February Favorites

It's the end of February, so it's time to go back and show you the best of the rest. These are some of the pictures I took this month, but never posted. If only I had more free time...but alas, all of my time has been going to Victor Hugo and Girls on HBO.

 

Anyway, here you go...

 

Tyler went to a birthday party at Kids Castle earlier this month and even though Kyle and I tried to lay low in the ball pit, he couldn't resist coming to play with his little brother. I love seeing those two play together.

I could look at this picture all day long just to enjoy that handsome smile. What you can't see though, is that Mr. Monkey Kyle Bear has climbed up onto the tile that surrounds the fireplace (what's that called...the hearth??) so that he can try and pull the blinds open. And as you can see, he's perfectly pleased with his progress.

Me and Kyle Bear ♥♥♥ It'd be nice if my hair wasn't in my face, but sometimes you get what you get.

Sometimes I take Kyle along when I walk Tyler to the bus stop. I just put his shoes on over the footies of his pajamas, throw on a sweater and off he goes. He loves going for walks or just going outside in general.

Lately Tyler has been spending a lot of time on his MindWare coloring book. It's a color by number book and has really detailed pictures. Once he's done with the picture, he rips it out of the book and tapes it up in the hallway...or gallery as he calls it.

 

Caramelita likes to keep Tyler company in the afternoon when he comes home from school and she seems to have made it her job to keep his pajamas nice and warm.

 

And with that, I'll throw in a few gratuitous cat photos. You're welcome.

Engineering Fair

Over the weekend we took Tyler to the Science and Engineering Fair at the college. It's geared towards younger kids and they have all kinds of stations set up with hands on activities. We got there kind of early, but it didn't take long for the crowds to start forming.

 

He started off at the milk and soap station, where they used food coloring to show how milk and soap repel each other...something to do with the protein in the milk.

Then he moved on and tried to make a structure using spaghetti and marshmallows.  He had a strong triangular base going, but then when he tried building off of that...things started to get wonky.

There was the tub of gak (cornstarch and water mixture).

And the cloud in a bottle experiment.

We ended up spending several hours over there and still didn't make it though all the stations. Eventually we just had to head back home so that Kyle could get a nap...he isn't one to nap on the go.

Back at the house, Rick got to work trimming up the unwieldy branches of the trees out in the front yard. We've got some serious overcrowding going on there.

The temperature has been staying in the low 50's and when the sun is out, it actually feels pretty comfortable. The boys don't mind going out to play, but I'm still holding out for something a little warmer.

The Sentence

It's no secret that Tyler has been having issues with his behavior, so it shouldn't come as a surprise when I say that he got in trouble at school last week. However, this time the incident happened on the bus and as a result he was kicked off and not allowed to ride for the rest of the week. Consequently, I became responsible for getting him to and from school each day.

 

Ugh! I understand why he got kicked off the bus....but I just don't see how that's a punishment. A punishment for me maybe, but not for him. He's been living the life...sleeping in and taking his time in the morning. When I drive him to school it's a quick 7 minutes and he doesn't have to deal with the "annoying kids" on the bus or endure the usual 35 minutes he would otherwise spend there.

 

For me the challenge is getting Kyle ready in time and leaving the house early enough so we don't get caught in the traffic jam that happens in the school parking lot.

 

Today is the last day of his expulsion, so hopefully tomorrow we can get back on track with the normal routine and have a better week.

Giant Oat Cookies

Tyler gets to check out two books from the school library every Wednesday and lately he's been on a total origami kick. He always picks from the non-fiction section though, and usually comes home with a drawing book or something of the sort. But for weeks he'd been bringing home origami books until finally he'd checked out every single one the library had. Then last week he brought home a Cheerios cookbook.

 

So since it's the weekend and we have the time, he declared that we were making the Giant Oat Cookies.

 

Okay, but we still have half a pan of those valentine cheesecake brownies, so I told him we could only make half a batch of the cookies.

Tyler got to work measuring out the butter and sugar so we could cream that together in the mixer.

While that was working Tyler asked where the flour was.

And in a manner that would make Amelia Bedelia proud, Kyle pointed out that the flower was right there. Silly Mommy and Brother!!!

Oh, that flour. Ha!

So Tyler added the flour, oatmeal, cherrios and the rest of the ingredients, mixed it all together and formed 6 whopping mounds of dough onto the cookie sheet.

After about 11 minutes in the oven, they came out looking like this.

Cheers!

Valentine's Day 2013

I spent Valentine's Day at home with the boys...and by "boys", I really mean Kyle since Rick was at work all day and Tyler was in school until 4:00.

 

Still I was able to get our annual photo once Tyler got back home. It was a mad race against the setting sun to get a good picture with natural light. I really hate having to use the flash.

For our festive dessert I made Red Velvet Swirl Brownies, a recipe from Sunny Anderson of the Food Network. You can't tell from the picture, but they have a bottom layer of red velvet brownie and the top is a cheesecake layer with some of the brownie batter swirled in. It looks similar to the Red Velvet Cheesecake I made last year, but not quite as good. Maybe you just need to go full brownie or full cheesecake and not settle for any silly half and half business.

 

As for the valentine's, I gave a gift bag to Tyler that had some goodies in it and I gave Kyle a tin with a chocolate chip cookie inside and a small box of Junior Mints.

Tyler brought home a massive envelope from school that had all of his valentine's from the classroom exchange. The most popular candy seems to be dum-dums...nobody hands out conversation heart anymore.

Before heading out the door to work, Rick surprised me with a new pair of shoes. Cute!

And then when he came home in the wee hours of the night, he brought flowers...which I am just now enjoying since I was all but asleep when they arrived.

Making Valentines

It occurred to me that Tyler will probably be doing classroom valentine exchanges for only two more years since elementary school only goes through 4th grade around here. And we've done some pretty cool valentines in the past, like the rice krispy treat heart valentines and the robot ones from Kindergarten. Then there was last year when I think I just sent him along with a box of Phineas and Ferb fruit snacks to pass out. Did I really do that? 

 

Anyway, I was ready to amp up the cuteness factor for this year's exchange so I looked around on Pinterest and saw a fish bowl valentine. Sold! That's what we were doing. So I bought the file on Etsy to print out the pre-designed fish bowls that came with four different sayings ("I'm glad we're in the same school, "I saw you and I was hooked", "You're the only fish in the sea for me", and "You're unlike all the other fish in the sea"). Then I bought some appropriately shaped gift bags and several sacks of Swedish Fish and let the assembly begin.

 

I printed out several sheets of the fish bowls that we had to cut out...that was the worst part. But Tyler has his own pair of Cutter-Bee scissors and is super good at cutting intricate stuff, so he was a gigantic help. We were actually done in less than 1 hour with the entire project.

Yay! They came out so good!

Hopefully they go over well at his party today. I'll have to find out later when he comes home from school.

Mardi Gras

Yesterday was Mardi Gras, which as you know, is just an excuse (for us anyway) to have a theme dinner and dessert and dress accordingly in the traditional colors.

 

For dinner I usually make red beans and rice or something along those lines, but this year I made a Penne and Smoked Sausage casserole. Eh....not the most authentic thing in the world, but who cares, we were more interested in the dessert anyway.

Mardi Gras cupcakes.

Yeah, forget the King Cake...these will do just fine! Actually, Tyler was seriously disappointed when I told him I wasn't making the King Cake this year. I just didn't want to deal with all the devastation that always happens in the oven...gigantic air pockets and ripped seams for example. I thought I'd go the easier route and maybe try the King Cake again next year.

The cupcakes came out alright considering that I'm not the best at making them from scratch. I also wish the colors were a little more vibrant, but I guess that's what you get when you use liquid food coloring rather than the paste. The boys ate them right up without a single hesitation though, so I'll take that as a thumbs up.

#1 Fan

To simply say that Kyle likes my banana bread would be a huge understatement. He loves the stuff. LOVES. I'm pretty sure he's my #1 fan.

 

I usually pour the batter into muffin tins since it bakes up quicker that way. I even put a portion into my mini muffin tin, so I end up with several smaller Kyle-size muffins.

 

And while they bake in the oven, Kyle will stand by and keep a close watch on them.

For 15 whole minutes.

But that's it...he can't wait any longer than that. He wants a bite as soon as they come out of the oven. Thankfully, I baked the mini ones first, while he wasn't looking, so they were all cooled and ready to eat.

Mmmmm, yummy!

Pancake Day

Today is National Pancake Day at IHOP, the day they give out free short stacks of buttermilk pancakes, which is nice... if you have one in your neighborhood.  Our IHOP closed last year so we're no longer able to partake in the festivities. No matter. I just decided to make some of my own.

 

Thanks to the Neely's and The Food Network, I've got the perfect recipe for pancakes. I love this recipe...it's the only one I make anymore. Sometimes I even use half whole wheat flour or add blueberries and they always come out good. Today I added blueberries to half of the pancakes and left the other half plain.

Then we topped them with all kinds of fancy fruit syrups, just like at IHOP. Well probably better than IHOP, actually.

One happy customer.

And another.

So take that IHOP. We didn't need your stinky pancakes anyway.