Insta Friday

Hello Friday!

I'm SO flipping excited it's Friday!

And not just ANY Friday friends.
This is the Friday before my date night!

Date night where ALL 3 kids spend the night with nana and papa,
and I go to the Melting Pot with my man.

A day without smelling like spit up...
or fighting the potty training battle.

Date.Night.People.
This is a glorious Friday.

Now, don't get me wrong...
I love my kids.
But sometimes you just need to refresh and renew.
It's healthy.
I think it makes us better parents.

Word to your mom.

And on such a glorious Friday, start something new.
Start doing something with all those pics you take on that electronic device
and click the button below to link up to Insta-Friday!

I know you take pics with your phone.
Now let me see them.
No pressure.

Well maybe just a little pressure.
C'mon. It's an easy post every week.
Now get on it.

Sledding.
I.love.sledding.
I love extreme sledding.
I went down the hill more than my children.
I even tried to make my own sledding hill in the back yard.
It wasn't safe.
I have bruises all over my body.
But, man did I laugh.
I want this Lucky Bums Kids Snow Racer Extreme Sled.
Not.kidding.
It's on my Christmas list for next year.

AJ was a dino in a school play this week.
I may be a little biased, but he was about the cutest dinosaur I have ever seen.
He roared.
Man, it was one hell of a cute roar.

Sometimes I feel guilty for not doing enough educational stuff with my kids...
and when that happens they get all kinds of educational activities crammed into one afternoon...
and then we are all tired and I have a mess to clean up.
And it's usually a month before the activity marathon happens again.
AJ calls it school time and asks for school time everyday.
I have to tell ya, I could not home school my children.
We play too much.

Wednesday we walked a tightrope of letters/shapes, traced our name/practiced writing our first and last name, practiced counting, practiced our sight word ring, did some building words...

Went on a scavenger hunt for yellow things and things that started with a.
Things around the house that start with a are kinda hard...
angry birds, apples, apricot...???

AJ requested "A" cookies with yellow frosting and sprinkles for his half birthday at school...
which really falls next week, but with V-day we sent cookies this week.
My last batch were really hard, so I found a new recipe.
Click the red link to make your own not hard as rocks cookies.
I also discovered via a commenter from the recipe link that, rolling out the dough on parchment paper, cutting out the cookie, and pulling the dough outside the cutter is way easier than
cutting and trying to movie the cookie. This way you just slide the parchment paper right on the cookie sheet. Seems easy enough, but I didn't think of it. I struggled with moving every cookie after cutting it...then trying to reshape it on the cookie sheet. And when you pull the cookies out, they just peel right off the parchment paper.

Brody Bear continues to just radiate joy.

I received some of the busy bags from the busy bag swap I participated in this week!
Busy bags...who know?!
These things really help a mom out.
And people are so clever.
Going clockwise,
the first one is a beginning sounds activity where the kiddos clip the letters that spell the words on the card...AJ loves this one...and I feel like a good mom that he is practicing phonics...
the next one is laminated so kids can make the letters out of play-doh...
then you have some patterning and fine motor practice...
and a button snake for shapes, colors, patterns, fine motor...

We also got a memory game, some pop stick puzzles, and a color matching activity.

Seriously, up until a couple weeks ago I didn't know about busy bags.
I have seen the light.
They save me multiple times a day now.
Just google busy bag ideas...there are TONS of ideas out there.

I think I could become addicted to busy bag swaps.
Then we won't have to do marathon school time afternoons.
These busy bags are a fabulous thing.

And now I need to go pack my kids' bags for nana and papa's house...
and start primping for my big date night.

Melting Pot here I come!