Walking Tacos

We had Walking Tacos for dinner tonight and they were pretty delish! Why are they called "Walking Tacos"? Because if you didn't have a "no food in the house except the kitchen" rule, you could walk around eating your tacos from the bag. Basically, you open a Frito bag, put chili in it and top with sour cream, green onions, olives, and cheese (really, anything you like) and then you eat it right out of the bag. We put our bags in bowls because the chili made the bags really hot to hold.
Here is the recipe for them if you'd like to try them yourself:
http://picky-palate.com/2010/01/31/how-to-make-and-eat-walking-tacos/

FYI - You can even dump them into the bowl if you want to eat it like that. It makes it easier to mix up the contents.

Enjoy!

Fun Playtime

Today we got to have Riya's favorite little boy from church come over to play! She likes Dallin so much that she is often really sad when we have to leave after church and she has to tell him bye. It is really cute!
We had so much fun with him! Emma and Dallin played in the pirate ship for quite awhile together while Riya and I kicked their new giant bouncy ball around in the backyard. There were lots of smiles and giggles today - and some cute little dances!

Almost Finished!

These curtains are really driving me crazy. They aren't difficult to do but because I am being so particular in how I want them - they are taking forever.

Somehow, I ended up with enough fabric to do 3.5 panels instead of the 2 that I wanted. I am so very confused about how this happened. I calculated it and then had the lady at the fabric store help me to make sure I did it right and she came to the same number of yards. Oh well - good thing it was clearance fabric with an additional 50% off. Seriously, I paid only $3 a yard for this cute upholstery fabric - I was so excited!

Besides the thin stripes (I wanted them a bit thicker), it was pretty much what I was looking for and the colors look great against the wall color!

Almost finished...

A Place for Books!

We FINALLY got a bookshelf today! We haven't had a good sized bookshelf since we left Texas and these books were very happy to be able to get out of the boxes they were stored in!

What? They were.

Tutu Party

Riya got to go to a birthday party for one of her friends today and it was all about tutus and dancing. She was a little too shy to participate and wanted me next to her the whole time she ate but I think she had fun anyway.
She went to bed late and woke up early so I think she was extra tired during the party. She had her own party last night with Grandma at her hotel - 2 parties in 24 hours is exhausting! :)

Taking a Tumble

One of my biggest fears of our current home is the stairs. They are really steep and ground at the bottom is tile. I have been constantly paranoid that one of the kids (especially Emma) would fall down them and get seriously injured. I've taken a few tumbles but just had some sore body parts afterwards. Riya has missed a few steps before but, again, just a few bumps. Not too sure about Jayden and John. Emma decided that she'd better take her turn today since we are moving out on Wednesday.
John and I were both in our bedroom when we heard the tumble down - it took a few seconds to register what it was but that's all it took and John was down at the bottom holding her. She fell from the top to the bottom and landed on some shoes! Thank goodness they were there to break her fall!! She came out of it with just a rug burn under her left eye (see picture). She had a good cry but calmed down pretty quickly and she didn't appear to be in pain - just shook up. We gave her some tylenol for a possible headache and she seemed fine the rest of the night!
I am so glad we will not have stairs in our new house!!

Flashback!

Look what I found today!! Yep - those are Jelly sandals. Brand-new, GAP, my size, half-priced Jelly sandals. John thinks they are hideous (surprised?!) but I love them!

(please excuse my pedicure needing toes and my awesome flip flop tan line - sure sign that summer is here!)

Spaghetti Hot Dogs

Tonight, we had pasta (yes, again) with hotdogs and tomato sauce. Pretty much spaghetti with hot dogs instead of meatballs. Do you notice the awesome-ness in this picture though? Yep - the noodles are coming through the hot dogs!
Jayden doesn't love hot dogs but he still thought it was cool - just not cool enough to eat them. He just had plain spaghetti. Riya, on the other hand, thought they were AWESOME! :)
It's pretty simple and a fun way to add interest to an otherwise boring meal. Just poke 5-6 uncooked noodles through cut up hot dog pieces and then toss into boiling water - cooking noodles normally.
Love!

Finally - A Haircut!

I finally cut Jayden's hair tonight (and John's) - he was looking pretty shaggy. Here is my handsome boy after his shower with very undone hair - not his usual spikes. This picture was the most normal shot I was able to get of him - he kept being so silly! I got one with his tongue sticking out and he was excited when I told him I was going to use it for my blog.
Of course - I don't use it. :)

*Please excuse his very unmade bed. He's decided that he wants all of his blankets in a sort of ball that just gets put on top of him when he sleeps. Huh?!

Meet Dorothy and Jack

Today, the kids went to a fun underwater birthday party and they got awesome party favors.... GOLDFISH!
They were so excited! Riya named her fish Dorothy and Jayden named his Jack.
Oh boy - good thing we didn't get that house that wanted to charge us extra for kids - we'd have to pay a pet deposit now too! :P
These fish are our first pets... leading to a dog in several years? Maybe.

Garage Sale!

Today was my much anticipated garage sale. Problem - it rained in the morning. Problem - it started at 9am. Problem - I had to actually set up in the garage (as opposed to the driveway) because of the rain, thus it looked like I just had my garage door opened to show my cluttered garage. Oh well - we got several customers, just not as many as I had hoped or expected. We are going to try it again next Saturday - assuming it doesn't rain again. :)

Sunday Quiet Books

I have been tearing out pages from The Friend magazine for a few years now with the thought that I would put them into notebooks with top loaders and let the kids use dry erase markers over and over again on the pages. Dry erase markers, however, do not wash out of clothes (or anything else, for that matter) so I had these pages tucked away with my crafts for a "someday project".
That "someday" came today. A few days ago, I saw on a blog (yikes! can't remember the one at the moment) my exact idea but with DRY ERASE CRAYONS! What?! When did these come out? How cool is that?! I decided to go to the store and grab 3 boxes and I assembled these little books for my kids to work on in Sacrament meeting. I took the magazine pages and backed them on colored paper for stability and gave each kid their own notebook filled with age appropriate activities. Jayden's has the crossword puzzles/word searches/code breakers/find the hidden object pages. Riya's has coloring pages and a few "find the pictures that match" pages. Emma's just has coloring pages - mainly those with babies in them because that's what she likes to look at.
Each book has their name on the front, a "sketch" picture of them to color and then their individual papers behind. I made it so that I could rotate the papers out to give variety from week to week.
Genius. Thank you blogger (I will post when I remember) for telling me about these crayons! My kids are going to LOVE them!

Easter Egg Hunt

Today we got together with some friends and we had an Easter egg hunt for all of the kids. Here is the line up of the kids just before they were set loose - quite the group, huh? And - yes, that's Jayden with the red bucket... on his head.
They had a lot of fun searching for eggs and then opening them to see what they got in each egg. Emma quickly learned how they open and she found a new hobby. :)
We had a great potluck dinner and visiting afterwards.
Happy Easter Eve!

Clean House

Who doesn't love a clean house? I certainly do! I love it even more when I get help cleaning it! Today was a little bit busy for us but we managed to squeeze in some clean time. This is our freshly straightened living area - with Pandora playing on the TV. Music always makes cleaning more fun!
(don't mind the pile of blankets on the chair - the kids were in charge of folding them and they decided that was a good place to put them. haha)

Saturday is a Special Day...

...it's the day we get ready for Sunday by.... cleaning the stair railing!! Haha. I decided the kids needed to do some light cleaning today that they don't normally have to do. You know, beyond the "clean up your toys" cleaning. They each got a wipe and Jayden started at the top with Riya at the bottom - they had to wipe the rails down. Somehow, they have gotten bits of chocolate or other beautiful colors wiped randomly on them right at their hand level and I was tired of looking at it. They did great!  By the time they were finished, the rails were white again. Look at those looks of concentration!
Lovely. :)
Thanks Kiddies!

General Conference Treat Buckets

Today was the start of General Conference weekend for our church. I look forward to these two weekends all year! This year, I found an idea to help the kids pay more attention to the talks given and I knew it would be perfect for my kids. I filled those 5 buckets up with various candy and wrote on them (with a dry erase marker) 5 different words that they were to listen for. Every time they heard the word, they got to get a piece of candy from that bucket and add it to their bag - or eat it. This was such a hit! We used the words "Scriptures", "Temple", "Faith", "Prophet", and "Family". However, after the first session, the word "scriptures" hadn't been used (that we heard/noticed) so we changed it to "Priesthood" for the second session. Guess what one of the first talks in the second session said several times... yep, scriptures. :) I loved how Jayden kept trying to figure out how he could get more candy - "They said 'President Monson' - does that count for Prophet?" or when the choir would get ready to sing and it would show the footage of the Salt Lake Temple "OH! Does that count for Temple?!" At least he was paying attention, right? :)
I loved all of the messages we heard and I look forward to more tomorrow!

More Sewing...

Last week, I found some striped long sleeved women's shirts on sale at Wal-Mart for $1 each. I didn't care much for them for myself but imagined all sorts of possibilities on how to re-purpose them for my girls so I got 3 of them. I found this tutorial and thought I could totally do this with my new shirts! This is such a simple tutorial! Try it!!
This one was a woman's size small shirt so it ended up being too short to make a dress for Riya. It is a shirt instead. It looks super cute on her! I skipped the belt though because the shirt wasn't as loose as the one in the tutorial. I'm planning to take the other 2 shirts (size large and x-large) and make them into dresses for the girls using this same method. To make them more dressy, I think I will make the straps out of gathered ribbon. And, yes - they will be wearing shirts under them! :)
If you do it - send me a pic! I want to see it!! You can do it in about 30 minutes. It is THAT easy!

Target.

I love Target. I could spend hours there. Today, I went there to return some things and pick up a few things - alone. I don't go too often anymore so the fact that I was alone encouraged me to browse a little bit. I got lost in there. I'm not sure what it is about Target but it just makes me so happy to walk around and look at all of the cool things they have. I happened upon this little beauty and was shocked to see the price. These go for $49.99 regularly. We love to entertain but because I can't justify spending that much money on something that I would only use occasionally, I've never paid much attention to it before. Today, however, it was marked down to $12.48. "WAIT... WHAT??" Yep. Unfortunately, this was the last one and it didn't have a box or instructions. Hmmm... is it worth it? I called John to discuss it and decided that it absolutely was worth it! I'm so stinkin' excited about it!
Are you wondering what it is? It is a food warmer with three serving sections. You just plug this baby in and decide if you want it on high or low and it keeps your food warm and pretty looking at the same time.
Steal of a deal!

Cartoon

Today, I went to a Stake Relief Society activity and it was a lot of fun. I learned about food storage, focusing on things of eternal value and the importance of education. I wish I had gotten a picture but I didn't.
BUT...
Later that day, the kids and I were in the girls' room and I was snapping pictures of them playing when I started playing with the settings on my phone. One of them is a cartoon setting so they each got to see what they looked like as a cartoon. Here is my Emma. Cute huh? :)

Chicago #2

Can you believe that I only got 3 pictures of our Chicago trip this time?? I am kind of bummed but oh well! Today was such a blast! We left our house around 7am - got to the temple in time for the 9am session. Heidi and I went through while John and Thomas took the kids to the Dairy Farm Museum that we went to last time. We met them there and they went to the 12pm session together while Heidi and I went to IKEA. We spent about 5 hours there. *sigh* This picture is of the girls at checkout in their cool car cart. :)
Great day!!