I LOVE Nutella

Well, Kevin Love's Nutella :)

I used to keep it in the low cupboard...after him getting into it twice while I was out of the room I've relocated it to the high cupboard.

Valentines Day 2013

The night before Valentine's Day Ryan and I finished decorating.  We heart attacked the front room, door and hallway.  The best thing about a small place is that it is quick and easy to decorate.

We spent the afternoon at a friends house.  The kids hadn't gotten together for a long time so it was extra fun.  They did a little craft...painted a plate then attached tissue paper contact paper that covered a heart cutout.

We had parmesan tilapia, butter rice, broccoli and stuffed mushrooms for dinner then ended up skipping dessert because I didn't have time to make anything.  Kherington did help me make lemon raspberry muffins the next day though.

Potty Training...When did he get so BIG?!

Kevin I know has been growing tons.  There seems to be no baby left in him.

Just for kicks, I took his measurement today.  He is 32 inches tall and weighs 25 pounds (roughly).

I decided that now would be a good time to potty train since we don't have any trips planned for awhile.  Week 1 is done.  I had errands to run and still put a diaper him whenever we went out.  We had lots of accidents but also lots of success.  By Friday he finally caught onto making himself pee and recognizing when he needed to poo BEFORE actually going.  I feel like that is kind of huge especially for a almost 22 month old boy.

To potty train, I just rolled up our rug in the front room and ta-da, we are carpet free (well minus a small train rug in the kids room).  If he goes potty in the toilet he gets 3 chocolate chips and he gets to give 3 to Kherington.  If he wets on himself or the ground, I put him on the potty and have him try and go more while I get it cleaned up.  Aside from a 'we need to remember to put our pee pee in the potty' there isn't anymore scolding.

There have been 2 really bad accidents.  The first one he was playing and only wearing pj pants...no undies, no diaper.  He pooed and kept playing.  I noticed the smell and went to inspect.  In the middle of his toys a big chunk had fallen down his pants.  The rest was still smashed in there which made changing him pretty gross.  The second one was was the same day.  He had a diaper on for naptime.  No big deal.  Well, he was napping in our bed.  Pooed while he was asleep, then took it off as soon as he woke up and make a poo trail across our bed (on my side) to come get me.  On the bright side, he came right to me, told me he pooed and waited a good 10 minutes while I finished up getting dinner ready before I could wipe him down (I didn't know at the time there was a poo trail waiting for me on my bed).

He loves his cars undies.  Sadly I only bought one pack at Costco and the rest are just blue/green pattern undies.  Here is his just playing...lining up cars and dancing around them.

Valentines Day Kids Party

Whew! After a late night with Activities the night before, I got everything ready for a little kids Valentines Day.  A friends was nice enough to let us have it at her house which really ended up being a lifesaver.  My house was trashed by the time I walked out the door.  I had the morning to make the food, put the craft stuff together and get it all loaded into our car.  I was really working against a hard deadline because I had to grab Kheringotn from school before heading over so I couldn't be late.  I ended up with just 2 hours to get everything done in.  I had such grand plans, but in the end I felt more like a contestant on cupcake wars where you just want to get everything on the plate and it doesn't matter so much it looks just how it tastes.

I made pretzel bites stuffed with ham and swiss cheese, 2 pizza braids and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  I ended up cooking one of the braids and cookies (pre-scooped though) at the party. 

For the craft this year I decided on heart/straw necklaces.  I had pre-cut hearts and straws so the kids just had to thread them.  I also made the kids little head pieces with stuff I had prep for last years party but never ended up using.  I feel like I'm pretty good with using the supplies I have on hand to keep things cheap but fun for the kids.  I've been trying harder to just focus on the kids having fun intead of how an adult would view a craft...pinterest adds a little extra pressure to make everything look perfect but really that shouldn't matter.

 The kids also exchanged valentines and some brought their own valetines box.  Each year I've helped Kherington make one.  This year, a week or so after getting back from the States she started begging to make hers.  I didn't realize she liked it that much.  I just wrap up an old box for each kid (plus cut an opening large enough to get things in/out) and let the kids glue hearts and put stickers all over it.  Kevin was pretty funny.  He only wanted car stickers...no hearts.  I ended up sticking one heart on at the very end because I'd already cleaned up and had missed it.  You can tell from the smiles on their face they that they had a good time.  After they finished their boxes we also did some normal gluing....meaning paper, paper piece I cut up years ago and glue....very easy.

Anyways, so they made their boxes then for their actual valentines they helped me pick the colors of what I printed out and Kherington glued a heart onto her chosen contruction paper (her color combo ended up pink and green).  Kherington's valentines said 'You light up my life" and had a finger light attached.  Kevin's said "You're simply sweet" and had a simply fruit roll-up attached and mine said "Happy Valentines Day Big Hunk (*or Hunket)" with a big hunk attached.  Best of all everything we used we already had.

I think everyone had fun. I'll be honest, I felt a little stressed on my part.  I'm not very good at asking for help and even worse at it when I don't have everything prepped as well as I would like.  I guess I just have more things to work on.

Activity Days: Cooking

In addition to teaching the 8-11 yr old English class at church each Sunday, I also am in charge of 'Faith in God' or 'Activity Days'.  It's a little different here in that it is both boys and girls (Belgium Scouting doesn't quite align with church teachings...for example the boy scouts fundraiser is selling beer on the corners).

At the beginning of each activity, we do an 'ice breaker' game. Then we have a lesson and activity. I try to have each activity fall under on of the 3 main areas: Learning and Living the Gospel, Serving Other and Developing Talents and in addition to that keep it cheap and fun. Some of the fun things we've done include Secret Service Agents, Article of Faith Scavenger Hunt, Goal Setting (complete with a domino object lesson) and Getting to Know you Jenga.

This week since there wasn't any mutual (we meet the same night so parents only have to make one trip), I decided to do a cooking activity and have it at our place so I wouldn't have to cart all my stuff to the church. We ended up having the best turnout we've ever had with 9 kids and 2 adults (me and our Translator Rachel...I am so very thankful every time she comes because there is no way the French kids would understand anything if she wasn't there). Our apartment is not very large, so I sent out an email nicely saying Parents and younger sibling weren't allowed to stay...I would only take the 8-11 yr old.

We ended up barely getting through everything. We talked a little about bread dough (I had already made some up). I demonstrated a couple things they could do with the dough including pizza, roll-ups, braids, crescents, etc. Then I had each of the kids roll and a create their own savory roll with pizza ingredients I'd prepared (marinara sauce, pepperoni, pineapple, onions, green pepper and mushrooms).

While I baked, cleaned the savory ingredients up and laid out the sweet ingredients, I had the kids make a valentine for someone else.  I prepped little bag for each of them in that included a balloon, candy, string, a "Home your Valentine's Day is bursting with fun!" note, and a "Go ahead burst my bubble" tag. They each wrote their own note to include also then stuff everything into the balloon. They could blow it up right before giving it to their valentine :). It ended up being a great activity for them that didn't need attention from me.

One of the girls gave her Valentine to her sister and her sister posted it on facebook later that night.  So sweet!  It really makes all the planning and prep worth it when I see the joy it bring to the kids and everyone else it touches.

Back to the activity, after eating their savory roll they decorated sweet rolls with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutella, speculoos, marshmallows and chocolate. It was fun watching them be creative with the ingredients and design. We put it on parchment paper and sent it home with them to cook.

The activity went crazy fast but I know the kids had a lot of fun. After they left, my kids came out of their room and wanted to their turn so I went through the activity with them at 9pm. Kinda late, but they had fun. Kherington made nutella/marshmallow rolls which were delicious and Kevin made a pizza and nutella calzone.

The Realm of Genius moves to Europe

My junior year of college I lived in an awesome house with 6 girls.  We had the whole house to ourselves which included 2 stories, 2 kitchen's 4 bedroom and 2 living areas.  We named the place/ourselves 'The Realm of Genius.'  Not sure the back story was necessary, but your got it :).

In January, one of my old roommate moved to Europe!  Her and her family are living in Fontainebleu for a couple months while her husband works on his MBA at INSEAD.  That means she is just a 4 hour drive away.  I found our she moved here mid January and 2 weeks later we dropped in for a visit.  We had a blast!

We arrived Monday afternoon and stayed through Wed night.  If I had gotten ourselves out the door a little earlier we might have been able to avoid the traffic near Paris, but we didn't.  The drive back I opted to do after dinner and it was smooth sailing the whole way.

She has 3 kids right around my kids ages.  Really we could have been anywhere in the world, but it was so nice to chat with another mom all day while we chased our kids around.  Plus our kids always had a friend to play with.  Now if we could only convince the rest of the Realm to move close by.  We brought some toys to play with including some water wow pages and paintbrushes.  We also brought over some finger lights so each night after scriptures the kids got to have a finger light party.

Both days we wandered around the Fontainebleu palace grounds.  One day we went up to a pond to feed the ducks...except we didn't find any ducks.  There was one massive swan that we fed briefly before herding our kids away.  It was just too big to feel safe next to it.  Instead we sat near a bench and had snacks before heading home.  Oh, but you can't get through an outing with 5 kids without a potty break.  Kherington was the lucky winner this time.  No a big deal.  I held her, she went and we walked back to the group.  The funny part was that right after she went and dog ran up and started sniffing her pee....for some reason that seemed kinda funny to me.

The second day we planned on actually seeing the palace.  We got almost there, then the path was blocked off by workers triming the trees.  Not all was lost.  Instead we went over to the playground and let the kids run wild.  It had been raining off and on so there were a lot of puddles along the way.  Both my kids were in their rainboots so I let them stomp on through them.  They loved it....until Kevin fell face first into the puddle....that wasn't as fun.  I just stripped his pants off and let him play the rest of the time in his tights (good thing I layered him).  He was pretty styling.

We're excited to have them come visit us sometime soon.  Kherington keeps telling me about all the things they're going to do when the friends spend the night.  Her list includes park, trampoline, food, bikes and more park.

Here are our kids the day after returning...worn out and need to relax but wanting more :)

Lucky Me

I was just thinking about how lucky I am to have Ryan.  Friday night I stayed up til 1:30 watching a movie, so when the kids woke up at 7am Sat morning, I did not want to get up.  Ryan got up, played with them and helped them make breakfast in bed for me.  They brought that in around 8am.  We all ate on our bed (I was still laying down the whole time) then when we were done, I flipped over and went back to sleep until 10 (yeah...I need to get my sleeping back into normal order).  Anyways, while I slept, he continued to entertain kids, did the laundry, cleaned the front room and cleaned bathroom.  When I finally got out of bed, I did an hour long workout dvd.  He gave the kids a bath, got them ready for the day and took the trash out.  So pretty much I did everything for myself and he did everything for the kids and me.  That was a very nice relaxing morning for me.

Then Sunday he woke up for his early morning church meetings, went to church, had meetings afterwards then went home teaching.  When he came home around 5pm, he watch kids while I took a nap (I stayed up til 3 the night before trying to get this blog up-to-date).  Currently I'm packing for a short trip to visit an old college roommate and her family near Paris (just me and kids) while Ryan reads the kids bedtime stories.

I look at this and from the snapshot of the weekend, I am so spoiled.  I really don't think I could have ended up with anyone more prefect than Ryan.  Aside from his weekly pick-up basketball game (which I consider his 'me' time) he works, fulfill his church calling and spends the rest of his time being an awesome dad and husband.  I am one lucky girl.