National Corn Chip Day 2012

To celebrate National Corn Chip Day on January 29, we made another HUGE pot of taco soup. We eat our taco soup with corn chips. Do you?
We had some people over to eat with us, sent them home with some, and still had enough soup left over to fill 6 gallon size ziplock bags to freeze.

Or five to freeze and one to eat again during the week. Yumm.

Mommy, Look

Look at my neat trick.

Penguin Awareness Day 2012

Friday, January 20, was Penguin Awareness Day.

We had fish sticks for dinner because penguins eat fish.

We made penguins out of cookies, frosting, candy corn and marshmallows for a treat.

Daddy's and Mommy's

Nichole's and Jr.'s

We made pipe cleaner penguins. Another idea from FamilyFun. Quick and easy. And so cute.

Nichole made a penguin picture.

The kids watched The Three Caballeros because there is a story in there about a penguin who longed to get away from the cold and live in a tropical climate.

We came up with a list of movies with penguins:
Mr. Popper's Penguins, Surf's Up, Happy Feet, March of the Penguins, Mary Poppins, The Three Caballeros, Batman Returns, The Pebble and the Penguin
Any National Geographic special about penguins.

Ah, penguins. Were you "aware" that there were so many penguin-themed activities?

Winnie-the-Pooh Day 2012

We have been waiting for this one for a while. One day months ago we were at our local Winco and saw that near the bulk section they had blackberry honey. I'd never had blackberry honey before. Neither had Jeremy. Oh, we wanted to try some. So we rationalized that if we could find a holiday or a "reason to celebrate" that might use honey, we could buy some. Looking at the Calendar of Celebration, we saw that January 18 is Winnie-the-Pooh Day. What better excuse for trying a new kind of honey? So we waited... and waited... and waited... and waited... and waited... until January.
As it got closer, we told the kids about our upcoming celebration. They were all ready to come up with ideas for activities we could do with a Winnie-the-Pooh theme. This is what we ended up doing for this holiday:

For breakfast, Jeremy used his pancake pen to create pancakes in the shape of Winnie-the-Pooh heads. We got to try out three different types of honey. Regular old clover honey. Blackberry honey. And creamed honey. It was fun to have the three different kinds on our pancakes. And yes, there is a subtle difference in the flavors (or textures in the case of the creamed honey).
Jr.'s piggy bank made an appearance as "Piglet," and we each decided to be a character from the stories or movies or TV shows.

Nichole made sure she wore her Winnie-the-Pooh shirt that said, "Sweet As Honey!" and even posed the same as Pooh Bear on her shirt for a picture.

We made sure to pack Nichole's lunch with items that fit the theme. A honey sandwich. Carrots from Rabbit's garden. Water because even Pooh drinks water. And honey graham crackers.
While she was at school, we listened to munchkinradio.com (the music starts as soon as you click on the link, so make sure you're ready with your speaker volume the way you want it). They play a lot of Disney music and sure enough, we heard a Winnie-the-Pooh song while listening. Jr. also got to play a Winnie-the-Pooh game cube game and we read a Winnie-the-Pooh book.

For dinner, we had cheeseburgers with vegetables you would find in Rabbit's garden, along with honey mustard and honey barbecue sauce.

This evening, Jeremy started reading "The Complete Tales and Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh" to us, then the kids started a Winnie-the-Pooh movie.

All this to justify getting some blackberry honey from the store.

We have lots of other Winnie-the-Pooh themed activities we've done before or can think of, but that's what we did today and all I'm going to blog about for now.

It was a great family day.

Appreciate a Dragon Day 2012

Appreciate a Dragon Day, January 16. I asked on facebook what people were doing to celebrate this holiday. The biggest answer I got was "watch How to Train Your Dragon." Popular movie.
Besides watching How to Train Your Dragon in our home, the kids and I started a dragon puppet from the February 2011 FamilyFun Magazine. We got as far as painting. We'll finish another day.
The "in progress" pictures I took didn't turn out very well (you'll have to wait until we finish), so instead I'll show you pictures of something else the kids did today.

Jeremy took some time and taught the kids how to make a snake and a flower out of balloons. I was very impressed.


For more information about the origin of Appreciate a Dragon Day and ideas for activities you could do with this theme, go to the website of Donita K. Paul, author of The DragonKeeper Chronicles.

Mom, You're So Embarrassing

Handmade Christmas Gifts 2011

Christmas 2010 I was able to make some handmade gifts for Jr. and Nichole. Christmas 2011 I was able to do it again.

Jr. is my kitchen helper so I sewed him an apron.

Nichole is taking a dance class and has been needing a skirt to go along with her leotard and tights so I sewed her one.

That's all I have to say. Thank you for reading.

Here We Go Again

It's a crackers and water day for the sick baby. At least he got a lot of sleep last night and is in a good mood so far today.

And he was just starting to get his appetite back from being sick last week. Sigh.

January Holidays Coming Up

January is full of reasons to celebrate, so I thought I'd mention some of them that are coming up and how we've celebrated them in the past.

January 23 this year is Chinese New Year. We've done simple celebrating in the past as well as more elaborate, and we already have some of our plans for this year's celebrations.
You can find what we did for Chinese New Year 2010 in my blog post for February 15, 2010. That day was also Valentine's Day so I blogged about it there as well.
I blogged about Chinese New Year 2011 on my blog post for February 3, 2011.
Currently we are in the Year of the Rabbit, but soon we will be in the Year of the Dragon. Woohoo.

Penguin Awareness Day is coming up on January 20. We haven't celebrated that holiday specifically in the past (we have plans for this year), but as I was going through the blog from years past, I found this cute penguin Nichole did at school (blogged about it January 27, 2011). It's done with simple shapes.

And even if you're not looking for a specific day to celebrate, January is a great winter month. Find a way to celebrate Winter. Nichole and Jr. recently drew and decorated snowmen with paper, pens, and whatever craft supplies Mom would let them use. Creativity. I love it.

Nichole's finished snowman

Jr.'s finished snowman

What reasons to celebrate are you looking forward to the rest of January or how have you celebrated so far this month?

In No Particular Order...

Here are some of the fun things we did in December:

Watched a magic show put on by "Nichole the Magnificent" and her lovely assistant, "Jeremy."

Walked around Riverwoods and looked at the lights and decorations.

Ate popcorn.

The kids tried eggnog (diluted with milk) for the first time.

Played with new Christmas presents.

And rediscovered some old toys.

Acted out "The Nutcracker."

After 8 years, said goodbye to our old microwave and got a brand new one

Ooh, and a new TV (which someone gave Jeremy for free when he helped them move).

(new one's on top, old one's on bottom)

Baked

Made gingerbread "zombies" as Jeremy liked to call them.

Went to our ward Christmas party.

And of course just enjoyed being a family.

I look forward to the joy of being a family this coming year as well.