More Celebrating in January

January 16 was Fig Newton Day. We ate fig newtons. Do you remember the commercial way back that said, "It's not a cookie. It's a newton"? I looked at the packaging for fig newtons and it calls them cookies. Ha.

It was also Appreciate a Dragon Day. Dad did some writing about dragons.

January 17 was Museum Selfie Day. Jeremy had some stuff to do at the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point so he made sure to celebrate the holiday while there.

It was also Popeye Day. I sang Popeye cartoon theme music over and over to the kids while we ate Popeye spinach.

It was also Hot Heads Chili Day. Let me tell you how I did some shelf cooking those two days, following "A Season of Family Meal Plans" volume 1.

I was thinking of making some spicy chili on Hot Heads Chili Day and the day before I was going to make lasagna soup with garlic bruschetta. Well, Jr. wasn't feeling the greatest that first day and said Ogre Stew sounded good to him. Ogre Stew is kind of like a white bean chili and it was a bit spicy so we had it for Hot Heads Chili Day Observed. 

The garlic bruschetta was supposed to use fresh tomatoes but we were out so I took a can of diced tomatoes, added the other ingredients, and cooked them up to make a sauce. Then I took my homemade baguettes (The Food Nanny recipe), cut them in rounds, and made them into garlic bread to put the sauce on top. It worked.

So the next day I made the lasagna soup to go with spinach salad. I also made cornbread muffins which were suggested in the book but I used a recipe I always use instead of the one from the book. That's another thing about shelf cooking. If I have a tried and true recipe why look for something else?

 

Lucky very nicely took pictures then edited them to make me green like spinach.

Summer Reading!

I was going to write about all our Summer Reading adventures in one post but changed my mind. Here's the second post.

We continued to do service and received service. Made cookies for neighbors. They made us fried squash which we had with our dinner one night.

Later when someone was going through a hard time, we gave them chimichangas so they wouldn't have to worry about dinner.

We made so many chimichangas. Some to eat, some to freeze, some to give away. This picture is of the chimichangas in our stock pot. You know our stock pot- the one we used to use to make a seven times batch of taco soup? Yeah, that stock pot.

Took all of the kids to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point. It was Jet's first time there. And... dinosaurs. He loved it, especially when it was time to dig for fossils.

He even got into calling out, "Oh no, it's going to eat me," for a picture in front of the megalodon. Tradition.

Nichole got some good sketching in, of course. She's been wanting to go to that museum for a while, too.

One of the reading activities was to have someone read a book you recommend. I recommended Spindle by W.R. Gingell to Nichole. It's the first book in a series and Nichole is already farther along than I am in the series now. Lucky recommended Wizard for Hire to me. I loved it. I just finished the second book in the series and will definitely read the third. After I read the first one, that meant everyone (except Jet) had read that book so Lucky put together a trivia game for us to play based on it. It was fun. Jr. Jr. and I were on a team and Nichole and Jr. were on a team. We had team names and even team handshakes. Later, Lucky was able to give the trivia questions to Jeremy so he was able to be involved. Book trivia was another Summer Reading activity.

I'm sure I can't remember all the activities we did but it was another great Summer Reading Summer.

We went to the Orem Summer Reading Finale. They had Polynesian dances including a fire dancer. I was telling one of my children about torches and fire because of my experience juggling fire. Yes, I have juggled fire. Jeremy used to juggle fire in a lot of his birthday party shows.

Jr. and Nichole both won prizes from Orem. Nichole put a lot of tickets into the one she won. Jr. put one ticket into the one he won. He has that luck when it comes to drawings.