RoyalMom

We beat the crowd and ran through the corn maze today. It was windy and raining a little, which made for an extra exciting adventure through the maze. We are having fun with the old Canon A70 digital camera. I had forgotten how light and convenient it is. The pics are decent and it has video!

And here is the first of the several clips of video I took. I really need to get over my need to narrate every second. I should shut up and let the video speak for itself. My apologies ahead of time. you can click into Youtube to see the rest of the maze set. >

Its been a rice and beans kind of week, scraping together meals with what we have left in the cupboard, but I had to share the recipe I found tonight.

A Chicken Pot Pie, that does not call for store bought pastry dough. Very yummy! and ingredients we had on hand...well almost, jason had to make a run for the chicken. Technically we have chicken, but those aren't for eating;)

We made up 8 little pies and stuck them in the freezer for tomorrow. mmmm! We'll see if picky little eaters will try them just because they look like pie.

We are flush with groceries and its like an early Halloween. The unscholing philosophy is all about not restricting food choices. Supposedly if a food is not restricted or considered only for special times, kids won't feel the need to gorge themselves on junk.

In our efforts to say "yes" more, we let them choose things at the grocery store. Xander had initially gorged himself with cookies last week and I wanted to pull back the restrictions again. Because he probably needs more time to adjust to the new freedoms, I decided to stay strong and forge on with the freestyle parenting.

They went hog-wild in the bulk candy section of the store today, but we realized we don't need to buy huge bags of everything. We got tiny bags of what they wanted to try and they are happy. We also bought lots of yummy fruit from the farmer's market and they love that too. Hopefully within time they will have tried everything and it won't be such a novelty. I'll keep you posted on that. lol

Okay...meals for this week:

Monday...Baklava Salmon. Have you tried this? It is DIVINE!!! the sauce mixture could be used for any meat and it would be delicious! Try it.
Tuesday...Crock pot egg/sausage/potato breakfast.
Wednesday...Veggie lasagna
Thursday...home made pizza
Friday...some kind of soup. Got a good one?

Monday...spaghetti with pesto, sun dried tomato and feta. Zucchini and tomato slices on the side.
Tuesday...ground turkey enchiladas
Wednesday...breakfast burritos
Thursday...spaghetti with tomato sauce
Friday...pizza

We've had the Macbook for quite some time, but every time we open photo booth the kids and I have to play for at least a few minutes. We were going for some Halloween scary pics and I don't think Isaac has it in him. Xander, though, has the scariest mean face I've ever seen. When he wakes up I'll see if we can capture it.

A little Halloween spin on it...

In the spirit of Halloween, I was pretending to be a zombie trying to get the kids. This lead to a little lesson on how to kill each type of scary creature, which lead to a little post-test on the material covered...

Me: so, quick, how do you kill a zombie?
Isaac: chop off his head.
Me: a werewolf?
Isaac: silver bullets.
Me: A vampire?
Isaac: a meat loaf...I mean steak through the heart.
Me: meat loaf? (explained what a "stake" is and both of us laughing hysterically)

I love that little guy. He makes me laugh every day with a real sense of humor, not just silly kid stuff. Like when he totally biffed it at the grocery store acting like a clown, balancing on the cart bumpers around the frozen food cases. He wasn't hurt but it was obviously an embarrassing moment. I asked if he was okay and he bounce right up, with a little smirk on his face and says, "Never better!"

Maybe you had to be there, but Jason and I were rolling. A six year old trying to maintain his cool like that. Good stuff.

Simon started really crawling. I LOVE this new phase we've entered. Let the exploring begin! He's been getting around the livingroom but hadn't figured out how to purposely make a forward motion with intent to get somewhere...until today. He ventured off the carpet and started down the hall.

What a big new world..err, house to discover!

Jason and I had a serious debate about this. I saw her spinning clockwise and he sees counter-clockwise. What do you see? I did finally see her switch direction.

This is the THIRD year Isaac and Xander have worn these purple dragon costumes. They have a huge assortment of costumes they play with and can choose from, but they always come back to these.

People always ask what they are and usually assume dinosaurs. The wings are pretty small. My favorite guess from this year was "What are you guys? Moose?"