Our sweet girl is FOUR!

Molly turned four years old on Wednesday.  We celebrated last week at Koenobel's with Patrick's family, and we tried to make sure her actual birthday was pretty special, too.  She loved her Strawberry Shortcake decorations and reveled in choosing all her menus for the day.  We had 'M' and '4' shaped pancakes, smoothies, and "noodles with white sauce," of course.  Aunt Lorrie and the cousins came and took Molly and Elijah to a movie, in the theater!  And Bobbi came for dinner.  We had strawberry lemonade, strawberry cupcakes, and strawberry ice cream.  She was thrilled with all her gifts, including lots of Jessie and Hello Kitty and her very own (pink!) Legos. 

in her strawberry shirt, too, of course!

crisscross applesauce

Molly is spunky, silly, and full of energy. She loves to draw and color and is learning to write lots of letters.  She is really looking forward to preschool in the fall, and seems to be a little less shy around new people this year (although you never know when she's going to suddenly need to hide behind my legs or just need a few minutes to warm up).  She loves to play pretend with Elijah, or her babies, or just pretend!  She "has volleyball practice on Friday mornings" with her pink volleyball, and loves to swim and dance.  She is also our resident artist - she loves to color and draw and paint and write "notes."  We love this little girl, and the four years we've had together!

Yummo!

He started a little slow, but he's catching on!  Finn loves to eat!

St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  We had a fun time celebrating!

We spent the week listening to Irish music and having some fun lunches - shamrock sandwiches and a fun backyard picnic, and ...

... tri-colored buttered noodles and shamrock cheese.  (Too bad it wasn't real Irish butter and cheese!)

Then on Saturday we went all out!  For breakfast we had green bagels and green smoothies.  (I decided not to attempt a full Irish breakfast - neither black or white pudding being readily available around here.)

Molly didn't have a St. Patrick's Day shirt this year, but it's OK - she had green bows and shamrock socks. =)

For lunch we had fish & chips!

and a fruit rainbow

We enjoyed telling the kids about Ireland and looking at books and pictures and listening to lots of Irish music.

For dinner we had Guinness beef stew (no picture, sorry!) and Irish car bomb cupcakes (and an alcohol-free version for the kids).  What a fun day! =)

Little bits of life

Elijah got to celebrate his birthday at school last week.  Since his birthday is over the summer, and his half birthday is over the New Year break, we just picked a day that would work.  He was so excited to take in a treat to share!  We made little dirt cakes - he helped make all of it, but particularly enjoyed adding the gummy worms. =)

Finn wearing the pumpkin hat that Bobbi made - Molly was a little older when she wore it!

 

I made a very special (*interesting*) dinner for Patrick - he found a recipe for a casserole called Flying Jacob in a magazine, and really wanted to try it.  He loved it!  The kids said that they liked it, but didn't end up eating very much, so I'm not sure what to make of that.  I'm not sure we'll make it very often, since it involves bacon, which is banned from this house.  My sister-in-law, Lorrie, very kindly cooked the bacon for me at her house and gave it back to me cold, and mostly un-stinky, so I could make the casserole.

Handsome little man

Love those baby smiles!  Finn is half-weaned from his swaddle now, but having that one arm in still seems to make a big difference, so these great (big!) swaddling blankets are still a necessity around here.

Some days, Molly's style is still pretty quirky. =)

Love those silly boys!

What we ate

I spend a lot of my time planning, making, eating, cleaning up and shopping for food.  A LOT.  I make three meals a day nearly every day of the year, and we are now re-entering the stage of baby food, so ... yeah.  Lots of food.

(Random aside - Patrick found an article somewhere that talked about the differences between cooks and bakers, and I found that I am neither, apparently, just a person who spends tons of time making food for other people to eat.)

I often find myself feeling uninspired and burned out when I sit down to plan our meals for the week, and sometimes we get into ruts of eating the same meals (especially at lunch!) over and over.  Lately, I've been glad for Pinterest and new recipes to try out and add to my giant recipe binder.  Some of the recipes have been great (we LOVE these chicken taquitos), and many have been pretty good, once we've tweaked them to suit us.  Once in a while we have a total bomb, but you'll have that with new recipes.  I hate it when dinner fails, but I guess the risk of trying new things is worth a few fails.

Anyway, last night we had a Pinterest dinner.  I made Rotisserie-style chicken in the crock-pot, and this broccoli.  The chicken was really good, and it was an easy way to make a whole chicken.  Now that I know that it makes good juices, I will make it with rice and use the juices to make gravy.   We have plenty of leftover meat and I am making stock today - I love making whole chickens because it provides so much good food!  The broccoli ... was not the best broccoli of my life.   I like broccoli - it is one of my favorite vegetables - but this was way too lemony and sour.  The kids and I really struggled to eat it.  {Three of us were eating with our faces all twisted up in a super-sour squinty-face, and Patrick just calmly ate the whole pan.}  We'll try it once more with half the lemon juice and see if it is any better.  It seems like it might be great just straight out of the oven without the additions afterward.  We'll see.  Now I've gotta go start on tonight's dinner.  Anyone have any new recipes that they love?

Some February pictures

Here are a few pictures from our month!

He isn't quite as big as his sister, yet. =)

Teething tongue

Flying a kite!  What a strangely warm February we've had!

Some from our fun Valentine's Day -

Molly's (sort-of) heart shaped pony tails

Patrick's special dinner

m&m and brownie cake hearts

And here are a few from the celebration we had for the February birthdays in Patrick's family (Danny, Maiah, Zoie, and Brynn).  We forgot our camera, but fortunately Bill took lots of good ones!   I made a cake for the three birthday girls.

Brynn's side - she requested Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

Maiah & Zoie's side - they each chose favorite colors for their tier.

and Danny got a cupcake. =)

Merry Christmas!

We have enjoyed celebrating Christmas this year, and we aren't quite done yet!  On Christmas Eve we made some special hot chocolate with fun peppermint stir sticks, (so rich and yummy) ate some cookies, and read the Christmas story in the kid bibles.  The kids each got to open one book, one fun gift (they got pillow pets from Nana & Grandpa) and their stockings.  It was such a fun time!  The kids were very excited about everything.  Afterward we went to the Christmas Eve service at church and then got the kids to bed! 

The kids were up at their normal early bird time on Christmas morning.  We went in to get them a little earlier than normal so that we could open presents without rushing around.  Molly totally forgot what day it was!  But they were both so excited when they got downstairs and saw the presents. =)

We read Luke 2 and then had a fun morning opening gifts, and the kids got some special Cars 2 cereal for breakfast, and then we headed out to church.  Finn slept through the presents, but the big kids very nicely opened his gifts for him.  The kids had a great time playing with their new stuff all afternoon.  It was a pretty quiet day - so nice! 

Opening gifts in their Christmas jammies.

Cute baby - almost too big for his jammies. =)

Playing with gifts - Elijah's cowboy cap guns and holster, and Miss Molly showing off the hat to her southern belle dress up outfit.

We have also enjoyed spending this week celebrating and being together and eating some yummy special treats.   We made cinnamon roll pancakes (totally over the top, and crazy good) one morning and had fun snowmen milks another day.   Merry Christmas, everyone!