Freezer Cooking (with friends!)

Awhile back, I hosted a Prep.Freeze.Cook party with some friends.  It was super fun, but at about $12 a meal, not something my budget could do every month.  Enter: my friend Amy.  She decided to take the concept and adapt it for a smaller group of friends and do the shopping/prep ourselves.  This month I invited myself to her house for the “party.” :)  William held down the fort and Miles and I headed over on Saturday morning. How it worked was a week before the party, Amy sent us an email with different shopping lists divided up.  We each picked a list to buy.  It also had a few items that needed to be prepped ahead of the cooking day.  Here’s what my list looked like:
SHOPPING LIST E

• PREP ITEM - 32 medium sliced green peppers
• 64 oz white vinegar
• 4 bottles (16 oz each) zesty Italian dressing
• 8 limes
• 7 jars (4.5 oz each) or 28 oz of minced garlic
• 1 bottle (12 oz) of ketchup
• 64 freezer bags
• 8 cans pinto beans, rinsed and drained
• 8 cans black beans, drained
• I also decided to pre-label all the bags to save us some time on the morning of

Every arrived and unloaded all their goodies.These 2 guys were adorable together and were so great throughout the morning.
Again, each group of ladies tackled one meal at a time.  We simply found the indreitent on the massive table of food and dumped it into a gallon freezer bag.  Once all the bags for that meal were done, we sealed them and put one meal in each lady's laundry basket.

Here was our list of the 10 meals that we prepped (can you tell we're big chicken fans?):
Taco Chili
Black Bean Chicken 
Meatballs
Coconut Lime Chicken
White Chicken Chili
Chicken cacciatore
Creamy Italian Chicken
Italian Buffalo Chicken
Crock Pot Aloha Chicken
Crock Pot Philly Cheese Chicken
All in all, it took us only about an hour and half for everything.  And even better, the total was $89.52 for all of it!  Definitely worth doing a little of our own prep work to get our cost down.Amy has a full run down of the meals with links to the recipes.  I can’t wait to make this a monthly (or bi-monthly) tradition!

Janessa’s b-day party

This morning, one of Owen’s friends had a birthday party.  I got a babysitter for Ellie and then decided I might as well leave Miles since he takes a bottle well.  So Miles had his first non-family babysitter and did awesome!  And I got to spend some special one-on-one time with Owen.

The party was at Michael’s craft store and Jennifer had come up a with a super neat art project for them.  She spent the time taping off each kiddo’s name on a canvas.  Then each kid painted and put handprints on it.  After it dried, we peeled off their names.  So cute!Then we enjoyed pizza and cupcakes.  Such a fun morning.  And can you tell that Jen is a professional photographer?  Thanks for all the great pictures of the day!  Happy 4th birthday Janessa!

4th of July!

We had a fabulous 4th of July weekend.  The weather was gorgeous and we had just the right amount of activities planned.  Thursday morning, we started getting in the spirit with a Pinterest inspired activity.  I taped together bendable straws and they dipped them in paint and made “fireworks.”Friday morning we got all the crazies dressed in their red, white, and blue and then it was off the parade.  It was much cooler than last year and we found a shady spot, so that made it much more enjoyable.  The parade is nothing to write home about, but the kids enjoyed the fire trucks, the few horses, and the few large inflatables.    Love her little skirt and headband: Owen was a little bored except when they threw out some candy: I love how smiley this little guy is becoming.  I don’t know what to do with a boy who smiles!We didn’t have any other plans so we spent the day just hanging out and enjoying having William home.  Saturday morning, we enjoyed another gorgeous day and took a long family walk.  We got everyone (including Owen) to take decent naps as we knew it’d be a long night.  After naps, we packed everyone up and headed to Tuscola where Owen’s best buddy Sam and his family live.  We ate an awesome dinner and the boys had a blast playing with each other.  We also finally got a picture of Miles and Jack – maybe future bff’s? At about 8 we drove over to Tuscola’s park area – it had a pool, park, baseball fields, etc.  We really could not have asked for a better experience.  Our vans are literally 5 feet away (in case of babies waking up or Ellie getting scared).  We were one of maybe 6 families on this whole field.  The kids played with their glow sticks while it got dark.  I brought things to make snack necklaces (a piece of yarn with things like fruit loops, butter cookies, pretzels, etc to string on).  That went over like a lead balloon.  They just ate the snacks. I was pretty nervous about how Ellie and Miles would do.  But it was awesome.  Ellie covered her ears for the first half, but then forgot about it and seemed fine.  Miles literally slept the whole time, and the whole way home too!  The show was great for a small town and the perfect length.  And getting out of the park only took about 15 minutes.  So much smoother than I think it would have gone at Memorial with the huge crowds.  I definitely think we’re going to make this a yearly tradition with the Bubbs!  Happy 4th of July everyone!

first pool day

I’ve been a little sad as I’ve started to see all these great pool pictures from friends taking their little ones swimming.  I didn’t get a pass this year as I knew taking 3 kids to the pool by myself wasn’t going to happen.  But this morning, my friend Lori asked if we wanted to meet at Sholem.  Her girl, Avery, is a fabulous babysitter-in-training.  She held Miles for a good majority of the morning and had no problem missing out on the swimming fun.    Owen and Ellie acted like they hadn’t missed a beat with swimming and were both braver than I had anticipated them to be.  They blew bubbles in that water and both went down the slide. I definitely could not have done it by myself.  Ellie refused to get out while I nursed Miles, so Lori played with her.  And taking Owen to the bathroom was much easier without having to drag the other two along.  And the best part – the long afternoon naps had by all.  Even Owen who hasn’t taken a nap in quite a while!Thanks ladies (and Ryder).  We can’t wait to go again!   

Owen’s 4th birthday!

Owen’s  birthday celebration began early on Saturday.  We’ve been talking a lot about what kind of bike he wanted.  So we headed to Toys R Us to try some out.  He immediately gravitated towards this orange bike, even though he’s been saying from the get to that he wanted a blue bike.  He hopped on it at the store and rode like a pro.  After trying a few others ones out, he still said this was the one he wanted.  So it came home with us, along with a hot wheels helmet!We struggled to get him back inside after riding.

On Tuesday (his real birthday), he woke up to this:   He of course wanted to open his presents immediately. We had birthday donuts for a special treat.Elmer and Jackie (William’s parents) arrived later in the day and he got to open even more presents!

Owen wanted to help decorate his own cake.  So not Pinteresty but fun to do it together.

For the last part of his birthday celebrations, he got treated to a movie with his best buddy, Sam.  Carrie and Rob (and baby Jack) came to pick him up Saturday morning and they all went to see How to Train Your Dragon 2.  He had an absolute blast.

All in all, it was a super fun week of celebrating him!  Definitely not a birthday party complete with animals, but we’ll go big again next year when I haven’t just had a baby. :)