No, I didn't get a shamrock cookie cutter in that short amount of time...

I simply cut out a shamrock on paper, laid it on the bread, & cut around it with a knife.

Yes, skittles (taste the rainbow) would make more sense than jellybeans for a rainbow,

but I had jellybeans & was trying to be resourceful! :P

I have one last St Patrick's Day food picture to share with you.

This is what my family back in Minnesota had for dinner last night...

Roast, green mashed potatoes & green gravy, peas, & salad with green dressing.

Our traditional Sunday dinner meets traditional St Patrick's Day green dinner! (:

Check out other awesome muffin tin meals @ Another Lunch

March Madness - Platypus Day, Pi Day, Party Planning

I haven't posted in a while.

What have we been up to this month?

Let's see...

Our S is for Snow unit for Mommy School has been 2 weeks long due to Little Dudeman not feeling so hot,

prep & planning for Little Princess' 1st birthday party,

& making sure we had everything we needed for all our fun meal traditions coming up!

We went to Disneyland for Platypus Day,
but since they don't make Perry shirts in 12m or 18m I had to make shirts for the kidlets.
Nothing fancy, just white tee shirts, baby Perry, doo-bee doo-bee doo bah.

We were actually slightly disappointed in how few platypuses we saw in comparison to the first 2 years.
I think we counted 32...
Last year was more like 120+
I wished people that had Perry paraphernalia a "Happy Platypus Day" if there were at least 2 Perrys in the group.
Most of them had this I-didn't-know-it-was-Platypus-Day look on their face.
Hubby started to wish that he wasn't wearing his Perry shirt since he wanted to act like he didn't know me...

Then I was busy planning the YM/YW combined activity - Easter Minute To Win It.

I think it turned out pretty fun & can't wait to share that with you!

Later that week we had a youth fireside & YW sleepover that I didn't want to miss.

I was busy working on party invites the rest of that weekend & was actually kind of excited about it since I got to use my new toy that Hubby got me for our anniversary last year...

My Silhouette Cameo (:

How on Earth did I ever make those Mickey invites without it!!!

Yes, I cut them out by hand...

I'm crazy.

I know.

We like to celebrate Pi day by eating circle foods, and of course, pie.

We had a slightly abnormal Pi day this year...

Breakfast was going to either be pancakes or quiche, but we had to leave our house around 7:45 to make it to the walk-in hours at the doctors office.

I'm no morning person, so there was no way I was making breakfast before we left.

I skipped breakfast & Lil Dudeman ate some dry fruit loops on the way.

Not the healthiest breakfast, but at least they were circles.

We waited there over an hour before we were seen since there were a few people ahead of us.

We were going to have circle sandwiches for lunch when we got home,

but we had to run a few errands while we were out & I was pretty hungry after not having breakfast,

so we stopped at Sonic & had lunch there... 

We had pizza for dinner & had dreams of a delicious Claim Jumper blackberry pie for dessert.

We had been looking all week but couldn't find one anywhere.

We would have settled for pecan, but couldn't find one at our last stop while running errands.

Bummer.

What's Pi day without pie?

I also wanted to do some of the fun Kindergarten Pi day ideas that I found at Helping Little Hands.

But alas, I am not superwoman & simply had too much going on.

Maybe next year...

So that's what has been going on around here...

But what do we have coming up?

Little Princess' 1st birthday party is tomorrow.

We have a St Patty's Day green dinner & muffin tin lunch coming up on Sunday.

Our family tradition of Oswald is coming up this Sunday.

What's Oswald you ask?

You'll just have to check back to find out (:

My sister will be coming to visit the last week of March,

and of course Easter will be here before we know it!

Yep, it's pretty crazy around here...

March Madness?

I think yes.

xoxo

Simply Seussical

Theo LeSieg has a birthday March 2nd.
He would be one-o-nine if he wasn't in heaven.
Who is Theo LeSieg you may question and ask?
Why, it's Dr Seuss' pen name or mask.
We got to celebrate his birthday this week.
In honor of books everywhere, so to speak.

We watched a few movies and read quite a few books
We ate some strange foods and were such silly cooks.

We watched The Lorax who speaks for the trees.
Both the old and the new versions of these.
Then we watched an elephant with rather large ears
protecting a minuscule speck that he hears.
We watched another one about The Grinch
that stole Whoville's Christmas one year, every inch!

"The more that you read, the more things you will know.
The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."
That is some wisdom a wise Seuss once said,
so we read,
and we read,
and we read,
and we read.

Some books that we read were Hop on Pop,
and also Ten Apples Up on Top.
Then we read these three Books you see,
The Eye,
The Foot,
The ABC.
All three great Books, we read all three.
Green Eggs & Ham,
The Cat in the Hat,
we sat as we read
and we read at we sat.
1 Fish, 2 Fish, Red Fish, Blue,
we then read Horton Hears A Who,
Bartholomew and the Oobleck too.
Oh, The Places You'll Go,
Oh, The Thinks You Can Think,
and The Lorax were read
all in printed ink.
Yertle the Turtle and Thidwick the Moose,
each book was written by dear Dr Seuss.

For our muffin tin meal this is what we had eaten
10 apple slices and eggs that weren't beaten.
They were deviled you see, and green ones at that,
then into our tummies went Cat's cookie hat.
We also had ham and some chocolate mousse
since Thidwick the Moose is in no way a goose.
One fish, two fish, red fish, green.
A Lorax sandwich can also be seen.
Green Oobleck pudding is quite a strange sight
but I'll have to admit, it tasted alright.
Last but not least a chocolate Yertle
Yes, Yertle the chocolate covered Turtle.
We were also to have some Pink Yink Ink Drink
but what would you know, I sure didn't think
We were all out of milk, not a drop nor a blink.

Another fun thing that we did as we played
was sort and count a fish cracker brigade.
We hopped and we popped on our bubble wrap,
searched for some specks, made Oobleck in a snap.

Some other odd happenings happened this week;
A hospital visit for a bloody nose leak,
Our car broke down on the freeway one night,
we're very thankful that we were all alright.
Our floors got mopped which does rarely occur,
All in all this whole week was somewhat of a blur.

All Things Dr Seuss link up

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xoxo