Zelda Muffins

February 20 was National Muffin Day. We made muffins.

February 21 was the 40th Anniversary of the Legend of Zelda. Some family members played Zelda games. We didn't do anything big to celebrate the 40th like we did with the 35th. 

What we did do was Jeremy, Jet, and I went for a walk at Farmington Bay and got to see some birds. 

February 23 was National Rationalization Day and it was National Banana Bread Day. I rationalized making banana bread and I did.

 

February 25 was National Chili Day and National Toast Day so I made chili and we toasted bread and had chili on toast. 

The Beginning of 2026

Happy New Year!

I was so tired by the time I finished my blog post yesterday but it was only half an hour until midnight so I stayed up long enough to toast the new year with the family with sparkling cider then the kids stayed up soooo late and Jeremy and I went to bed.

About 5 o'clock in the morning, Jet finally went to bed (unless he fell asleep in the living room earlier. I don't know. I slept with instructions for the older kids to watch after him. So I guess he finally went to his bed at 5 o'clock in the morning). 

 

I heard this from him, "Mom, go back to sleep."

He said it several times. 

My reaction? "What? Go back to sleep? Oh, thank you for waking me up in order to tell me to go back to sleep."

Oh, I love my kids so much. 

A Few More Celebrations and Shelf Cooking

February 21 was the Anniversary of when the first Legend of Zelda video game came out. Jeremy and I celebrated it observed earlier in the month when we watched a special concert online of Zelda music.

 

February 22 was National Chili Day. I made chili and garlic bread. Yumm.

February 23 was National Banana Bread Day. When I went shopping earlier in the week, I bought bananas and hid them when I got home. Bananas don't last very long when Jet knows where they are. I was able to make them last long enough on this occasion so I was able to make Cinnamon Crumb Banana Bread for the holiday. The recipe came from "A Season of Family Meal Plans volume 1."

With the banana bread we also had Pizza Pinwheels and Seven Layer Salad also both from that book. That salad is not something I would normally make (it had peas in it and I don't like peas) but it actually tasted really good.

Speaking of that book, we're still enjoying trying out new tastes. And I'm learning better about adapting, substituting, and repurposing leftovers. Yay, shelf cooking. 

For example, I made Thai Peanut Lettuce Wraps. The recipe called for ground turkey but I used rotisserie chicken. We had Classic Fried Rice on the side.

Later, I used some corn tortillas and a bit of cheese, the leftover Thai peanut chicken, and made quesadillas. Jet and I ate a few and put the rest in the freezer for quick lunches or whatever.

 

Here are some other things we tried.

Hawaiian Pork Sandwiches with leftover Seven Layer Salad.

Sheet Pan Greek Chicken with Lemony Greek Rice. 

Easy Broccoli Pasta. The other recipe for that meal was Tomato Basil Salad. Since I didn't have enough fresh tomatoes, I used canned tomatoes and cooked it all up to make a sauce that we ate on toasted baguettes. #shelfcooking

I already talked about Leap Day but February 29 was also National Toast Day. So for dinner we had BBQ Pork Quesadillas with rice and toast and Lost Mesa Corn Avocado Salsa (that last recipe came from the Fablehaven Cookbook).

Rationalizing Not Taking Pictures (with some pictures thrown in)

February 23 was National Rationalization Day which is why I can rationalize not taking pictures on that day, even though the kids had chili and toast for National Chili Day and National Toast Day. I didn't have chili and toast. I went to a Relief Society dinner and had Cafe Rio food instead.

I can also rationalize not having pictures for other days. February 26 was For Pete's Sake Day. I used that phrase.

February 27 was International Polar Bear Day and National Pokemon Day. I told my son to clean up his Pokemon figures and we watched some Pokemon type videos. I learned some polar bear facts from Hogle Zoo Instagram page and we watched an episode of The Mysterious Benedict Society (which has a polar bear illustration in the opening credits).

And while I'm in the mood for rationalizing, here are some pictures I took on different days.

We've been having a real Winter. The kids had another actual snow day, which just means nowadays that they do school online at home instead of having a day off. The kids and I decided to go to the library that evening and since the red car was parked behind the van, we had to clean snow off both vehicles in order to get the van out of the driveway. Luckily it was flat surfaces all the way to the library. 

We spent maybe an hour at the library but by the time we got back to the van, it had to have snow cleared off it again.

We celebrated Jeremy's birthday.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year.

Toasting the new year with sparkling cider and "starting the year off on the right foot." 

They woke me up for this. Then we all went to bed.

 

That's a fake unhappy look from Lucky. Pretty good, though.

Hello, 2022

I can't believe everyone was still awake at midnight, and I mean everyone.

Here's Jet helping Nichole brush her teeth at 11:48pm.

Then he was running around like crazy going between rooms and family members. I looked at my clock at 12:01am and said Happy New Year while Jr. Jr. and Lucky watched a movie in our room. They started another movie after I fell asleep on my bed but didn't finish it because Lucky fell asleep and slept the rest of the night/morning across the foot of our bed. When Jr. Jr. noticed Lucky was asleep, he turned the movie off and went to bed in his own bed. Nichole and Jr. watched a movie in the living room then Nichole went to bed in her own room and Jr. fell asleep on the couch. Jeremy fell asleep in our bed. 

I woke up in the morning when Jeremy did (to get ready to go birding with Nichole and a friend) and asked, "Where's Jet?" "Right next to you," Jeremy told me. At some point Jet ended up asleep in our bed.

As Nichole was getting ready to go, she placed things on Jr. since she would have put them on the couch anyway. "He doesn't care," she said. "He hasn't made any objections."

It was very cold but they enjoyed seeing the birds.

We toasted the New Year with sparkling cider and Jet got such a kick out of everyone clinking cups together, he got a hold of a cup and kept hitting others' cups with it himself. He also screamed, "Happy New Year!" a few times after hearing us say it. It was a cute scream.

And nobody was too cranky when they got up. Yay!

Happy New Year and Hello to 2022. 

Hey, today is 1.1.2.2. 1-1-22. Fun, isn't it?

Happy Noon Year

New Years Eve has passed. The year 2021 has begun. We celebrated last night with sandwiches, movies, and sleep. I mentioned how we missed our toast of sparkling cider and our all day nacho binge. Luckily we often find time to celebrate, even if it is a day late or even the next year (or in this case both).

So we, as Jr. so aptly put it, toasted the noon year. At 12pm on January first we toasted 2021.

We made our nachos and snacked all day.

I toasted 2021 a little extra, just to make sure it would be a good year.

You're welcome.

February Catchup

It's amazing how I can miss just a few days of posting on this blog and I feel like I have to do major catchup. Oh well. So let's do some of that catchup right now.

February 19 was National Chocolate Mint Day. Jr. really wanted to make chocolate mints but couldn't find everything that was needed so he took my advice, melted some chocolate, and dipped pieces of candy cane in it- voila, chocolate mints.

February 21 was the anniversary of The Legend of Zelda. The kids played Zelda music on their stringed instruments. A couple days later, Jr. played the game Majora's Mask while Nichole painted. Yeah, that's right. If you give Nichole a medium...

February 23 was National Rationalization Day. It was somewhat low key that day. I did make banana bread because it was also National Banana Bread Day. I'll tell you something. It was so nice to sit around the table as a family, eating banana bread and talking. I love my family.

February 26 was Carnival Day. We had pink lemonade with dinner.

February 27 was National Chili Day, National Toast Day, and National Strawberry Day. Guess what we ate. Turkey chili and toast with strawberry jam. Mmmmmm.

February 28 was National Tartar Sauce Day. We had fish sticks sandwiches. That day was also National Tooth Fairy Day. Lucky celebrated a day later by having another loose tooth come out while he was eating carrots.

February 29 was Leap Day. Apparently, according to our 2020 National Day Calendar, it was also National Rare Disease Day USA. How appropriate I was sick that day. Luckily it wasn't a rare disease, though. I'll take what I had over something really scary. I looked back at my last Leap Year post in 2016 and family members were sick then, too. Sigh.
Nichole and I watched the movie, Leap Year, on Leap Day. Nichole and Joshua also took care of dinner that night. Thanks, kids. Joshua took care of dinner the next night as well while I was recovering but I'll go into more of that when I post about the beginning of March.

Wow. Busy busy. And it's still Winter so this is all still with the baby and me not going out much. Wow.

Some Celebrations in January

December 31 and January 1- New Year's Eve and Day
We had nachos. Our friend gave us individual sized sparkling cider bottles so we each got one to toast the new year.

At midnight, Jeremy again had the kids starting the year off on the right foot or left in Jr.'s case.

January 4- National Trivia Day
The younger boys and I told each other bits of trivia that day.

With my time (and arms) filled up with baby, I realized I could celebrate some of the same ways I celebrated when Lucky was a baby- watching movies based on the holidays.

January 6- Sherlock Holmes' Birthday
I watched the Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr.

January 8- Elvis' Birthday
I watched an Elvis movie, "Fun in Acapulco."

January 11- National Step in the Puddle and Splash Your Friends Day 
Jeremy was out birding with the older kids that day so they got a picture for me.

January 13- National Rubber Ducky Day
I watched a YouTube video of Ernie singing that song.

January 14- National Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day
We had hot pastrami sandwiches for dinner.

I already blogged about Appreciate a Dragon Day on January 16. 

We didn't celebrate Popeye's birthday on January 17 like we sometimes do. Recently, friends of ours gave us a calendar that lists national holidays. Woohoo. On the calendar are some we already celebrate and some that we don't... yet. One of the holidays listed for January 17 is Hot Buttered Rum Day. Now we're not going to celebrate anything with alcohol but Nichole pointed out that some of the candies we got for Christmas were toffees and some of those toffees had the flavor of butter rum. Ha Ha. Victory. So I handed out butter rum flavored toffees so we could celebrate this holiday that was on the calendar.