Category Archives: children

Our Neighborhood Macaroni and Cheese Bake Off

Last night we held our neighborhood Macaroni and Cheese bake off. There were 5 trays of the yummy cheesy goodness. We all did good! We cooked different recipes and they each turned out great! There was some grilled chicken, veggies, brownies and cream puffs to help balance it out. It was fun and everyone enjoyed the tasting but we all ended in carb overload.

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We did this mainly to spend a little more time with each other. Although we live right next to each other we rarely get to chat as much as we’d like to. With all that is going on in the world and within our own country I feel a much bigger need to have a closer relationship with our neighbors. It’s so important to have that sense of being in a safe community. We are all there to learn from each other and we should all be able to depend on each other should anything arise in the future.

I have to say our neighbors are pretty great to begin with. Most of us have been here for a while. The rest of us moved here within the last couple of years. Yesterday’s gathering was a small gathering but it’s a start to some, hopefully, great traditions.

Do you have good relationships with your neighbors? Does your neighborhood have any great traditions that help to encourage a better sense of community?

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Our First Trip to Bloedel Reserve

Our trip today to Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island, Washington was amazing. It was very quiet and serene. The hike was pretty decent in length but it was really neat to see the different landscapes of the Reserve. We especially loved the Japanese house and garden, the ponds, the lookout over the bay, and the wild life.

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We decided to purchase the Friends and Family annual pass so that we can return. It’ll be great to go on “Date Walks” with my husband. It’ll also be great to be able to take visiting family and friends to see the beautiful grounds.

I’m still working on learning how to use my camera. I was a little disappointed that some of my pictures didn’t come out as well as I had hoped. Hopefully with research and practice I’ll be able to return to Bloedel Reserve and take some worthy photos. I hope you enjoy these. They were of the best pictures taken today with my camera and phone.

http://bloedelreserve.org/

 

How to Feed a Family of 6 Without the Restaurant

Having a toddler has made it much more difficult to enjoy eating out as a family. We still go out to eat occasionally with our children but we have been trying to limit ourselves. One of my favorite places to eat at is a local Hawaiian restaurant called Aloha Kitchen in Silverdale, Washington. I often crave eating food from back home and Aloha Kitchen provides some of the best known dishes of Hawaii.

Their Kalua Pork and Cabbage plate (complete with rice and macaroni salad) is my favorite. I’ve made Kalua Pork several times in our oven but it is very time consuming and can be a greasy mess.

A few months ago, we ordered trays of food from their restaurant for our daughters 1st birthday. Our friends and family loved it. This is where I came up with a money saving idea. It will also help save our sanity.

I ordered their largest Kalua Pork and Cabbage party tray for our dinner on Wednesday. It is listed as having 18-25 servings but the tray serves so much more.  After eating dinner, were able to package the rest into eight portions that will serve 5-7. We froze the packages and containers for future dinners. The cost was $125 for the large tray. Therefore, each (5-7 servings) portion cost about $14.

Those who feed their family on $3-$5 per meal may think me crazy but this is a dish I crave for often but I really dislike cooking. The $14 for a dinner to feed our family of 6 is a huge savings compare to what it would cost to take our family out to a restaurant to eat. It would normally cost our family $60-$70 to eat at Aloha Kitchen.

We now have 8 more meals in our freezer. We will just need to cook up some rice and throw some veggies in a pot on the stove. This works great for those last minute meals and it sure beats eating at a fast food restaurant.

We will occasionally eat at Aloha Kitchen without children every once in a while to continue supporting their business. We also love purchasing their gift certificates to give away as gifts to friends and family.

Do you have a favorite dish that a restaurant near you could cook up a huge batch for you to freeze into portions?

Creative Hobbit House

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Today we had an amazing trip to a local nursery and its very creative hobbit house. The Brothers Greenhouses in Port Orchard, Washington is full of beautiful, lush, healthy plants. The hobbit house itself is covered in succulents and flowers. It is such an adorable piece of art. It has a fully functional round hobbit sized door, a fireplace and cute round windows.

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The kids loved the house. It could definitely be a child’s dream playhouse. It was just the right size for our little hobbits.

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I’m in the process of researching how to create and care for a terrarium. The nursery’s owners/staff were very friendly and super helpful. I found a few new succulents, moss, and rocks to add to my creation. I was very inspired by their adorable miniature gardens.

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Along side the beautiful plants, the nursery also sold a plethora or fairy and miniature garden items. It was truly hard not to walk away with purchasing more than what I needed for my first terrarium. We will most certainly be back!

http://brothersgreenhouses.com/

4 Amazing Family Games

One of the things our family likes to do to pass time is playing table games. Our youngest son’s favorite is Apples to Apples. He’s 11 so sometimes he’ll question a card or two but other than that it’s a hoot to play. Our boys can get pretty obnoxious and then it’s all giggles and farts till the game is over.

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We also love playing Qwirkle, Spot It, and Blokus.
Qwirkle and Blokus takes a little more seriousness to play because it’s all about strategy. These two games are great. We are much more laid back when we play these games and they allow opportunities to communicate with the kids on a deeper level.

http://www.mindware.com/qwirkle-a2-32016.fltr

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Spot It is fun and exciting to play. There are several games you can play with the Spot It cards and it can become very action packed. Our boys get so excited and sometimes a card will end up flying here and there. This one makes a great gift for families with children.

http://www.blueorangegames.com/spotit/

We absolutely love that we can sit down, be silly and interact in a positive way. This should be very important in every family. Sometimes there is just so much going on that it gets to be a stress fest. So whether your family’s fun time is going out to the park, camping, shooting hoops, throwing a football, or just playing a card or board game, you are doing something super positive for your family.

Our children grow so quickly. Enjoy every minute that you can with yours.

What is your family’s favorite fun-time activity? Do you have a board or card game that your family loves playing together?

Excited Over Pencil Deal

Many of you would think me hilarious for getting so excited over this. For some reason there was a post for a really good deal for colored pencils on my Facebook newsfeed today. I was able to purchase this set of colored pencils from Amazon.com for $3.97. I clicked on the link that was in my feed and it took me to instructions and a coupon on how to claim the deal. I’m sure the deal is no longer in existence because it claimed that there was only 29 coupons left.

Anyway, I was hesitant to click on the link but I’m glad I did. My youngest son and I love to color but the pencils from the Crayola set we are using are really hard to sharpen without their tips breaking. So I was really looking forward to purchasing a different set. This was great timing and I am hoping these will work out. For this price if they don’t work out for us then it’s not a huge loss. I just need to take a few minutes to write a review about the pencils.

I did check out the Facebook page that the offer was sponsored from. https://www.facebook.com/Amazon-Brand-Aware-Club-1603817996601610/?fref=nf

On the page is a button to sign up for their club. I’m looking forward to seeing what other offers they’ll have. I’ll be very selective and only choose those offers that will benefit myself or my family. Since we are trying to be productive in decluttering our home. I just figured I’d share this opportunity with all of you and to see if you have already participated in any of this company’s deals. If so, what are your opinions of the company? Here is the link to their sign up page. http://www.brandawareclub.com/

Question for all of my coloring friends: What are you favorite coloring pencils?

 

Camping Craziness

Getting ready for camping, whether Boy Scout camp or our own family camping, is often stressful. No matter how many days in advance we insist on getting started on packing, we are usually not ready until the night before and sometimes the day of.

Boy Scout Summer Camp begins tomorrow. It’s our youngest son’s first time attending a full week of camp. Luckily, my husband and our second oldest son will be going to camp as well, but this means that all 3 needed to prep.

Our youngest son started to gather things and pack earlier this week, but he still had a few items missing, so with my husband’s help he finalized his pack tonight.

My second son is also still finalizing his packing tonight. He started packing in earnest last night. He’s a bit more experienced at getting ready for camping. I’m still praying and hoping he doesn’t forget to pack anything.

As for my husband (the Scoutmaster), he’s been working on gathering things earlier this week for the Troop but also had paperwork and emails to finish on top of a full week of work. He’s still running around packing his stuff while ensuring our youngest is ready. I think it’s going to be a late night.

This is just 3 out of 6 of us packing for a camping trip. At the moment I cannot imagine prepping for 6 of us and a dog to go on a camping trip.

We purchased a camper a few years ago. We pretty much got tired of the “blue tarp” camping. No matter how prepared you are to tent camp in Western Washington, you can always count on getting soaked at least a few times during camping season. While the boys have no choice to tent camp when out on scout trips, we felt our family trips should be as relaxing as possible.

This year my husband is still insisting we plan a family trip in the camper for this summer. I wouldn’t have to worry about packing for my husband and our boys but we also have our dog and our now one year-old daughter. We’ll of course need to take extra gear with us. For example: play pen, sleeping pad, things to keep her entertained, etc. This is on top of the dog crate and the normal camping paraphernalia. Our “just the right size” camper, I imagine, will seem very small.

Our controversial solutions are 1. Kick the older boys out to camp in a tent. 2. Sell this camper and purchase a bigger one. 3. Let’s rent a suite at the Great Wolf Lodge and pretend to camp. 4. Not go.

For one, while I wish we could sell our camper and purchase a bigger one, realistically it would not be a financially smart move for us. Two, renting a suite at the Great Wolf Lodge would be fun, but it would be great to take advantage and do awesome outdoor activities in the nice summer Washington weather. Three, it would be easy to just not go on a camping trip but I know I would fully regret not experiencing all the fun we could potentially have. Especially sharing our love of the outdoors here in this beautiful state with our daughter while making so many more wonderful memories as a family. So I think our only camping solution is to kick the older boys out to camp in a tent. Sorry boys!!!

Curve Ball

Two years ago God threw us a curve ball. We had a senior in high school, a sophomore in high school and an almost 10-year-old when we found out we were expecting our 4th child.

To say the least I was shocked. When the doctor gave me the news I cried. I was excited and elated that there was a life growing inside of me but a little crushed because it meant we’d be starting all over again. Life as we knew it was about to change. We were to become parents again. At my age of 43 the medical field calls it advance maternal age.

The shock eventually wore off. Due to medical concerns, the pregnancy was tough and a bit stressful at times but life began to brighten as we began to see our daughter grow and develop via ultrasounds.

Slowly the colors of pink and lavender began to inundate our home. We were finally blessed with the arrival of our first daughter, Jillian, in May of last year.

Having a little girl with 3 older boys has surely been interesting! The boys simply adore her but the boy adventures must simply go on.

Since the birth of our daughter many great things have happen. Our eldest graduated from high school. He earned his Eagle Scout through the Boy Scouts and is now a student at Pacific Lutheran University.

Our second eldest is now the Senior Drum Major in his high school band and is very active in his Boy Scout troop. He is currently working on his Eagle project.

Our youngest son has graduated from Cub Scouts and is now in the Boy Scout Troop. He is also learning to play the trumpet like his oldest brother. (It gets loud in this house.) He’ll be going to middle school in the fall.

It has been a very crazy year for our family. Jillian’s walking…ummm running now. It’ll be fun to see what kind of things she’ll be interested in as she gets older.

In all the craziness, our house at the moment has taken a back burner. This blog will be a great tool for me to help get things back on track.

Effective Lists

Having an organized and clean house has always been a challenge for me. I was always great about making lists but not very good about using them. Lately I been trying a new attempt at list making. I first came across the idea of bullet journaling through Pinterest.com. I’ve just been using a plain ruled composition book for my daily lists but a bullet journal would work so much better. I just ordered one through Amazon.com.

So far my little fancy composition lists have been working. Plus it’s really nice to add little notes here and there about my day in my book. I’ve never really been one to journal so this is perfect.

Trying to motivate teenagers and a pre-teen is a chore in itself. I’ve been experimenting with “journaling” and jazzing up our childrens’ to-do lists. Above is today’s list for our 11-year-old. He got through most of the list. I think this works great for him.

Having a jazzy list for our 17-year-old is a completely different story. I’m sure there’s a lot more running through his mind than our 11-year-old. We’ll try it out for a few weeks to see if his motivation changes.

Do you organize your days with lists? What kind of lists work best for you and your family?

Here are a few links to a few blogs I found very helpful.

To-Do lijstjes die echt werken: Mijn Bullet Journal

http://www.bohoberry.com/craft-a-better-to-do-list/