Holidays, Shelf Cooking, and Bonding Time

September 10 was Ants on a Log Day. We had fluffernutter sandwiches and ants on a log. See my blog post for September 14, 2020 for an explanation why we celebrate with fluffernutter sandwiches on that day. We didn't have any marshmallow fluff so we used real marshmallows. #shelftember

 

Other Shelftember foods we had near that time:

Start with a box pasta meal. Add cooked pasta, some extra seasonings, and cooked bacon from the freezer. It stretches a lot farther. That's shelf cooking!

 

Sometimes I forget that something as simple as beans and rice works for a quick lunch.

 

Homemade bread, spinach before it goes bad made into a salad, casserole from the freezer (tortellini casserole from A Season of Family Meal Plans), and a banana.

 

My husband has always been better at throwing things together to make a good meal. He knows how to do shelf cooking. He took my leftover black beans and some polish sausages and veggies and made some yummy yummy food. He's awesome.

September 11, we remembered.

September 12 was National Video Games Day. I had every intention of playing video games that day but by the end of the day I was too tired. Sigh.

It was also Hug and High Five Day and National Chocolate Milkshake Day. 

Jet helped me make cornbread muffins to go with our dinner of Sausage Veggie Skillet (with extra zucchini because it was cheaper than yellow squash) and rice-n-cheese (instead of orzo-n-cheese because we have rice, not orzo). Both those recipes came from A Season of Family Meal Plans, volume 3, of course. Our chocolate milkshakes were yummy.

September 13 was the Anniversary of The Animaniacs premiere in 1993 so we listened to Animaniacs music. It was also Roald Dahl Day so I put on music from Wonka.

After after school snack of parfaits to celebrate International Chocolate Day and National Peanut Day (and quoting the movie Shrek about how ogres, onions, and parfaits all have layers), I let the kids have the kitchen for Kids Take Over the Kitchen Day and they made pizza. 

September 14 was Eat a Hoagie Day so I made hoagies/buns for people to use and it was National Parents Day Off but I really don't remember what Jeremy and I ended up doing, if anything. I did get a picture late at night of the moon and clouds.

September 15 was Double Cheeseburger Day and National Linguine Day. We had spaghetti with sauce (it had hamburger in it- well, ground turkey, tee hee) and two types of cheese (double cheese, tee hee). #shelftember

September 16 was Cinnamon Raisin Bread Day and National Play-Doh Day. I was complaining about not having time to make play doh and Jeremy pointed out that I played with dough in order to make cinnamon raisin bread which tasted so good by the way.

 

September 17 was Monte Cristo Day. Did you know there is a Count of Monte Cristo musical? I found out when I tried to get Alexa to play music from The Count of Monte Cristo while I was making food and it put on songs from a musical. Fun. I decided to do something new this year and made Monte Cristo Slider Sandwiches from sixsistersstuff.com

Yumm. I made more later to freeze so we could pull out sandwiches when we wanted them.

 

September 18 was National Cheeseburger Day. So we pulled hamburger out of the freezer (ground turkey) and made smothered beef burritos from... you guessed it... A Season of Family Meal Plans, volume 3.

Of course walks, snuggles, and other kinds of bonding have continued. I love my family.

My parents made a quick trip to Utah for my dad's 60th high school reunion. They stopped by to see Jet and me one day. I love my parents.

Penguin Awareness Day 2020

January 20 was Penguin Awareness Day. Since the kids had that day off school, Jeremy took the two oldest on a birding field trip to look for gulls. 

At home, Lucky helped out by doing laundry without complaining so I let him watch Penguins Spy in the Huddle. He had so much fun making me aware of things he was learning while watching the video. I love it.

Jr. Jr. made a penguin out of play-doh. Lucky helped take pictures of it.

Later on, we ate our traditional fish sticks since penguins eat fish.

On a different note, that evening we went over to have Family Home Evening with the couple who were helping us get ready for the Book of Mormon in 2020. We talked about Lehi and Nephi and their family. They sent us home with some scripture figures that we can use in our scripture study and Family Home Evenings.

One of the things that happened in Lehi's family was that Nephi was commanded by the Lord to build a boat so they could cross the ocean. His brothers Laman and Lemuel murmured and told him it was a bad idea. There's a great Primary song about this called "Nephi's Courage." You can find the account of Nephi building the boat in 1 Nephi Chapter 17 of the Book of Mormon, which can be found in the scriptures section of churchofjesuschrist.org (it used to be known as lds.org, which I have mentioned that name in previous blog posts).

Anyway, at one point Nephi showed his brothers that he was filled with the power of God by reaching out and shocking them- enough so they wouldn't continue doubting who the command came from about building the boat.
We had our own shocking activity. The boys took turns sliding down the stairs on mattresses that were set up. As they slid, they built up a static charge so that they could shock whoever was at the bottom waiting. Later, they were able to send balls down as well. They had a blast and I of course enjoyed the social time chatting while they were playing.

It was a pretty good day I'd say.

National Play-Doh Day 2014

September 18th is National Play-doh Day.  Earlier this week, Nichole made play-doh at Activity Days.  How is that for timing?  I made sure to publicly thank her Activity Days Leader on facebook (and by publicly I mean for my facebook friends to see).

National Play-doh Day 2013

Family Home Evening.  Jr. was in charge of the activity.  When he heard we were doing FHE on National Play-doh Day, September 18, he knew he wanted us to do edible playdough again.  That was fine with Jeremy since he was in charge of the treat.  Taken care of.

All three of the kids did a great job measuring the ingredients.  Once again it was easy to make and easy to play with.

Nichole's sleeping giant.

It was a good Family Home Evening activity and treat.

National Play-Doh Day 2012

O.K.  National Play-Doh Day.  Some people say it's September 16th every year.  Some people say it's September 18th every year.  I say, what a great excuse for me to finally make the edible playdough I'd been wanting to for a long time.  I got a recipe for peanut butter playdough from the site, Our Best Bites.  And we had fun.

Some things I like about edible playdough:

It's really easy.

I'm not afraid to let my littlest play with it.

The kids are allowed to eat it.

And I can even join in.