days 84-87

Time to catch up again! :-)

day 84..
... Alex playing with his Kinect (disc toss game in Kinectimals, I think).

day 85...
... Family Game Night! A little Apples to Apples with the family.... so much fun!

day 86....
... Clara and Mango playing with Mango's "baby".

day 87....
... a late night dinner out after Alex's play rehearsal/class and Clara's make-up ballet class (phone).

We're still rather boring. My biggest accomplishment lately is that I think I managed to fit all of the pieces of our summer puzzle together! I do realize that this may be temporary, as things have a tendency to change randomly... but as of this very moment, I do believe I have it all figured out! :-) Now this week? That's a whole other story... our schedule this week has just spiraled out of control... with no school on Friday, we just have to keep it together through Thursday night... I think I can manage that (I hope!).

day 83...

... dinner! Black Bean and Avocado Quesadillas... yum!

I had been thinking about posting about this topic for a while, but after reading this post on a blog I subscribe to, I figured it was time.

You know I posted at the beginning of the year that making more "family time" was one of my priorities for 2011... well this is another facet of that... family dinners. I don't know if I set out to do this from the beginning or if it just happened. Spending time with your family can be addicting, so maybe it just happened. :-)

We had always tried to sit down together for a family dinner each night... but it was hard with the kids' schedules and my lack of motivation in the kitchen. I found myself coming back to the same few convenience meals or throwing my hands up in defeat and asking Jeff to pick up take-out on the way home. Now, things have changed. The kids' schedules are still crazy, but I have made family dinner time a priority and have figured out a way to make it work. I have started subscribing to several recipe blogs and have expanded my repertoire of dinner options. The kids get so excited about "what's for dinner" now... I used to dread it when they asked me that question because I really had no idea most of the time. Now I plan ahead and have everything planned out for the week. With the new blogs, comes a ton of new recipes to try... here's a few of what we've tried just this week (in addition to the quesadillas above) ...

Ranch Chicken Pizza
Sour Cream Noodle Bake
White Chicken Enchiladas

It would be tempting to feed everyone separately (especially since Clara doesn't get home until 9 some nights)... throw everyone some convenience meal item and just get it done. But we've decided that sitting down together as a family is our biggest priority. Like I've mentioned before, our time together as a unit of 4, is so limited... I can't imagine not taking advantage of every opportunity to spend a little extra time together that we can. We have some of the greatest family conversations over dinner, even if it is at 9:30 at night. If we didn't have family dinner planned on those nights, Jeff wouldn't be able to sit down with the kids at all that day. At least we get that daily dose. Does it always happen this way? Do I always get something cooked? Do we always sit down together? No... definitely not. You saw in one of my last batches of photos that we had cold cereal for dinner. But do we make this a priority and try to make it happen more often than not... definitely yes.

days 76-82

Okay... so I didn't get the photos up yesterday like planned. Wednesdays are my crazy days and it just didn't happen. But here they are now... and I'm once again (temporarily) caught up! :-)

day 76...
... Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

day 77...
... basketball games on EVERYwhere in our house!

day 78....
... Alex checking out the new Nintendo 3DS at Best Buy (phone). He was so excited to try it out! He has one pre-ordered and absolutely canNOT wait for it to arrive!

day 79...
... a typical scene in our house... Clara practicing her ballet, Mango playing with her "baby". Clara had just gotten home from a particularly encouraging ballet class and was motivated to practice even more than she normally does!

day 80...
... the boy enjoying one of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup cookies we had just made!

day 81....
.... how the boy ends his day... in bed with a book (had to stand on a chair to get this one!).

day 82...
... I was going downstairs to go to bed and realized that I had forgotten to take a photo! Thankfully (?) Clara had fallen asleep with her light on and I was able to grab this quick snap.

days 71-75

It's nice to know that I've gotten into such a good routine about posting, that when I don't for a few days, friends email to check up on me! :-) (thanks Tracy!) Nothing wrong here... we've just been rather boring.

day 71....
... last day at Devil's Head for the season. (taken by Jeff)

day 72....
.... the crew on their last day of skiing for the season (@Cascade).

day 73....
Cereal... it's what's for dinner! (at least we didn't eat out, right?)

day 74....
... Alex trying a cake pop from Starbucks on our walk home from his class.

day 75...
... Clara's school photos... turned out better than I expected!!

I'm working on the rest of the photos now. Hopefully I'll have them up tomorrow and be caught up again for a brief moment. We need to go do something exciting so I have more photos to post!! Lately it's all been basketball and ballet. We did a family NCAA bracket challenge (the four of us and the grandparents)... there has been a lot of basketball games watched lately. And Clara has put in a lot of hours of ballet in the last week (17 hours if I counted correctly). She's been trying to whittle away at the make-up classes she needs to do and has been putting in extra time working on her solo for the school talent show. But even with all of that, she still managed to fit in a slumber party over the weekend. So, I guess we've been busy... just not very exciting busy... I'll work on the exciting part!

hmmmmm....

.... I've got nothing today. Nothing really going on and the only photos I've taken have been my photo of the day photos. I guess we do have a little news.... Clara found out yesterday that she got into her school's talent show! She auditioned for it a couple of weeks ago. She's one of only two in her class that got in (her entire class auditioned) and one of three from the whole third grade. She's really excited... and a little bit nervous. She's never really performed solo before!

And since I have this thing about all posts needing photos. I'll leave you with a couple of Mango photos...

The girl with curls and her pup....
And Mango's nap time with friends....

the end....

Last weekend, Jeff and the kids took their last ski trip of the season... sniff. This winter has been our best ever, I think. Jeff overheard a conversation the other day. A man from the south was asking a guy from Michigan how he handled such long, cold winters every year. The guy simply answered, you find something you love that you can only do during the winter. He went on to answer that for some people up here it's snowmobiling or ice fishing... but for him it was skiing. Skiing has truly made a difference in how we viewed winter this year. We watched forecasts constantly, lamenting warmer weather and hoping for more snow! Dreading the end of cold and snow (which meant skiing would come to an end).... made it come all that much faster! Last year we were trapped in the city by classes on the weekends which made getting out and around in the cold and snow depressing. This year (with the plan I mentioned at the first of the year)... we were free from plans most weekends which gave Jeff and the kids so much time to go out and embrace winter. Even the fact that the kids (mainly Alex) ice skated more this winter, made winter fly by! Yes, we could ice skate indoors, but I prefer outside for several reasons. Partially because I feel our kids spend way too much time indoors sometimes, and outside is good. But also because it makes us embrace winter as well... it has a season, we again watched the weather, and hoped to be able to get in a least a couple more skates before the season ended. It sure made the end of February (the closing of the city rinks) arrive in a hurry. Even the additional two weeks that the rink at Millennium Park was open disappeared in the blink of an eye.

And with that... the photos from the final trip of the season...

The kids ready to ski at Devil's Head...

Jeff's self portrait :-)
(you can even see his hand and the camera reflected in his goggles).

Conditions got a bit messy, so they headed to the pool for a while with friends. Later that night, they went out again to do some night skiing.

Alex and friend on the chair lift...
Just Alex...
Clara and friend...
And now, Alex and Clara...
Their friends were done in for the day, so Jeff and the kids got in another hour and a half of skiing after the friends had gone back to the hotel.

The next morning, they got up and headed over to Cascade for a little more skiing...
The typical "Alex on a chairlift" photo...
The kids....
The view from the top...
The whole skiing group...
... taken by the non-skier of the bunch.

Now on to embrace spring and a whole new bunch of outdoor things to do!!

days 63-70

day 63...
... the kids in the car on the way to Crystal Mountain.

day 64...
... ready to ski!

day 65....
.... Alex on the biathlon course (shoot... messed up on the label... gotta fix that!)

day 66...
.... Bulls' game! (taken by Jeff)

day 67....
.... paczki day!!

day 68....
... Clara in bed with her stacks of books.

day 69....
.... Alex making the best banana bread EVER! :-)

day 70....
.... Mango. She's an odd little dog. When she saw me in the floor with my camera, she went and got her "baby" (little brown teddy bear) and would place it on the floor. She would then come and sit next to me so we could look at it together. :-)

I scrapped!!

Shocking! I know!

Seriously, this is like the second page I've scrapped in the past 8 months or so... I used to scrap at least two pages a week. What happened? Oh well... maybe I can get on a roll again.

Everything by Miss Kim Designs @twolittlepixels. Main kit is Bubbly and the snowflakes came from Spread Christmas Cheer. Font is Daily Birdie by Audrey Neal.

what the boys have been up to...

MONDAY:

The very night we got back from our weekend away, Jeff ended up with tickets to the Bulls' game. He was supposed to go with a client, but the client canceled last minute... so Alex got to go...

They had a great time at the game! But while they were there, they saw an announcement about what was going to be going on there the next night. After a bunch of texts flying back and forth between me and Jeff, tickets were ordered and they were set to return to the United Center the next night.

TUESDAY:

And the event they were there to see was.... the Bon Jovi concert!!!
Alex was soooooo excited! He LOVES Bon Jovi (not quite as much as the Beatles, but they're right up there).
They had an absolute blast at the concert!

Alex has been hyped up for days afterward... he's still belting out Bon Jovi songs around the house. The next day was his guitar lesson, so his teacher found the music for Living on a Prayer and now he's learning to sing and play it!

the view from jeff's camera...

While I was at the bottom of the mountain with my big camera, Jeff was all over the slopes with my little point and shoot. Here are some of the photos he took of our weekend...

The map...
A view from the top...
After dinner that first night, Jeff and the kids went out to do some night skiing. Here are Alex and Clara on the chairlift...
And a group shot taken by Ski Patrol...
The next day, Jeff was on his own for awhile, since the kids were off together, so here we have the traditional "self portrait on a chairlift"....
And the slopes from the lift...
After dinner the second night, they decided to go night skiing again. Here are the kids getting ready in the parking lot...
The view from the parking lot...
An extreme close-up of Alex on the chairlift...
And finally, an attempt at a group self portrait on the chairlift...
I think that's the last of my Crystal Mountain photos.... now on to catch up with the rest of our photos from this week!