Land Before Time Dinner Movie Night

This weeks movie of choice was...

 Land Before Time.  An oldie but a goodie.  Perfect for my dinosaur obsessed girls right now!  Pretty simple meal.  Tyson dino chicken nuggets, salad for palm tree leaves and grass, carrot for the trunk, cheese sandwich stegosaurus with carrot legs.

Adelyn said this was her favorite one because she got to eat scary stuff.  I guess that's important to a 3 year old.  You know control, dominance, I'm in charge...

Rise of the Guardians Dinner Movie Night

This past weeks movie was...

Rise of the Guardians.  Very cute movie enjoyed by all :)  For those of you who are not familiar with it Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Jack Frost and the Sandman all have to defeat "fear" and "unbelieving" from taking over the world.  So here is what we made.

 Tooth Fairy teeth made out of apple slices, peanut butter and mini marshmallows.

Carrots and ranch in honor of the Easter Bunny.

Santa Claus pancakes made out of multigrain pancakes for the head, whip cream for the beard and hair, strawberries for the hat and nose, bananas and chocolate chips for the eyes.


and not pictured was ice cream for Jack Frost with ground graham cracker topping for the sandman.

Girls loved it.  Nailed it.

Wreck It Ralph Dinner Movie Night

Last week for our Friday night ritual we watched one of the hubs and I's fastly approaching favorites, Wreck It Ralph.  This movie cracks me up.  Maybe because I grew up with a lot of the games in the movie or I have the mentality of a five year old.  That's still up for debate.  Anyways...

The girls and I started by making our candy cars (The characters in the movie make a candy car).  Of course this went over famously.  The only problem was keeping them from eating their car before it was finished.  I just used graham crackers, marshmallows, frosting and leftover Easter candy I had laying around the house.

What do you mean I can't just eat straight icing?!?!?!

Then we snacked on "Fix it Felix's hammers" (pretzels and cheese cubes).

The main course was Felix's favorite meal, pie... Mommy twist, pot pie.  Not as fun but thematic.
(Didn't take a pic cause well... it was just a pot pie)
Dessert was their cars and our "Hero Medals" made from cookies and nerds licorice.

There you have it! Ton of fun.  This week Winnie the Pooh...

Arrrrrr Pirates Friday Movie Night

We have started a new tradition in our house, Friday Night Movie Night.  It actually has sinister ulterior motives.  To our girls it's a fun themed treat night.  For Daddy and I, it is motivation to not spend money going out to eat, an excuse to sit down and secretly enjoy watching kids movies and a reward/incentive for the girls to be on their best all week.  The hubby and I choose a movie of the week before I go to the grocery store so I can plan accordingly :)  Our first choice was The Pirates movie.

Our girls have had this weird "boy-like" obsession with pirates because of their infatuation with Peter Pan.  So, we figured a new pirates movie would be a good fit.  I whipped up a pirate themed dinner to eat while we watched and the girls LOVED it.  The plus was that it really was easy to make, wasn't expensive and our house was SILENT for 1 1/2 hours with stuffed mouths and zoned out movie PEACE :)  Here was the menu...

~ Hot dog octopus:  Just slice the bottom 3/4 of the hot dog into "tentacles"
~ Raman noodle ocean: Raman noodles (minus the rediculous sodium flavor pack) with blue food   
   coloring
~ Blueberry canonballs
~ Hard boiled egg pirates ship:  Hard boiled egg cut in half.  The sail is made out of a pretzel and
   triangular shaped cheese slice
~ Ocean jello dessert:  Blue jello with Swedish fish

This week is Wreck-it Ralph!  Post and pics to come soon.

"Watch This!"

We have entered one of the many predictable and common phases in the younger years this week.  Almost as equally annoying as the "why" phase is the "watch me" period.  Everything suddenly warrants immediate attention.  Mom!  This is very important! MOM. MOM. MOM. WATCH ME!  and then a twirl or a small booty shake or blinking or some mundane common not so extraordinary event follows.  I found myself super agitated by these two words this week.  Short, irritable and rushed.  I would follow with one or two of my own two word responses, "One minute" or "Not now."  The things I have to get done are important.  This floor isn't going to mop itself.  This dinner isn't going to make itself.  These medical bills aren't going to get sorted and paid by themselves.  I would return to my tasks bugged that I can never seem to get anything accomplished from start to finish with little ones constantly interrupting me for a "watch me" nose blow.

And then I woke up.  I woke up from this busy mundane not so important job called 21st century super distracted mom.  It was Marcella that shook me awake.  She was being as loud and rambunctious as ever and desperately wanted me to look away from my phone to "watch me" on the swing.  "Just let me finish this email!" and out of the corner of my eye I saw her sadly look down and her life flashed before my eyes.  Maybe a second or two of what has already passed but an entirety of what will be here in the blink of an eye.  Boyfriends, prom, driving, hating me, loving me again, college, marriage, grandkids...  It was at that moment that I decided my routine and priorities had to change.  There should be nothing more important to me than soaking in these precious moments where my children are truly and passionately proud of what they are doing.  It's a guarantee that life is going to start to rob them of that simplistic confidence.  Because to Marcella, being able to wiggle her legs on that swing was just if not more important to her than me paying the bills on time.  I realize that my children need to learn patience and the importance of not interrupting but I realized that I need to learn the practice of listening.  If I don't listen and pay attention now, when they really genuinely want me to, they aren't going to want to when their "watch me's" could be very self destructive later on.

It brings tears to my eyes reflecting on how many moments I have already lost to a text message, a Facebook post or (I can't believe I'm saying this...) Pinterest.  I have earnestly been praying that my eyes and heart find a renewed interest and childlike longing for the simple "watch me's".  So, if you can't reach me, I'm probably soaking in the latest couch jumping competition or bunny hopping/galloping thingy my girls are so proud of recently.  Because the bills, floor and dinner can wait.  My kids growing won't.

Stain Glass Toddler Art

We are doing an upcoming Easter party at our church and I wanted to give my activities a trial run before attempting them with 30 two and three year olds; so we could troubleshoot ahead of time.  Since we have had ample time being trapped during this bipolar spring it wasn't hard to find an opening in our schedule...

We are not a family that bans the Easter bunny or any other of the fun traditions surrounding Easter but we do try to to make extra effort to ensure the real reason for the season is apparent to our children.  When perusing Pinterest I came across this fun stain glass cross craft.  I already had all the supplies on hand, so we tried this one first.  We placed a sheet of contact paper sticky side up and taped the top and bottom to ensure it didn't curl up or move on my ocd toddlers. This was the hardest part.  It kept wanting to curl over and stick on itself so you had to work quick. Taping the top first and then slowly peeling the paper as you went worked the best.  I had pre-cut a cross outline out of black construction paper and carefully placed it on the contact paper starting at the top and working my way down to try and minimize bubbling.  I had assorted tissue paper cut out in squares (because I am anal about the uniform look of it) but you could easily have your kids cut it or tear it.  Then it was free reign for the little ones.  I made sure to explain that once they set the tissue on the sticky part it was permanent and would be impossible to move.  You know, to try and minimize the epic meltdowns that could occur if a tissue square could not be relocated and it was a two year old life or death situation... They were very serious about distributing their tissue colors evenly throughout their cross.  I tried to explain to keep it inside the cross but that was too limiting.  They wanted it everywhere.  Doesn't matter though because you cut off the extra anyway.  This took 30 minutes!  That's like 3 hours toddler time!  It was AWESOME!  Mainly because it required very little supervision or help from me.  So, I was free to do fun mom stuff like clean the kitchen undisturbed while they were tackling it.  Once they were finished, I took a second piece of contact paper and placed it on top of the first sticky side down and ran the straight edge of my scissor over it to get out any bubbles.  Then trimmed around the outline of the cross.

I think they turned out great!  We hung them on the back window and the March snow blindness in the background really helped bring out the colors :)

He is Risen Treat

Since my last post on my plague diseased family a couple weeks ago, I am sad to say we are still fighting some sickness.  Whatever we got, got us good.  I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.  The littlest one came down with it right in the middle of our spring break vacation that ended up not being very relaxing.  After a trip to urgent care, a freak snow storm in March and power outages to our rental, we called it for what it was and came home a few days early.  So that means folks my toddlers have been in a house with me continuously for, count them, four weeks now... I really don't feel like I need to elaborate on the insanity that has been my life.  They have developed a very odd love/hate relationship and become incredible wrestlers who scream and cry when they are together but scream and cry when you separate them.  I think the only one who needs to truly separate is me.  Unfortunately, St. Louis is now being pummeled with it's own freak spring break snow storm.  So, I am pretty sure that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

I've have always been pretty good about coming up with stuff on the spot creatively speaking but I think I have exhausted all of the tricks up my sleeve.  Adelyn is ALWAYS begging me "let's do a little craft Mommy,"  (Yes I have created a monstrous version of little me who idolizes holidays and anything DIY) and I needed something new.  Amen for Pinterest.  Last year we were in tank tops and shorts planting jelly beans outside, swimming and outdoor Easter egg hunts.  This year we are sledding... (Literally the same week last year... oh how I love the lack of monotony in Missouri weather)

Therefore, we brought our spring activity inside.  We have been discussing the story of palm Sunday and the forth coming events of Jesus' last days.  Adelyn has always really liked the Resurrection rolls and story.  So, I decided to tackle the story with a different edible craft (edible is the only route to go with Marcella.  If she can't eat it, she isn't interested.) 

I had seen this done with chocolate doughnuts but I'm not a huge fan of chocolate pastries so our stone tomb is "limestone".  The girls constructed the whole thing, eating along the way, while I read the Easter story.  The ground is two graham crackers sandwiched with peanut butter with green icing grass.  A partially sliced glazed doughnut is the tomb and an Oreo is the stone that rolled away.  The "He is risen" signs were leftover stickers on toothpicks I had laying around.

Adelyn was satisfied for 30 minutes!  That's impressive.  It was a success :)  Now for what to do for the other 11 hours they are going to be awake today...