International Polar Bear Day 2017

February 27 is International Polar Bear Day.  We ate fish sticks (even though polar bears don't usually eat fish). 

We also ate caramel crunch bars because the brand had a polar bear on its logo.  Tee Hee.

Jeremy put on a sort of nature show that had polar bears in it.

We spent some time realizing we don't have any movies with polar bears in them, but Nichole mentioned that Studio C has a sketch with a polar bear in it, so we watched some Studio C.
That's how we celebrated this year.

No Blog Post

February 23 is National Rationalization Day so I'm rationalizing not doing a blog post because I don't want to.  So there.

Legend of Zelda Dinner

February 21 is the Anniversary of the Legend of Zelda so we planned a lovely Legend of Zelda Dinner.  We took ideas from several different games.  Some items fit into multiple games.  Here are some of the things we ate:
Tasty meat (chicken drumsticks)

We also thought of the drumsticks because there are birds in Skyward Sword (ewww) along with clouds (mashed potatoes).

Red chuchus with hearts inside and green chuchus with magic inside (jello jigglers made in mini muffin tins with red or green runts inside)

Magic milk

Blue potion (Kool-Aid)

Deku scrub cheeseball

We also ate carrots since you can feed Epona (horse) carrots to make her go faster.
Some other ideas we came up with but didn't make:
magic refried beans (from magic beans)
salmon burgers (because of fish you can go fishing for)
While we ate Jeremy played The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for us.

I love going with a theme like this.  It's fun to celebrate.

Playgrounds on Presidents' Day

One day while we were out for a nice afternoon drive, Jr. needed to stretch his legs.  We stopped and a few of us got out to stretch our legs.  We were near a playground at the time and Jeremy came up with a wonderful idea.  "We go and spend a day out birding, but every park we pass that has a playground, we have to stop and spend five minutes playing on it."  That way Jeremy and I get our birding in, but the kids don't have to stay cooped up in the van the whole time and get to have some fun as well.
Enter a day off of school.  Today.  Jeremy planned out a route and we made sure to have enough food and snacks in the van as well as movies for the kids to watch during our in the van time.  They each got to pick a movie from the library for our trip- extra incentive to go out.

 
Honestly it was fun.  We ended up stopping at quite a few playgrounds, some we planned on and some we happened upon.  A few of the playgrounds the kids got extra time at because there were birds to watch.  They didn't complain about that.  I got a new life bird.  We got some better pictures of some birds than we had before.  We didn't stick strictly to the route Jeremy planned because a fellow birder contacted us while we were out and gave us some suggestions of what birds we could find in certain places.  That was fun.  We also didn't get to all the places on Jeremy's list, but we went to some others because hey, it was our trip and we could be flexible.

 

Look.  It's our national bird- the bald eagle (juvenile, not adult).  Perfect for Presidents' Day.

It was a good family day.

Cereal... Again

It's that time of year again.  Lots of reasons to celebrate with cereal.
We celebrated the anniversary of William Kellogg founding the breakfast cereal company on February 19 by having those individual boxes of Kellogg's cereal again... this time for dinner.

We had a decent breakfast and lunch so cereal for dinner totally works.

Today's Gulls

So, today was Pluto Day. We forgot to celebrate.

 But here is a picture of a gull. So there is that.

Snacking on Almonds

Enjoyed snacking on almonds this National Almond Day, February 16?

I sure did.

My Sweetheart

Since yesterday was Valentine's Day, I think it is right for me to say that I have a wonderful husband.  He let me have some getting out time this evening while he took all of the kids to drop off and pick up Nichole from Activity Days.  While Nichole was there, Jeremy took the boys to a playground which they enjoyed.
I don't have pictures of the awesomeness that he showed because I had the camera and was taking pictures myself of birds and the sunset.  Lovely lovely sunset.

It was so nice to get out and to have weather to get out in.  Winter is slowly going away, but enough that we have some nice days for playground playing (and going for walks to watch the sunset and birds).

Valentine's Day 2017

While menu planning for Valentine's Day, I asked my family members what foods they love and thought it might be nice to have some of those for Valentine's Day.  So we had orange chicken and rice.  We had pizza and hot dogs.  We had apples and we had Woo-woo.
Before dinner, we took the kids to a new playground near the Orem Library.  Lucky fell asleep in the car, so I stayed with him and read a book while Jeremy took the other kids to play.

Even earlier in the day, Jeremy helped out in Jr.'s class for his Valentine party.  He brought balloon bows and arrows and a balloon target for the kids to shoot at.  The target reminded me of Captain America's shield so we had a good laugh after I saw that he was also wearing an Ironman shirt.  My sweetheart is the Avengers.  Captain America (shield), Hawkeye (bows and arrows), and Ironman (shirt) all in one.

We had some good family time this Valentine's Day.  During dinner, Jeremy and I told the kids some stories of past Valentine's Days when we were dating and when we were married.  It was a lot of fun with my family today.  I love them all.

National Tortellini Day 2017

February 13 is National Tortellini Day.  Great excuse to make some chicken stew with tortellini.  Yummm.

You Know You're a Birder If...

You see a bird on a telephone pole out your kitchen window then drop what you're doing to go running out the door with the camera calling, "That's bigger than a scrub jay!"

Jr. Jr.'s Jokes

What did the duck say to the bird?
There's a quack in that tree.

What did the duck say to the frog?
You eat flies?  I eat cheese and quackers.

Later-
Mom:  Jr. Jr., I really liked your duck jokes.
Jr.:  They made me quack up.
Mom:  Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.

Where do cars and boats meet?
At the sea park.

How did the bird in the water fly?
I don't know.  It couldn't.

Indian Night

Two of our kids are going to be in the school play again this year.  This year they are doing "The Jungle Book."  After they got home from play practice one day, I made Indian food while the kids watched the cartoon, "The Jungle Book."  When the kids finished their movie, they came into the kitchen where I was making the food and watching my own movie, "A Little Princess," which takes place in India in the beginning.

After the kids went to bed, Jeremy and I ate Indian food while watching another movie that took place partly in India.  Yeah, fun theme night.

Oh, the movie Jeremy and I watched was "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol."  Besides part of it taking place in India, there were also parts in Hungary, Dubai, and Seattle, all places Jeremy's been to (not India, but he did eat Indian food while he was in Dubai).

What?

Observed

February 6 is the anniversary of when Alan Shepard hit the first golf ball on the moon.  We celebrated it (observed) yesterday along with February 5th's holiday, World Nutella Day.  For dinner last night we had astronaut sandwiches made with Nutella.  We also drank Tang.

Thank a Mailman Day

February 4 is Thank a Mailman Day.  Yesterday the kids drew pictures and wrote notes to our postal worker and this morning we put them out with a little treat to take and enjoy while working.  The kids even folded the paper and drew on it to make it look like envelopes.  How fun.  This is a fun tradition.

The Groundhog's Summer

Yesterday we were too busy to celebrate Ground Hog's day so we moved the celebration to today. How does one celebrate a giant rodent predicting six more week of winter? By pretending it is summer of course! Well that and Feb 3rd is the half way point of winter, so again... summer!

We made our usual imitation ground hog burgers (sometimes we do real ground hog burgers, but ground beef is usually less expensive than ground pork) and then we had other traditional summer picnic foods. Besides the burgers we had chips, melon, potato salad, and lemonade. We topped it all off by watching the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. No matter how many times you watch that movie it is like you've watched it forty more times than that. It's that good!

Complimenting Cooking

I don't always get compliments on my cooking from my children (my husband compliments it all the time), but when I do-
Jr.:  Is it because you make your pancakes with love they are so good?

Backwards Day 2017

January 31 was Backwards Day.  That is a day I let my kids wear their clothes backwards to school if they want.  The older two weren't interested in doing that.  Jr. Jr. just wore his pants backwards.  He did wear his backpack to school on his front and carried it home that way.  Lucky, even though he doesn't go to school, wore both his shirt and his pants backwards all day.

We had pizza for breakfast and breakfast burritos for dinner.
We celebrated.
Jeremy says we also celebrated by posting this post after midnight instead of before.