Breakfast for dinner

One of our favorite meals for dinner is pancakes.  I love to make them because it's the one meal that EVERYONE eats even Trevor (post coming on this later).  Since the boys love pancakes (it may be because I put chocolate chips in a few of theirs) so much I thought I would buy the HUGE 10 pound Krusteaz bag at Sam's that you just add water to and voila you have pancakes.  The bag is only $7 and makes a TON of pancakes so what a cheap meal for my family..  I thought this would be a huge time saver and it was.

However, Jason and I weren't fans of the taste of these pancakes so I googled on how to make them taste better.  I just knew these pancakes were going to be great and my life would be so easy.  So I made about 30 or so since Brody can eat 5 or 6, Trevor eats 3, and Jason and I eat about 8-10 between the 2 of us.  Any leftovers are used for breakfast over the next couple of days.

Our huge mound of pancakes.

Unfortunately the new doctored recipe didn't help it out much, so the remainder of the bag which was probably about 9 pounds went to my good friend Janan who recommended them to me because her family loves them.  She was very happy to receive some more.

So I am know on a mission to find the BEST fluffiest pancake recipe I can.  I hope my family will be happy with this mission and will enjoy testing them out for me.

Early birthday surprise

Jason's birthday was this past Saturday but since we were going to be out of town I wanted to surprise Jason with a little something before.  Last Friday we decided to decorate the house for a little surprise birthday party.

The boys were so excited to help decorate the house and "surprise" their daddy.

So with the surprise party came a surprise dinner.  Jason LOVES chicken n dumplings BUT I don't like them at all and I've never made them.  I thought ok I will try to make them for him, so after much internet searching for the perfect recipe I was off and running.  It really didn't look that difficult.

The dough - yes from scratch.  People told me I could just buy the dumplings in the freezer section but the recipe I found sounded very easy so I went for the from scratch method.

Squares ready for the dumplings.

 The final product.  Jason said the taste was really good, but the texture was a little doughy.  I think the dumplings need to be thinner the next time I make them - if I make them again.

 Jason's dinner napkin :)

We then ate some banana pudding for dessert since Jason isn't a big dessert eater, but he does enjoy some pudding.

After dinner and dessert we had family game night starting with playing Wii resort with some dueling, golf, and archery.  Brody beat me in dueling - this boy is good at that game.  I beat him in archery and then Jason played me, but check out the score

Then off to play some Zingo.  My boys love this game and Trevor can even play and is pretty good.

Crazy boys to end our wonderful family night.

Nature Hunt

Last week we tried to go on our Nature Scavenger hunt.  It had been raining so much the few days prior so the mosquitos were getting pretty bad, but I thought it would be okay in the middle of the day - I really just needed to get the kids out of the house.

We were off to find a few things around the house.

"Something straight"

"Something round"

Admiring the garden or lack of nowadays.

"A chewed up leaf"

"Something beautiful"

"A Stick"

We didn't get to hunt for too long because the mosquitos were so big they looked like they eaten 3 or 4 mosquitos.  We will definitely have to finish our hunt because the boys had a lot of fun looking and finding things.

Sleeping buddies

Ever since the boys "tried" to sleep in the same bed back in April when we were in Orlando they have wanted to try it at home.  We told them they could try it again during the summer.  Well a couple of weeks ago we tried it again.  They were so excited to both sleep in Brody's bed.  Trevor thought he was such a big boy being able to sleep in a big boy bed.

Well, we put them in the bed around 9:30.  We knew they would talk and not go to bed for a little while.

However, they decided to laugh, giggle, hit and not go to sleep.  Trevor is our little instigator and just can't be still.  He loves to pick.  Brody must have gotten out of the bed about 12 times to tell us that Trevor was doing something.  We kept threatening them saying they if they can't keep their hands to themselves then they would sleep in separate beds.  This continued on for over an hour and finally Brody came out and said can we please put Trevor in his own bed and maybe they could sleep together after Trevor turns 3.

Well, Trevor wasn't too happy about that but Trevor just wasn't ready for this change.  He just had way too much fun.  We'll see if we try it again later.

Water Pinatas

What little boy doesn't enjoy water balloons so when I saw the idea of hanging water balloons to make them water pinatas - what a great idea for little boys.  They were so excited when they saw me filling them up with water.

I hung most of them from the playground and they took to swinging.

Trevor went first but had a hard time actually busting one, so I had him stand under one while I broke it - yeah he didn't like that to much.

Brody went next and boy did he have fun.  He was swinging away with the golf club and he ended up breaking all of them.  

 Here goes nothing - watch out pink balloon I'm coming for you.

Love it!!

They then moved to the trampoline with the last 2.  They tried everything to bust them.  I thought they would bust if they hit the trampoline so we played the toss and catch game but they didn't bust.

They then tried sitting on them and that was the key.

The boys had so much fun doing this so I'm sure we will be having some water balloon fights soon this summer.

A busy Monday

Last Monday, we had a busy day on our agenda - this is how I like to roll.  Our first stop was the recycling place.  We are a HUGE Dr. Pepper family - well Jason and I not the kids.  They've never even tasted it, which I hope to keep that way for awhile.  Anyway, last year we started saving our cans because everyone knows a soda is much better out of a can than a fizzless 2 liter bottle.  We then take the cans to the recycle center to cash in for money.  And who gets the money?  Brody!!!

Here we are with the huge bags of smashed cans.

Waiting on the cashier to give us the money.

This place is pretty sketchy, so thankfully I didn't have to stay there too long although we almost got run over by a semi who decided to come flying into the parking lot.  I know I gave him a not so nice look since he came up to me later and said I didn't need to be scared.  Of course I came back with "yes I did, since you came flying into the place when there are people walking around".

All smiles with his $11 he received from the 2 bags of cans.  He did give $1 of it to Trevor.

I did stop by Winn Dixie with BOTH boys.  Thankfully they did pretty good.  I had to keep telling them if they weren't good then no library.  We were off to our first library visit for the summer.

Having their books checked out.

 When we got home we enjoyed our homemade strawberry/blueberry popsicles.  I love making homemade popsicles because they really are so easy to make.  Unfortunately Brody and I were the only ones who enjoyed them.  Trevor (and usually Brody) would rather have the pure sugar cheap ones from the grocery store.

A very busy Monday meant 2 tired little boys for the afternoon.  They were very excited to mark 3 things off of their Summer Fun list.

Toys, toys and more toys

Sometimes I feel that I sound like a broken record with as many times as I am telling/raising my voice to the boys to pick up their toys.  I felt as if that's all I did so I had to come up with something.  Please someone tell me I am not alone?

I finally found this great little idea "Clutter Jail".

I give the boys a certain amount of time to pick up their toys and if the toys aren't picked up in that amount of time then the toys that are left out go to Clutter Jail.

The first time I did this, it made Brody so mad because one of the toys left out was his basketball.   They have gotten a little better about picking up their toys and I don't seem to have to tell them as much.  I still have to work on Trevor since he is younger.   If Brody would stop telling Trevor what to pick up then Brody would be ok as well.

I then had to come up with something in order for them to get their toys out of "Clutter Jail".  I came up with an envelope of chores for them to pick out of.  These chores range from cleaning up their room, cleaning the floor, pulling weeds, cleaning the bathroom, and dusting.  There are also a few funny ones like rub Dad's head and tell him what a great job he does working, a few Free ones, and the one they just picked out was go clean up the backyard (toys) do a flip on the trampoline and come in and tell mom that you are sorry for not picking up your toys.

They thought it was great.  I did have to explain that not all of them were like this.  We will see how long this will last - but for my sake I hope it lasts a long time.