My Son's First Play Date

My son has a neighbor boy over on his first real play date.  My son and daughter have had many neighbor kids over, but most were kids I was babysitting.  About 2 years ago, we moved into a neighborhood where I knew some of the other parents from elementary school.  My kids and their kids play together quite a bit, but they're really more like family, as I've known their parents for as long as I can remember.

This little boy is from one of the few families that I haven't known my entire life.  He is a grade older than my son.  I'm a little picky about that, as my son is the "baby" of his class, with a late summer birthday, so even the kids in his grade are a year or two older than him.  It really is a trend in this area to hold kids, especially boys, back a year before beginning Kindergarten.  Honestly, had we had the financial means for my son to attend preschool for another year, I would have put him in it for another year, instead of sending him to Kindergarten right away.

Most of the kids in this neighborhood are girls, unfortunately for my son.  This is a good thing for my daughter, as I can be a little more choosy about who she plays with, as there are many girls in here.  Unfortunately, my son gets stuck playing mostly with girls.  He is getting to an age where he wants to make friends with other boys, instead of hanging out with all girls.  There are only 3 boys in our neighborhood that are close to his age, so that doesn't leave much of a selection.  The kid that he's hanging out with today is a little whiny and dorky, but, looking back, most of my friends were a little dorky, too.  I guess I'd rather he hang out with a whiny kid than a trouble maker.

Cub Scouts Pet Care Belt Loop and Pin

Over my son's winter break from school, I began helping him earn his Pet Care Belt Loop and he is nearly done with the Pin.  I took him to our pets' veterinarian, where he took a tour and interviewed the veterinarian.  He got to help give an examination to a kitten, which he loved!  Surprisingly, he didn't really care for looking at the x-rays.  He really loves animals, so I thought that he'd be more interested in learning about animal physiology.  For part of his Pin, he gave a short presentation to his den about guinea pigs.  We have 4 of them, and the kids help out as much as they can, so he's pretty knowledgeable about them.  I can't wait until he is awarded these!  He has worked very hard, and I hope he'll continue being interested in scouting.

Egg-Potato-Sausage Casserole and Jello for Dinner

I was feeling a little lazy today and made a concoction for dinner out of stuff I had in the fridge and freezer.  In the casserole, in put:  eggs, frozen hashbrowns, frozen tater tots, sausage links, peppers, and cheese.  Normally, I would sneak in a dark leafy vegetable and onion, but peppers were the only veggie that I had that would go well with the rest of the combination.

As soon as the kids got home from school, I had them help me make dessert.  They made Jello with bananas.  They often request Jello, but it takes 4 hours to set, so we rarely make it.  This was a fun and tasty after school activity!  Well, tasty for them, anyway.  I'm not much with Jello.

Thanks for reading!

 - Vanessa

Is Your Toilet Running?

My water bill was outrageous last month!  It showed 3 times as much water usage as normal!  I called the city's billing department to discuss the bill and the reasons for it.  I suggested that maybe my next-door-neighbors could be stealing water.  (If you knew them, it would not be beyond the realm of possibility.)  They had a suggestion that I wanted to share.

I put food coloring in the toilet's tank and waited to see if the food coloring would seep into the toilet bowl.  I also left the lid off of the toilet tank.  With the combination of the lid being off and being able to hear the normally muffled leak, and being able to see the pink water in the bowl, I was able to show my landlord and the maintenance guy the leaking toilet.  Hopefully, this will solve the issue, and I'll stop having $100 water bills!

I hope this can help someone as much as it did for me!

 - Vanessa

Great Wolf Lodge

My mother-in-law bought my family a one-night-stay at Great Wolf Lodge for Christmas.  We left on Friday and returned Saturday afternoon.  Everyone really loved it!  There is really something there for everyone.  My kids were introduced to water slides for the first time (my favorite!) and my oldest child loved it and begged to go on it again and again.  I don't care much for roller coasters, but I absolutely love water slides!  I would definitely recommend going there, if you ever get a chance!

Thanks for reading!

Vanessa

Bacon Wrapped Stuffed Chicken Breast

I admit that I haven't been eating that healthy lately.  Tonight, I made a favorite standby of bacon wrapped chicken breast.  I just used ingredients that I had.  Granted, we have guinea pigs, so that usually is a motivation to keep veggies around.

Tonight, I stuffed the chicken breast with:  kale, canned tomatoes, and cheese.  My dad and I are into canning (especially salsa!) and have lots of canned tomato to use up.  We have guinea pigs, so I always have lots of miscellaneous veggies around.  I made the kids macaroni and cheese to go with their dinner and salad.  I turned down the macaroni and stuck with the salad.  I also chopped up lots of veggies to go with the veggies.  Another plus side to the kids and I eating chopped veggies is that it saves time in preparing the piggies' dinner.  They basically had what I had for dinner, minus the chicken and canned tomatoes.  I used turkey bacon to wrap the stuffed chicken breasts, as that's the only bacon that I had on hand.  I prefer turkey bacon over pork bacon to eat by itself and in eggs.  For wrapped stuffed chicken breast, pork bacon is better, but hey, it was all I had on hand.

Bacon wrapped stuffed chicken breast is one of my family's favorite healthy standby dinners and is pretty inexpensive to make!  What are some of your standby healthy dinners?

Thanks for reading!

 - Vanessa

Pumpkin Pancakes

Last night, as I was deep cleaning the house and organizing the food cupboard, I found a couple of big cans of canned pumpkin that I had found out about.  I decided to treat the kids and I to some pumpkin pancakes this morning!  There is still about 90% of the can left over, so I'll have to make a pie or figure out another use for it.  Please don't judge my pancake making skills.

Thanks for reading!

 - Vanessa