Those Darn Plastic Easter Eggs

We do not do Easter baskets in the traditional sense of the word. The Easter bunny knows my intense dislike of freely dispensing candy to my little ones. He brings them awesome summer stuff in their baskets: bubbles, badminton racquets, flip flops, sunglasses, bug boxes, word searches and coloring books. Do not get me wrong there is nothing wrong with a good chocolate Easter bunny, but that is the only candy they receive in our house Easter morning.


So how do we have a shopping bag of those darn plastic Easter eggs? And the even bigger question, what to do with them?

Originally garnered from Grandma and Grandpa’s house full of candy, hubby and I hid them one last time for fun: empty. The girls had a blast seeing who could find the most, who found the purple ones and who found the big ones. OK now what?

Give me some glue, some buttons, pipe cleaners and we will have fun before they will eventually be recycled. Do those eggs have a recycle number?

The obvious craft was to make musical shakers. We filled some with rice, some with beans, and some with orzo to make different sounds. When we had found the sounds we liked, I super glued them together so as not to have to vacuum the insides later. This got rid of seven eggs. Fifty-three to go.

Stephanie at http://www.playinghouseinmaryland.blogspot.com/ had some great ideas. My favorite was the Capital and lowercase letter matching game. Put a capital letter on the top of the egg and the lower case letter on the bottom of the egg and mix them up. Match away. She has some beautiful stickers on hers. Knowing B and how long they would last I used a sharpie to write on ours. There goes another twenty-six.

M is learning fractions so, a spin on that one was doing numbers on the tops and bottoms. She matched them up and told us the fraction. This was fun as she could mix and match to make an innumerate amount of combinations. Nine more down.

http://www.creativityinprogress.com/ had the most adorable idea: Plastic Easter Egg Tea Cups. Two girls plus an infinite quantity of dolls equals a lot of tea parties. Buttons are tacky glued to round end of the egg. Decorate as desired. We used left over stickers from our Paas box and sharpie markers. We only made 5 each so we still 3 left over.

3 Easter eggs. Perfect for storing those mini hair clips in the girls “pretty box.”

They always seem to fall to the bottom of their box and get tangled in the ponytail holders.

The Nuclear Family Meltdown

Screaming can be heard from the street, through closed doors and windows. Something small set it off. “Please go wash your hands for dinner. No not at the kitchen sink. Upstairs in your bathroom.” Every Thursday. No. Really. EVERY Thursday.

M attends an intense core curriculum charter school. Homework is a daily occurrence. By Thursday she is done. The smallest frustration with math or reading sets her off. B attends an education-based pre-school slash daycare. By Thursday being a big girl and not napping anymore has caught up with her too.

Hubby and I are at our wits end. Three weeks in a row now we have had knock-down drag-out fit throwing from our seven and five year old. We have been following all the “rules.” Don’t give in. Don’t let them get their way. They will learn that a fit will get them what they want. The fits have lasted from 30 minutes to an hour. We are done.

We decided that there will be NO errands on Thursday afternoon. The monthly menu now boasts a crockpot meal on Thursday, so no cooking time either. We will come home and give the girls what they really want, but are not able to express: an environment to meltdown that is safe, loving and does not involve going to their room or time out. We call it family steam night. Let off steam. Do something together as a family. Lots of hugs and snuggles.

This week boasts Karaoke. Singing is my hubby’s true love. The girls love to flaunt with a microphone. We have a new video camera. Ham it up baby you are on TV.

Logistics:

Microphone attached to our speaker system so we can blast out the neighbors.

TV tuned to the Karaoke channel.

Did not know you had a karaoke channel? You get cable? Then you most likely do. Go into themes with your remote and type in karaoke and do a search. DirecTV has channel 1828 The Karaoke Channel On Demand. You can search by genre, artist, and title. Plenty of kid’s songs as well as all those 80s tune that hubby and I love to sing.

Optional:

Video camera so you can blackmail your children at age 18.

Enjoy your nuclear family time tonight.

Olive Green

We are a one car family. Due to some unforeseen occurrences over the last two years we have “lost” our second car. First, I tried to see if a minivan could take on a Prius. Prius won. The minivan was replaced by an older Saturn which decided to die a cruel death of transmission malfunction. Who needs reverse anyway, right? So we have a trusty Subaru Forrester now.

But hubby and I both work and the kids are in different schools, how do we do it? I have been asking myself that since November, when this started. Luck plays an important role. We are lucky to both work at the same office. We are lucky to have next door neighbors who have a daughter in the same school as M. We are lucky that I can come in early to work so I may go back and get the rest of the family.

My day runs like this. Out the door by 4.30 am. Go to work. Come back home at 6.30 am (10 minute drive thankfully). Finish up getting kids ready for school while hubby finishes getting ready for work. Out the door again at 7 am. M goes next door for a ride to school from our neighbors (charter school equals no bus). We drop B off at preschool and go to work. I leave work at 2.30 pm. Pick up M and neighbor girl from school. Drop of neighbor girl. Get B from preschool. Get hubby from work. Go home.

There is not a lot of room for error in our schedule. This means planning ahead. Need to stop quickly at the supermarket. Plan ahead. Need to make a doctor appointment. Plan ahead. My route to the school or back to work varies depending on what I need to get done. And when we arrive home, we are home for good.

One car has saved on the following:

Car insurance

Gas-- every trip is planned out to maximize the route and carpooling with neighbors

One car has given us the following:

Time – since our car usage is so planned we have more time to enjoy each other when we get home.

Communication – we are all in one space. There is nowhere to run; nowhere to hide so just tell me what is bothering you.

It is not for everyone, but it is working for us.

Yeah Yeah... Winter is over so Spring blooms blogs

Spring cleaning overtook our house and with the clutter gone I have time to update. The winter clothes are put away. What is this? SNOW on May 2nd? Maybe I was a bit hasty with that. We have de-cluttered the garage and sent a lot of things packing. Most notably, the hot tub that has taken up residence in our garage for 5 years left yesterday on some guy’s trailer. Thank you www.freecycle.org. The girls were so excited. B. for the first time saw what a garage should look like. She even made a comment about not having to walk around it to get to other things.


Books, clothes and the like made their way to ww.thredup.com. I am donating my box choices to a military family so we do not replace what is going out the door. Towels that were not used or frayed to the point that hubby did not want to wash anymore went to the animal shelter. They love getting towels and blankets alike. Something warm for that cold concrete floor.

The girls organized their toys back into the appropriate boxes. Dress up, Little People (nope, B is not ready to get rid of those yet), dolls, building toys and the newest addition to their toy bins: Barbie. We finally broke down at Christmas and allowed Barbie into our home. We have some older styles from the neighbor girls and some new mermaids and the ever famous Pet Vet Barbie. This is M’s fave since that is what she is planning on becoming when she grows up. Oh, and a teacher, cowgirl, AND a Bronco’s cheerleader. We are encouraging all of them right now. She has another 15 years to pick.

On a personal note, I did a monthly meal plan this month. I have always done the meal planning thing, but usually a week at a time. However, I was lazy the last couple of weeks. This caused a rash of eating out and poor nutrition. We are back on track for May. Monday is Salad Day. Tuesday: things with Chicken. Wednesday is Pork. Thursday is not so much a food group but crockpot only (will explain below). Friday is Fish. (Not for reasons of Lent) Saturday: Scrounge what you can, culminating in Sunday: family style sit down relaxing comfort foods. Menu is set. Grocery lists planned. Let’s get cooking. A whole month! WOW!

So why is Thursday crockpot only? Because Thursday for the last three weeks has been meltdown day for both girls. The intensity of school hits M by the time homework rolls around Thursday afternoon. B just has had enough preschool and being away from Mommy and Daddy. So Thursday I will not be in the kitchen cooking dinner when we get home. We will be able to have about 45 minutes to an hour more time to share together. This will hopefully fend off the nuclear family meltdown.

I will post my menu tomorrow.

The Girls of Summer

Summer fun continues

School may have started back but the fun remains. The girls had fun making up a dance and hamming it up for the camera.

Summer comes to a close

Back to school is no longer a after Labor day affair. The big one's last day of summer "school" ended on August 6th when that school started back to real school. After spending 2 weeks at daycare with the little kids, including her sister, she started the 2nd grade on the 24th. We are one of 2 school districts starting so late this year. What happened to the 104 days of summer vacation? Oh and another big event happened too... we have a loose front upper tooth.