Cow Appreciation Day

I just drove through Chick-Fil-A (this is at least a once-a-week occurrence at our house) and in our bag of yummy food there was a cute little coupon.  It says, “Dress like me, git free chikin” and there’s a picture of a cow dressed up in a cow costume.  (Yes.  I said that right.)

Apparently Chic-Fil-A has named July 11th, this year’s “Cow Appreciation Day”.  And if you wear a cow costume to their fine restaurant on that day, you’ll get a free meal.

Now, I’m all about bargains and getting things for free and what-not, but I’m not so sure I’m ready to dress up like a cow for it.  But, for those of you who would, YOU GO, GIRL (or boy)!  :)

I’ll just have to remember to allocate a little extra time to get through the lines on that day since I’m sure they’ll be packed with cows…

What about you?  Will you be one of those cool people that dresses up, or a dork like me that doesn’t?  :P

Story Time at The Rienzi

When I was skimming through all the indoor Houston activites for kiddos on NinaLoca, I ran across some information that just really excited me. There is a mansion in the River Oaks area that has been donated to the Museum of Fine Arts, complete with all of the artwork and collectibles that the Masterson family had acquired over the years. It houses other collections from time to time and you can regularly tour it. But, during the summer time, they offer Rienzi Storytime Tours, every Wednesday in June and July at 10am, for kids ages 4-8, as well as other family activities.

I emailed a friend of mine and we decided to take our kiddos today to check it out. We loved it! They gave us a tour of some of the larger rooms in the home and would stop in each one and have all the kiddos sit down on the floor. The docent then gave a brief piece of information about the room or something specific in the room and then read a children’s book that somehow fit. In the Dining Room, she read “Bear Wants More” about a bear that wakes up from hibernation and wants to eat more and more. In the Drawing Room, the docent read a book about 3 mice who painted (Get it? We were in the Drawing Room?! hee hee ). In the Ball Room, she pointed out some of the Masterson’s collection of Chinese porcelain from the 1700’s and then read a book called “The Empty Pot” about a little boy who was trying to become the new emporer of China.

They have several different docents that rotate each week, and they each have different books that they like to bring and read to the kids. My 5yo absolutely loved getting to hear stories in such a new and exciting place. My 3yo actually paid attention and enjoyed kicking off his flip flops to listen. While my 21mo didn’t exactly listen to the stories, she absolutely loved pointing at all the paintings and statues throughout the house. Obviously the age range of 4-8 is best suited to the tour, but they don’t limit it to that age group.

After the tour was over and all the kiddos hugged our docent, “Ms. Mary”, we went out into the back yard to see the beautiful pool and grounds. We wound up playing hide-n-seek in the shrubs of the side yard until we were too hot and sticky to stay any longer.

All in all, a wonderful experience, and one that Kate is anxious to repeat!

Potty Trained!!!

We finally did it!  The boy is potty trained!!!!!!

(Yes, I meant to put all those exclamation points after that sentence.  That’s how EXCITED I am that he’s finally wearing ‘big boy underwear’.  If you’ve ever potty trained a boy, you understand my elation. )

After months of fighting, pleading, bribing, arguing, and disappointment, I finally found the right combination of things for Ethan to want to potty train.

We had tried bribing him with candy corn (the treat HE picked out at the store for just this purpose) and that wasn’t really working.  We tried putting him in pull-ups and telling him to let us know when he needed to go - yeah, right.  Then, one day, I got so tired of it, I just put ‘big boy underwear’ on him and set the timer.  Every 15-30 minutes the timer would go off and I would say, “Time to go sit on the potty!”  The first few times he fought me on it and didn’t want to do it.  It took a few times, too, before anything happened when we were ON the potty.  When it did, there was HUGE celebration, much clapping and cheering, and candy-giving.  

The few times that he had an ‘accident’, we went immediately in the bathroom and sat on the potty just to see if there was any pee left.  A friend of mine said that sometimes when they have an accident, they stop themselves before they’re completely empty.  This way you have a chance to praise them for going potty in the toilet, even in the midst of an ‘accident’.  (Thanks for that idea, Shannon!)

We also checked out a book from the library called “Time to Pee”.  It’s a great little book about potty training that starts off “If you ever get that funny feeling… don’t PANIC!”  Cracks me up!  I’m not sure if it was the book, the underwear, some cosmic alignment of the planets, or the combination of things, but suddenly it clicked with him!  And now, I don’t even know most of the time when he’s going pee, because he just gets up from where he’s playing, goes into the bathroom, and goes potty!  Yippee!!!  :)

Now, to work on wiping his own bottom.  That’s the part that no one talks about!  :P

How about you?  What were your tricks that helped get your little on to finally potty train?   

NinaLoca.com

If you’re a mom or dad living in the Houston area and you haven’t heard of NinaLoca.com yet, BOY are you going to L-O-V-E me for telling you about it!  :)

NinaLoca is a great site full of ideas for summer fun for kiddos.  She’s got everything from jumping places, to local parks, to museums, to kids-eat-free restaurants.  I’ve already found 2-3 places that we just HAVE to go check out this summer because of her great information.  Most of the places she’s listed she has a brief description and her own experiences (if she’s been there), too, which is MOST helpful!

Here’s her description of her own site…

Welcome to Nina Loca! Summer Fun Listings for Houston, Cypress, & surrounding areas. We list everything from kids eat free, play places, VBS, camps, volunteering for kids and teens, stuff for Moms and Dads, pet resources and more! We are Houston locals and we know the best places to visit with family and kids. Texas is cool!

So go check it out and then tell me where YOU just HAVE to go this summer because of this list!!

Earth Day: Kid-Friendly Ideas, Follow-Up

I was just writing an article on using fresh herbs and realized that I had forgotten to give you all a follow-up on our herb-planting Earth-Day fun.  And we took a LOT of pics, too!!  Shawn was great and kept the camera handy as we planted herbs and then made our Rice Krispy Treat Globes.

I started getting everything set up during nap time so that we would be ready to go when the kiddos got up.  Kate helped me choose some cans from our recycling bin, take off the labels, and wash them out. Then I smoothed out the tops to make sure there were no ragged edges to catch little fingers on and poked holes for drainage in the bottoms by tapping a screwdriver into the can using a hammer.  Then I painted a generous coat of gesso on each of the cans to give them a white background to start with that the acrylic paints would stick to.  I even painted a little on the inside of the top of each can since the dirt probably wouldn’t reach all the way to the top rim.  We also made labels on popsicle sticks for each of the herbs.  Kate enjoyed using her new writing skills to make these…

By then, the little ones had woken up and were ready to paint.  I gave each kiddo a ‘palette’ of all the different colors on the inside of a cut up recycled cereal box.  Kate was very particular and deliberate about painting pretty flowers and such.  Ethan immediately started swirling all of the colors on his palette together to make a lovely brown color… eww.  He then commenced to spreading the brown color over as much of the can as possible in very specific horizontal strokes.  Talk about contrasting Kate ‘the artist’ with Ethan ‘the engineer’.  You could almost hear his internal conversation where he was determining the quickest and most efficient way to cover the can with color so he could move on to the next step…  :P  Karis was just happy to dip her fingers paint brush in every color of the rainbow and splash it on the can.

Next, it was time for the herbs.  First we put some rocks at the bottom of each of the cans to help with drainage, and then put in about an inch or two of potting soil.  I had six different plants (2 basil, mint, oregano, rosemary, and parsley), so we each then took a plant to put into a can and then fill in around it with more potting soil.  (Did I mention that this was a very ‘dirt’y craft???  hee hee)  Notice the dirt on Karis’ face which blended in quite nicely with the purple paint she had been trying to taste earlier.  Geesh…  But, didn’t our project turn out pretty??  And the kids had a blast making them, too.  (Oh, and I sprayed the cans and labels with a matte finish acrylic sealer later that night after they went bed to make sure it would all stay perty.)

Then, it was dinner-time, so we made our Rice Krispy Treat Globes.  Yeah.  I’m weird like that.  The hardest part was mixing in the food coloring evenly.  By the time you’re done stirring one in, the other half of the hot mixture is cooling which makes it even more difficult to stir.  But, somehow we wound up with half blue and half green and then had the kiddos smear some butter on their hands, grab a little handful of each color and smush them together into a ball.  Great sticky and sweet fun.

We had a great evening playing together as a family and talking about the Earth.  The kids still love to water their herbs that sit on our windowsill and especially enjoyed the Rice Krispy Treat Globes, too.

Using Fresh Herbs

You know, if you read any of this blog, that we planted fresh herbs for Earth Day here with the kiddos. (Which reminds me, I still need to show you all my pics of our fun day!) While we did give some of them away as gifts for Mother’s Day, I still have some fresh parsley, rosemary, and oregano on my windowsill.  And since I’m not exactly the world’s best cook, I wasn’t really sure what to do with them all.  I mean, I know you can use all three of those in spaghetti sauce if I ever made my own from scratch, but other than that?

And this is where we all thank God for Google and the internet and other bloggers out there that write about the things that they do!  I ran across this article on using fresh herbs and how to pair them with foods.  Great resource to keep bookmarked and refer back to when you’re cooking and want to try something new, but don’t know which herbs taste best with which foods.

Just thought I’d share!  :)

Freezing Tips

Just found this GREAT article about freezing.  Almost makes me wanna thaw everything out and start over…  Okay, maybe I’ll just wait and do this the next time I buy ground beef…

Check out Lunch in a Box.

Let me know what you think and what creative ideas YOU have, too!

Earth Day: Kid-Friendly Ideas

So, Tuesday, April 22nd, is Earth Day.  And, I’m wanting to do SOMETHING with my kids to mark this day as special.  We already do a little bit of recycling at our house and we ‘celebrated’ Earth Hour a few weeks ago by watching the first Indy Race of the season in the dark (see this post about Earth Hour) - btw, we would have gone completely dark, but hello! the FIRST Indy race of the season?  Couldn’t miss that one.  :)  All of that, but I’m still feeling the need to do something more, especially on a day set aside specifically for the purpose of recognizing the earth and our contribution to the environment.

So, I’ve been doing a little googling and have come up with a few ideas that I think we can handle here with a 5yo, 3yo, and 18mo.  Here’s a couple of links for your reading enjoyment…

Tin Can Herb Pots - This looks like lots of fun and I figure we can use the end products as gifts if we want.

Coffee Ground Fossils - I have to admit that this one REALLY appealed to the Earth Science teacher in me…

Rice Krispie Earth -  Okay.  This just looked yummy.  How long HAS it been since I’ve had a Rice Krispie treat anyways??

“Stained Glass” Butterflies - Not sure how this really fits in to the whole Earth Day theme, but it brings back such fun memories of my own childhood, that I HAD to include it. 

There were SO many other ideas out there that it was almost overwhelming!!  I figure we’ve got to save some ideas for next year, though, right?  :)

So, what are YOU doing to celebrate Earth Day this year?  Leave me a comment so I can change my mind again about what I want to do!

English Muffin Personal Pizzas

I don’t know where I first read this idea, but it’s ingenious.  My kids love it, it’s easy, and it’s cheaper than ordering out, too!

Just take an English Muffin and lightly toast it.  Then spread your pizza sauce on it, top with cheese and pepperoni, or whatever else floats your boat.  Put it in the oven on 350 for about 10 minutes, or until the cheese melts.

If you get the kiddos to ‘help’ make their own, they’re ALWAYS more apt to eat it when it’s on their plate.  Plus, it’s fun watching them develop the motor skills to put shredded cheese on top of their pizza.  (Be prepared for a little more cleanup than if you did it, though! )

I usually put the finished product on a plate then throw it in the freezer for about a minute or two just to help it cool down a little faster before serving to munchkins.

So, what about you?  Do you have any easy, kid-friendly edible ideas?  I’d LOVE to hear them!  Comment below….

Ebates.com

What a great site I just stumbled upon!  If you do ANY online shopping at all, this is a GREAT resource.

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They have a whole section of Coupons and Promotionals that would be a great resource to check anytime you’re about to purchase something online. And the extra benefit is that some of the coupons not only get you a discount at the store you’re shopping at, but also gives you a cash back percentage with Ebates, too.

Plus, sign up FREE with Ebates today and we’ll each get a $5 bonus when you make your first purchase!

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