Wednesday, August 31, 2011

First Day of School

Today is the TinyTwo's first day of school.  Sigh.  They're getting so big and grown up.  Grant it, we're talking pre-school/pre-k here, but still, its their first time out of the house everydayand dropped off anywhere I won't just be down the hall.  I talked here about the great lunch debacle from day camp and my anxiety over making lunches everyday, but I do have my plan now.  The first step in my plan was to pick up these Ziploc Divided Containers.  Then, being me, I came up with my daily menu.  I'll likely vary occassionally, but as for now I will be packing the same thing everyday:  Cheese toast sandwich, applesauce and raisins with water.  The school provides snack everyday (well, parents take turns providing snacks for the entire class everyday) so I don't have to worry about that except for my 2 weeks I'm in charge of that.  Actually, I guess its 4 weeks since I have 2 kids.  Anyway, I have the lunch thing down.  The kids have their little backpacks and matching lunch bags and everything is ready for school.  Except me.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Kindle

I received the most generous gift for my birthday a few months ago... a Kindle.  OK, actually it was for me and Sweetheart, but, in reality, its mine ;)   He knows how to turn it on and get it to read the audio version of Good Night Moon I uploaded.  Otherwise, he's pretty new to it.  I, on the other hand, LOVE.  IT.  Love it.  I don't, however, love to pay to read, and so I was so excited to find this site.  Jungle Deals and Steals has been updating once a week with free Kindle books!
Sometimes the books are awesome, sometimes they're not, but they're free and I always read the comments and ratings before I load one.
Carrying around 100 books in one little Kindle= Lazy
Carrying around 100 Kindle books without having to pay for them= Awesome

Thursday, August 4, 2011

lunch

Well..... Mother of the Year here... again.
I just found out I need to pack lunches this year.  For BOTH kids.  For some reason I had decided that only the full day kids at the school would eat lunch there.  I was wrong and sent my son to school today, his first day, without a lunch.  (He's going to their day camp for 3 weeks this summer, but it is in the same building, is everyday, and has the same hours as school will, so, in all essence, today was his first day of school)  Yes, I can hear the applause at my amazing mom skills.  So, besides being awesome at motherhood in general, and completely new to the "drop kids off and pick them up at school" thing... now I'm going to have to pack lunches.  Peanut and tree nut free lunches.  I'm totally fine with this rule, but its not one we've had to encounter before and an enormous portion of the kids diet involves PBJ.  I found this great post here for ideas.  We'll see what I come up with.
Side note:  as I told Sweetheart about this HUGE adjustment in my planning for the year he responded with, "Great!  You can make my lunches too!"  .... I'm sure you can imagine how that went down.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Tortilla Pizzas

Happy August!  How on earth did that sneak up on us????

We love pizza around here.  Like... a lot.  I'd even say we <3 pizza and I never say we <3 anything.
So... when a new pizza recipe came my way- that's super easy and super yummy- we of course made them right away.  And took them out to the pool for dinner :)

First, toast the tortillas a bit so they're a tad crunchy.  Add pizza toppings.  I always use  mushroom spaghetti sauce because I can never remember to buy pizza sauce and I can't tell much of a difference.  My mom, mind you, would disagree.  Do what you think is best :)  Then we topped it with shredded mozzarella cheese, then some of them got pepperonis too.  We put them back in the toaster oven for 5 minutes to melt everything and they were wonderful.  Much like a really thin pizza actually.
You, of course, could use a cookie sheet and a regular oven.  The "toast" setting for the toaster oven is 450, but I'm sure 350 would be better to keep them from browning to quickly.  You want the tortillas to dry out, not brown.  Half of the TinyTwo rolled his up, the other half preferred hers cut up like a proper personal pizza.  Both halves loved them.