March Save the Date

We had lots of fun dating each other in March!  

The first weekend in March is when we went downtown to Klyde Warren Park.  On our ride back on the train, I texted David this picture asking if he wanted to have a home date night after the kids were in bed.  I had found this post on the Dating Divas that had a whole list of 2 player games and I added in their Spouse Scattergories (Free Printables!) for some extra fun.  We picked out several games and put them in my random generator app and spun the wheel each time to pick a new game

 We ended up playing through several of the games including 3 round of Spouse Scattergories.  It was a fun night with my favorite guy!

 The second weekend in March we were supposed to have some friends over for dinner, but our 3 year old started throwing up the night before so we decided to cancel just to be safe.  As bummed as we were to cancel plans, a sick kiddo meant early bedtime for the kids and we got to check out a few movies from Redbox that we had missed in the theaters last fall.

 I already blogged about our weekend alone.  We enjoyed our night out on Friday and then a weekend at home.

David got approval from his boss to start working from home one day a week.  So this Wednesday he worked at home.  Wednesdays is the one day both kids are in school in the afternoons, so we snuck in a lunch date while we were kid free for a few hours and David was on his lunch break!

Easter Activities

We had a great Easter yesterday.  We went to Woodcreek's service and then met up with my family for church, lunch and an Easter Egg Hunt.  Our kids loved hunting Easter eggs (they went at each of their schools, a hunt with friends on Saturday and then family on Sunday) and I tried to incorporate a lot of Easter activities last week as we got ready.  Our 4 year old asked several times "how many days until Easter?" so it gave us lots of time to focus on this special weekend!

I kicked off our week with a fun Easter snack after school on Monday.  Individual dirt cups with a bunny (peep) in it.  We try to stay away from too many sweet snacks, so this was a fun treat for the kids.

Then we did some "educational" activities.  Our 3 year old needs a lot of practice for fine motor skills, so I bought some "kid tweezers" (they came in a set with a magnifying glass which the kids love to use outside) and this was the first time we used them.

The kids had to pick up a pom pom with the tweezers...

 

...and drop it in to the same color egg.  So it was fine motor and color matching.  It took our 3 year old a long time to get through the bowl of pom poms, but she persevered and did a great job!  Our 4 year old loved playing with it too!

 The activity I found for him was matching Capital and Lowercase letters.  He's learned so much since starting Pre-K at the end of last year and now can identify most capital letters, so we're trying to work on lowercase ones.  I'd done a similar activity around Valentine's day with heart puzzles, but this one was easier since the color of egg matched up so he was very successful with it.  And sister got a turn to work on opening and closing the eggs--once brother put them all together and they switched activities, so did one at a time opening the egg and then putting it back together so she got more fine motor work in! :)

We also did some gross motor games to help get energy out!  I used this idea of putting different numbers and activities in eggs and the kids opened them one by one and then did the activity--ranging from 12 soldier marches to 4 ninja kicks to 1 somersault.  I also had some eggs that had numbers 10-20 in them and the kids would open them and our 4 year old would tell us the number and the kids would do that many jumps across the yard.  It was a fun way to work on recognizing the numbers that are a little harder for him.

The kids love all kinds of candy, so one afternoon we did some jelly bean sorting and graphing.  The 3 year old helped us put all the jelly beans in piles of the same color and then the 4 year old helped count them all and counted as I graphed each one.  Our bag had a lot of red ones and not many white ones.

And our course we tried to keep the focus on the real meaning of Easter.  Each day we went through this poem and opened the eggs that spelled out the word EASTER to learn about the story of Jesus' death and resurrection.

And we loved this Jellybean prayer that I could talk through the kids as they ate their snack.  They got to savor each flavor as I talked about what each color meant.

This weekend we also made Resurrection Cookies (recipe from my sweet mother-in-law) on Saturday night for the kids to wake up to Sunday morning.  It was a good way to walk through all the Jesus went through during the crucifixion and then the empty tomb.  And for breakfast yesterday we made Resurrection Rolls.  Yesterday morning was a little crazy trying to get out the door, so I didn't get any pictures, but it was a fun start to our morning--any day the kids get cookies and rolls with marshmallows for breakfast is a good day in their book!

We had a lot of fun last week and I'm looking forward to using some of these activities all Spring!

Love Affair with The Pioneer Woman

So I am a huge fan of The Pioneer Woman.  I love her recipes and her writing and her show.  And I've loved the new line of cookware that she released last year.  I only have a few utensils from her collection, but I love how fun they are.  

A few weeks ago I bought some new accent towels for our kitchen and I wasn't loving how they looked with my regular red kitchen towels.  So I decided to buy a set of towels from her newest line of kitchen textiles.  I think the colors are so fun and bright and they add a lot to my kitchen--especially heading into Spring and Summer time.

And I may have convinced David to let me spring for a new oven mitt set too :)  Such an easy and affordable upgrade to my kitchen!

I also have been trying out a few of her recipes recently.  David's aunt gave me her newest cookbook for Christmas and I absolutely love it.  I went through and marked several pages to try.  Last night I made a batch of her freezer-ready taco meat.  So we have tacos this week and meat in the freezer ready to go for busy weeks down the road!  I loved this recipe for taco meat--it was simple but tastes delicious!

Spring Weekend

This past weekend our kiddos went to respite so we were able to enjoy some time together.  Respite weekends are always nice for everyone--the kids love getting to meet new people and this weekend they had 2 other kids to play with where they stayed and we get a little bit of rest.  

We had decided to spend most of the weekend working on projects around the house, but kicked off Friday night with a date night.

Heading out the door with my favorite guy!

 We decided to dinner and a movie and go see the last movie in the Divergent Trilogy.  We both read all of the books and have seen all of the movies together since we've been married.  In fact we've seen them all opening weekend which has been this same weekend in March the last 3 years, so here's a look at our past dates:

Before the movie we grabbed dinner at a restaurant right next door to the theater.  We had been there once before and we really enjoy the food!

Saturday we slept in a little, David met a friend for breakfast and then we took my car in for an oil change since we usually have both car seats in it and the last time I took the kids with we waited for THREE hours.  Then we came back home and got to work

 We worked on the pool and the yard.  We took the pool cover off and hosed it down.  Then we added pool chemicals.  I pulled weeds and sprayed off the patio around the pool while David added weed killer to the rest of the yard.

We took a break for a late lunch and decided to ride our bikes to a local restaurant.  We haven't been able to ride bikes much since the kids are still learning how to use theirs and we don't have the equipment to tote them along on ours.  So it was nice to go on a bike ride with my hubby.

 We'd been wanting to try out Wing Bucket and we really enjoyed it!  I tried the PB&J flavored wings and they were interesting.  We also had a side of sour cream and onion fries.  We really enjoyed the food and will definitely go back soon!

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and catching up on some of our shows.  It was a nice couple of days with my man!

A Day Downtown

David and I have been wanting to get down to Klyde Warren park for the last few years, but have never found time.  Last Saturday we had a free day so we decided it would be a good day trip with the kids.  Our 4 year old frequently sees the DART train near us and always comments on the train, so I had mentioned to David that it might be fun to let them ride the train downtown.  So we looked up the schedule and headed down to Dallas.  

 We got on at a train station a few miles from our house and I snapped this picture of David and the kids walking up to the station--I was trailing behind with the stroller and all of our stuff.  Our 3 year old got very scared getting onto the train, but after some snuggles with David she was happy again.  We rode the train to the stop close to the park and got to walking.

By the time we got to the park it was past the kids' lunchtime.  So we quickly got in line for food.  The lines were very long and we ended up getting grilled cheese for me and the kids and David got some food from the Asian truck.  Next time we go I will probably take lunch for the kids--they enjoyed the grilled cheese but would have been just as happy with sandwiches from home and they wouldn't have had to wait.  They were champs with the long wait and took the time to rest and drink their waters while they waited for lunch.

I had The Boss which is a grilled cheese sandwich with brisket.  It was very yummy!

After lunch we headed to the children's park area and let them climb and run around for a while.  The park was very crowded since it was a beautiful weekend day.  After a little while playing it was time to head home.  Everyone was worn out so we did baths, had a family movie afternoon and then early bedtimes!  It was a great day trip and I'm glad we finally made it down there.