Monday: Baked ziti, green beans, French bread
Tuesday: same
Wednesday: Beef tacos, fresh fruit, chips & homemade salsa (see recipe below)
Thursday: same
Friday: Larry’s Pizza! Yea!!!
Saturday: Vegetable beef soup, baked potatoes, cornbread
Sunday: Chicken rice casserole, salad, green beans
Menu Plan Monday has a a guest host this week, so be sure to check it out.
* * * * * * *
Recipe: Salsa (more…)
Ahh, the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. When we went last year, I was one week away from giving birth to our sweet Anna, and I found myself looking ahead to this year as we would enjoy the festivities with our little girl. I envisioned a warm, sunny day; maybe little Anna could wear the green-and-white striped sundress and matching hat I had recently bought her; perhaps she would even be walking, toddling around in little sandals, the sunshine illuminating her golden curls…
… instead she looked like this:
Yep, it was a cold gray day, so we were all bundled up in layers. Weather issues aside, she’s not walking yet, that particular dress is still way too big, and she still doesn’t have much hair. But that’s ok. We had a great time and our little girl was absolutely wonderful. We manipulated her schedule a bit so she would take a nap before we went, and it worked—she was in a great mood the whole time! She seemed to enjoy watching everything and everybody and being with mommy and daddy.
Our friends the Allisons went with us. Here’s Emily with the youngest of their three daughters:
The Lyon College Pipe band:
Our friend and fellow musician Joe with his Irish Wolfhound:
Dancers from the O’Donovan School of Irish Dance:
Did you know the Faulkner County Library has a program for babies under 2? I didn’t. I just found out on Saturday, and I took Anna there this morning for her first story time! She was certainly attentive; she just sat in my lap with a wide-eyed expressionless face, staring nonstop at everything going on, probably wondering what in the world her crazy mommy had brought her to. But towards the end, she finally cracked a smile. I feel certain she’ll warm up to it if we go every week.
Afterwards I let her play alongside the other toddlers in the little kitchen play area there. I tried to get Anna interested in the pots and pans, but as soon as she discovered that she could push the chairs around, that’s all she wanted to do. (She rearranges the furniture in our kitchen pretty regularly these days!)
We’re definitely going back. It’s on Mondays at 10, if you have a wee one and want to come along. The library website actually says it’s on “Monday’s”—jeez, they ought to know better! But then, they also have it listed under their “teens” tab rather than their “kids” tab, which may explain why I’ve never heard of it.
On Saturday David grilled a whole chicken, two flat-iron steaks, a batch of veggies, and some burgers, so we have most of that left to get us through the week. We froze the burgers and will pull them down as needed. If you’re grilling, always grill a lot—you can eat on it for several days and/or freeze some for later, and the majority of your cooking’s done!
Check out Menu Plan Monday for more great ideas.
Monday: Grilled chicken (pollo diablo), grilled mixed vegetables (see recipe below), baked sweet potatoes
Tuesday: Steak tacos, fresh fruit, chips & homemade salsa
Wednesday: same
Thursday: Roasted chicken hash (except with grilled chicken this time), green beans, French bread
Friday: same
Saturday: just snacks for supper because we’ll eat fish ‘n’ chips from Cregeen’s in the afternoon following the St. Patrick’s Day parade!
Sunday: Burgers, potato wedges
* * * * * * *
Recipe: Grilled Vegetables (more…)
We’ve probably all done it. You’re doing some household chore involving bleach, and you don’t want to change clothes just to do something that takes 30 seconds, and you’ll be oh-so-careful… but, nevertheless, you get bleach on your clothes and your dark purple sweater is ruined. Ok, maybe not a dark purple sweater for you, but you can extrapolate.
It was just a small area on the sleeve, but it still made the sweater unwearable. But then I started wondering if I could just dye the whole thing dark purple and even it out. So I did a little research, went to Hobby Lobby and bought some Rit dye (one purple and one black, to make dark purple), and went for it.
Here’s the “before” shot:
Did you know that today is National Grammar Day? I didn’t, but thank you, Charlie, for bringing it to my attention in your Facebook status. In observance of this little-publicized but much-needed calendar day, I thought I’d let my readers know three things that really bug me.
1. Putting an apostrophe in every word that ends with s. You did not have dinner with the Felio’s last night. You did not buy lot’s of egg’s on your trip’s to the grocery store last week. Come on, people!
2. Using your in place of you’re. You’re going to get in big trouble because you didn’t put your dishes in the dishwasher this morning. Get it straight.
3. Using I when me is correct. I hear it everywhere: “John shared his candy with Mary and I.” Would you say, “John shared his candy with I”? Of course not! Despite those early-childhood grammar corrections that were drilled into our brains, sometimes me really is correct. And whatever you do, please do not select your pronoun case just to make the lines of your song rhyme! I’m specifically referring to the Newsboys song “Something Beautiful,” in which they sing, “… When we laugh so hard we cry / It’s the love between you and I…” Ugh! I have to change the station every time I hear that song come on. If the correct pronoun doesn’t rhyme, then re-write your song!
So what really bugs you? Let’s have it!
Last week we postponed Saturday’s pizza until Sunday, so we still have leftover pizza for Monday. We’re planning to grill next Sunday, as long as the weather is nice, which should carry us well into the next week. Remember to check out Organizing Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday for more ideas.
Monday: Homemade pizza, salad
Tuesday: Pot roast w/ carrots and potatoes, French bread
Wednesday: same
Thursday: same
Friday: Macaroni and cheese (see recipe below), steamed veggies, green beans
Saturday: same
Sunday: Grilled chicken, grilled mixed veggies, baked potatoes
* * * * * * *
Recipe: Old-Fashioned Macaroni and Cheese (more…)
For a couple of weeks now, I’ve noticed Anna holding out her arm toward Sasha like she’s waving. How sweet, she’s waving at the dog, I thought.
But then I realized that’s not what she’s doing at all! Whenever we tell Sasha to sit, down, or stay, we use hand signals. We don’t even think about it anymore; it’s just automatic. Apparently Anna has picked up on this, and she’s going around flinging her arm out in Sasha’s direction whenever she’s around her. That’s obviously what you’re supposed to do around a dog, right?
… er, month, that is… Anna is eleven months old today! But it also seems like the “eleventh hour” in that the deadline for soaking up every moment of her sweet baby year is all too quickly approaching. I can’t believe she’ll be one year old in one short month. My baby is disappearing before my very eyes and is being replaced by a little girl!
Anna is quite active right now; consequently, David and I are too. It’s incredible the things she tries to get into, some successfully, as the rest of you parents know. She loves taking things out of things, like pulling stuff out of her diaper bag, pulling laundry out of the laundry basket, pulling her books off of her bookshelf, etc. She’s really cute with her books; she’ll sit there surrounded by the little pile she’s made and just flip through them and look at them for a few minutes. She likes music and will smile and rock back and forth excitedly when she hears it. She’s cruising everywhere now, just crawling when there isn’t something to hold onto to get from point A to point B. And she’s finally eating some solids now; she likes bananas (as a whole chunk she hold and eat), yogurt, cheese, peaches, applesauce, and most any kind of bread/crackers/cereal. Oh, and taco meat. She is definitely my child.
Comments(5)
