So Very Pinteresting

Before I get to all the pinteresting things we did this week, I want to share this little video of my Baby Girl.  She has a favorite song!  For the longest it was Trey Songz Bottoms Up (yeah, I KNOW).  But now she likes that Party on Top of the World song.  Yesterday, at lunch, she started asking for "Night!"  I found it on YouTube and she treated us to a little performance:



(We had bacon, egg, and cheese burritos for lunch because we can no longer have breakfast food for dinner since Eddie is off shift work and not working nights.  I love breakfast for dinner but I married a weirdo.  So the ocassional breakfast for lunch has to suffice).

Now, our Pinterestings!

Food:

Crockpot Ranch Potatoes - This was the biggest recipe FLOP I've had in a long time.  We eat dinner around 6:00.  I put them on about 10:00 in the morning to ensure they'd have plenty of time to cook (the recipe says to cook for 6 hours on low).  At 4:00, the potatoes were still hard.  I flipped the crockpot up to high and an hour and a half later, they were STILL not soft enough to eat.  The flavor was a little weird too.  I ended up feeding them to my garbage disposal and making a pot of mac and cheese instead.

Potato Slabs - I washed too many potatoes the day I made the crockpot ranch potatoes so I decided to fix these for an afternoon snack.  They're sooooo good.  I knew they would be -- I mean, it's basically "meatier" potato skins or bacon cheese fries.  Good stuff.  The kids loved them.

Secret Ingredient Cheesy Garlic Bread - These were alright but I could totally taste the honey (that's the secret ingredient) and I only used about 3/4 teaspoon.  In fact, Eddie took one bite and said, "Why are they sweet?"  I knew he'd freak if I told him they had honey on them.  He brought home a bottle of Moscato that night so I just told him it was probably the wine!  Ha!  The kids really loved them though and I thought they tasted better the second day.  I'll probably make them again but I think I'll just use the basic recipe and no secret ingredient!

Kid/ Thanksgiving Stuff:

We had a really tough week with the time change.  My Jaybird is not an earlier riser.  He's also a night owl and it's practically impossible to get him to go to sleep before 10:00 or 10:30 at night.  I have no idea what we're going to do when he starts kindergarten . . .

Anyhow, Jaidan had been waking up every day when Kyan got up (always before 6:30!).  It made for a really grumpy Jaybird and very long days!  We didn't get near as much accomplished as I'd hoped we would this week.  I've been letting Jaidan sleep in Zhariah's room the past few nights (and he's sleeping in!!) so maybe we'll get him on a normal-for-him sleeping schedule and have a better week next week.  *Crosses fingers*

Here's what we did get done:

We did almost this entire preschool pack from Homeschool Creations.  I love the stuff Homeschool Creations puts out!  They have kindergarten and preschool levels and the stuff is just . . . well, it's just better than anything else (free) I've found out there.  I even got Kyan to do some of these activities!  That one deserves a round of these: !!!!!!  And my boys absolutely loved the "Top the Pie" activity in this one.  I put the cotton balls in a Cool Whip tub (as suggested on this pin) and they think it's a game.  They love it!

We worked through some of these worksheets.  This pack includes about 9 or so pages of basic addition.  Jaidan LOVED doing those.  Also, these are all in black and white so they're easier on the printer!  (Or, rather, the ink consumption which is easier on the wallet!)

This preschool pack includes a game idea (alphabet printed out on little turkeys, a few other turkeys with the word "Gobble" on them, kids draw one out if they correctly identify the letter then they keep the turkey, if they get a "Gobble" card they get up and act like a turkey [easy enough for MY children to do]).  We played it mainly because I wanted a better idea on where Kyan is with his letter recognition (turns out, I didn't need to worry).  Cute little game idea but a little beneath my boys' levels.  They also got MAD when they pulled a Gobble card because they wanted to be the one with the most turkeys at the end of the game.  *Sigh*

If there is anything I haven't been vigilant about when it comes to preparing the Birds for kindergarten, it's scissor practice.  We have ONE pair of kid scissors and he's only been allowed to use them in the past couple months or so.  I just . . . I dunno . . . I like my kids' hair.  You know?  So we haven't been all about the scissors in this house.  But I did print out these cutting pages for him to try out.  And, well, he still needs a lot of work.  :/

We tried to make these little pinecone turkeys.  We even went and, uhhhh, "borrowed" pinecones on our walk one morning.  But pinecones are really hard for little hands to work with.  And the're not exactly the easiest things to glue stuff on.  Craft fail.  We abandonded this one really quickly.

We did make this thankful turkey though:

We didn't use a TP roll for the body or give him a hat, but he still turned out pretty cute!  Notice that Jaidan actually said he's thankful for his brother!  Miracles!

I'll leave you with this little gem I pinned this week: