Yesterday we hosted a casual get together with friends for Memorial Day. These dear friends are the people we met the week we set foot in DC over 6 years ago. They have stuck with us through our comings and goings. We all have older kids now and have spread out geographically so we don’t all see each other as much as we would like. It was nice to get everyone together, comment on how big the kids have gotten, eat yummy food and relax on a holiday from work! The guest of honor was an adorable 7 week old golden retriever puppy, Wesley Friesen! He was a charmer!
At dinner time we set all of the kids up outside with their plates and headed in to eat, a few sprinkles later and all of the kids had successfully shifted their picnic of 11 kiddos into the clubhouse of our swing set. Why we run around coordinating the kids so much I don’t know, they can clearly fend for themselves!
The Menu
(only possible because I think morning sickness has finally passed!! It only took 17 weeks but I am thankful)
many of these recipe links might be repeats because we pull them out each summer!
Appetizers
Sun-dried tomato artichoke dip with baguette (with this recipe I sub goat cheese for feta, it’s more of a spread then a dip)
Spinach dip and veggies
dinner
fried chicken- cheated here, left it to the experts and picked up KFC!
loaded baked potato salad-another cheat, thanks Costco!
corn salad with cilantro lime vinaigrette
Barefoot Contessa’s Pasta Salad with Sun-dried Tomatoes
Fruit Salad…thanks, Margaret!
Dessert
Blackberry Peach Cobbler Bars, thanks Rebecca (and Southern Living)!!
Homemade ice cream a la Seth and the kids who helped crank it!
The absolute best overflow of a great night was that we finally wore Owen out. He fell asleep immediately and slept until 7 AM for maybe the second time in his entire life. I was about to keel over from exhaustion after such a packed weekend but clearly it was just the right balance for the O man.
Happy Memorial Day! And of course more important than any friendly gathering and yummy food, we want to thank those who have served our country and those who continue to serve. We greatly appreciate all you do. And this year we especially remember the Foreign Service Officers who gave their lives doing what they love!
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I know it’s not February yet and I know that some of my readers are not in the US or celebrating Valentine’s Day but I couldn’t resist sharing a few ideas I have seen lately. And if you are anything like me you will need a couple of weeks to get anything done. I did a harmless search [read my sarcasm in the “harmless search”…we all know that each harmless search on pintrest, facebook, blogs and the like often leave us temporarily inspired, defeated and feeling less enthusiastic than when we originally typed in the search term :)] on Pintrest and around my favorite blogs to get the creative juices flowing and here are some of the things I found that I might attempt this year….
via Pintrest ( I have been on the hunt for the original source for this but the “Day in my life” blog isn’t coming up for me…if anyone knows the source feel free to add to the comments!!) This looks like a fun, easy card to make for the boys!
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pretty sure we’ll use these valentine’s for Jackson’s class…from Handmade Home
and a few things we have done in the past at our house that I’ve shared on the blog…
heart-shaped waffles and pizza
red whoopie pies (mine were more hot pink) from this recipe
We have a little white mailbox that I have used in the past at v day to put little notes in for the boys. I saw a blue one at Target the other day in the $1 section! This might be good for year round!
Not sure about you but I have no intention of making pink hard boiled eggs, sewing flannel sheets with heart fabric or making hand-dipped chocolates. More power to ya if you have the time and energy. I want to do a little something extra sweet for my lovies but need to keep it simple! Which is why I loved the above ideas! Guessing this year will boil down to some free printables for the Kindergarten class, some notes in our little mailbox and maybe some heart-shaped pancakes! And a nice dinner for Seth of course!
What do you have planned for Valentine’s Day this year?!
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I’m back! I flew back Sunday afternoon after a fun weekend of talking…well, we did far more than talk but basically while we did everything else we talked. I was brought up to speed on what teenage girls are faced with today, soaked in Annie’s parenting experience and wisdom, along with her gorgeous decorating taste, ate yummy meals, and did not respond to the early morning and throughout the night wake ups (thanks to super dad at home). I drank coffee each morning and took a shower that was unaccompanied by knocks on the door and “I’m starvings”. I watched a hilarious chick flick, giggled with the girls, laughed so hard I cried, and reminisced on when these big girls were itty bitty and was reminded of the need to once again SAVOR these boys in the now. They will indeed grow too fast and the Kindergarten boyfriend/girlfriend talk will soon be the real deal with them having to make real life decisions.
I have lots of pictures to share…some of the trip in general and some of the house because I just had to share that too. I haven’t organized my thoughts yet on how I’ll share those but I promise I’ll get on that soon!
In the meantime just wanted to give you all a shout out so you didn’t send out the search and rescue. I am here, we are well, just a bit overwhelmed on how to begin to catch up here.
Here are a few pictures to get me going and to give you a sneak peek at Annie’s house…
I arrived home to see my guys, two of whom seemed to have grown a foot while I was gone and one with a giant goose egg on his forehead. The night before I came home Seth got up in the night to go to the bathroom thinking he might throw up (TMI, I know) instead of throwing up he woke up later on the floor. He had passed one somewhere in there and hit his head. Unsure of how long he’d been unconscious. He says it was a ploy to make me never want to leave again. The bump on his head is turning a pretty shade of green. The boys and Seth had a great weekend together, despite Seth’s incident. After they picked me up at the airport we headed to Gravelly Point Park (just next to Reagan International Airport). For you locals who haven’t been you must take your kids! When the weather warms up pack and picnic and make the little drive.
I will be back on here tomorrow to share with you some of the fun ideas Annie passed along that she used with her kids when they were younger!
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A few years back I heard someone talk about using Christmas cards to pray for their friends. I thought it was a great idea but never really got my post-Christmas self in gear to make it happen. And our boys were never really both at the developmental point at the same time for it to be entirely practical. (I can’t for the life of me remember who told me about this so feel free to claim the idea in the comments and I’ll give you credit! I feel like maybe it was related to MOPS at Vienna Presbyterian years ago?!)
SO, before you toss that Christmas card stack into the trash or a box think about keeping them and using them for a fun family project.
As we received cards from friends this year I took a tip from one of my favorite blogs… A Barefoot Day and hung our cards to enjoy for the season. Simple…twine and clothes pins. Nothing fru fru!
So far since Christmas we have just kept our cards hanging on the twine that we hung on our front window. Most evenings after dinner we let one of the boys pick a card and we talk about and pray for those friends.
So far it is serving a few purposes:
1. Taking time to pray for friends! For their jobs, safety, health, joy…
2. (one I hadn’t anticipated) To help our boys get to know family and friends that we may not see so often. It isn’t uncommon for the boys to not know everyone in the picture so it’s a fun way to introduce them (or refresh their memories) to our friends/extended family and their children.
3. Teaching the boys to pray…what it means to “talk to God” and pray for others. It has been such a neat way to teach the boys more about prayer and having others in mind when we pray. I won’t lie, there have been some silly prayers. But they are learning. We are all learning. I don’t know about you but I want to be mindful of others needs and I often get a bit stuck in a rut and distracted by our own family needs. Praying for others helps get our attention off ourselves. And the visual reminders of the cards is helpful!
Sometimes we are aware of what friends are going through currently and can pray specifically, other times we just pray for them to be healthy, happy, etc. And I am attempting to send people a short message after the boys pick their card just to let them know that we care about them and spent some time in prayer for their family. That part is harder for me to remember to follow up on!
I am getting a little antsy to get things completely back in order around here and as much as I love seeing the cheerful cards, I am ready to take them down. So I took them all off the twine and punched a hole in them. I tied them together with a snippet of the twine (you could use ribbon, a ring, slip them into an old album, whatever you have). There are lots of ideas on pintrest for making them into a book to keep as a memento, which is fun too. But for now, I just want to keep them together so we can continue our family project and not have them scattered.
So rescue the stack of cards before the recycling bin and join us as we start this New Year!
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