Banana Oatmeal "Granola" Bars

I found these on Mel's Kitchen Cafe and decided to make them for snack this afternoon. The kids loved them, and I love how healthy they are. I did use half white whole wheat flour and half rice flour. I baked them for 15 minutes so they were more of a chewy bar, and not really like a crunchy granola bar. Rachel wasn't too keen on the sunbutter in it, but she still ate them:)

Vegetable Soup

Thanks to Pinterest, my family is eating very well (not that we weren't before) thanks to all the amazing recipes to try! So many recipes, and so little time...

I know that my picture taking skills make you want to run out and try this recipe asap, but let me tell you, although it might not look that good, this is the BEST veggie soup I have tried! I found it on the blog Butterfly Food, her recipes are delicious, and although her pics don't quite compare to mine, she *is* is a pretty good photographer. (insert giggle here)

I did add a few things here, I added homemade chicken stock along with the water (I just eye balled it), quinoa (because it's so healthy for you, and it doesn't have much of a taste for the kids to whine about), and sweet potatoes. I left out the pasta, as we have some gluten-ey type of

intolerances in this house (along with breads, pastas, raw fruits/veggies, dairy...*sigh*...). Brad and the girls really loved, so it will be a keeper for us!

Crockpot Yogurt

This was my first try at making homemade yogurt, and I fully expected to wake up to some milky slop called yogurt. Boy was I surprised! This made the BEST yogurt, and was so easy to make that I am going to put Rachel (my 10 year old) in charge of making this weekly. The recipe I used was from the blog Mom on a Mission. I love her blog and have made many of her freezer meals.

The only changes I made was that I used 2% milk instead of whole, and added a box of vanilla instant yogurt as a thickener. It was still pretty thin this morning, but I know it will thicken up in the fridge. I had some alone ( as in no fruit, not that I was sitting in a closet alone eating yogurt!) and was very surprised at how tasty it was. I plan on using this in our green smoothies instead of grocery store yogurt.

Minute to Win it Night

Last night we decided to play the game "Minute to Win it". I found some fun games on Pinterest, and then Googled more. We had a blast playing these! Alayna's favorite game was the cup stacking one. She spent more time just stacking the cups then playing the other games with us!

We played the dice game...You have one minute to stack 6 dice on a popsicle stick that is in your mouth.
Cracker on the forehead...You place a cracker or cookie on your forehead, then try to maneuver it into your mouth.
Rachel and I were the only ones to successfully get them in our mouths, haha!

Alayna stacking the cups, she got her stacked within the minute!

Rachel getting all of her dice on the stick within the minute...

Emma almost got it!
This was a lot of fun, I am going to Google more games to do, a great family fun night!

Alayna-isms

I figured I should make a post about the funny things that Alayna says because I will forget them like I have with the other two. Sorry girls, I do love you to pieces...

Alayna has always been our most "spirited" child of the three. The energy that comes out of this tiny 5 year old 35 pound frame is incredible! She keeps us all on our toes and makes us laugh all.the.time. This morning she was eating a toasted bagel that got cold and asked if we could "hot it up", man did we laugh! her favorite meal is "hangabers" (hamburgers) or "homelets". The funny thing with kids is even when they start saying the words right, you find yourself correcting them with the wrong words because you hate seeing that part of them grow up:) She is our little firecracker and we love hearing what funny things she will come up with next!

Meet Maci

Because we thought one cat and one dog wasn't enough, we figured we'd get another cat! This is Maci, and she comes from Brad's uncles farm. She was VERY sick when we brought her home, and even after having her for a month, she still deals with some respiratory business.

She is so much fun right now, very spunky and naughty, but cuddly in the evenings. Shelby was not a fan at first, but now the two of them are running around playing together, it's our cheap entertainment!
Aww, isn't she cute??!!

Today's Projects

Today was a good day for making a few projects I had found. This snowman idea comes from the blog "How Does She", and of course there's look a lot cuter than mine. Rachel asked why my snowman was so wide, *sigh*, because I don't have the power tools like others do. I just so happened to have these three sizes of wood in my craft bin. Score! The girls helped me sand and paint the pieces before I covered them with scrapbook paper. I think it turned out cute!

The next one is made from toilet paper rolls, love this one! I needed something to hang in my bathroom in between the two mirrors. This worked perfect.

I've seen this floating around in blogland and pinterest, and can't believe how easy it was. I measured and marked where I wanted to cut the roll (I measured so the cut pieces would be even), hot glued them together and then glued the flower to a piece of scrapbook paper.

Easy peasy! Although you would have thought my girls would have lasted longer than the five minutes they helped me...