School is Cool

The kid's school calendars have been jam packed with all the fun things this month.

They've had projects, guests speakers, themed days and field days.  We got the schedule for their field day weeks ago and I mentioned it to Kevin.  He said, "It's already on my calendar!"  He was so excited to go and cheer for the kids and their classes.  It was really sweet!  It was perfect because both kids had field day time slots that were either Leo's lunch or nap time.

You know this has been a wild and crazy year for our family moving mid school year so this meant the world to us that the kids were wrapping up the year on such high notes.  Elementary school will always have a special place in my heart since I spent 9 years teaching there before we had kids.  Both Olive & Fletcher have teachers that are wonderful about posting pictures on the class Facebook page during their class time and Kevin said he was on assignment to document their Field Day since I couldn't be there.

Olive's team won the big tug of war battle and both kids had a blast.

I cried happy tears watching some of their class videos.  It was a big answer to prayer to see them both so happy in their new schools and introducing Kevin to their friends.  We're all excited for Summer break and feel confident going into a new school year not being the new kids.

Olive's class is wrapping up a big unit on Charlotte's web.

Fletcher had Beach Day in addition to Field Day.  Kindergarten is so fun!

Best day ever!

I'm hoping that your kids are wrapping up great school years, too.  If not, I'll be hoping and praying that next year is fantastic for them.  We're praying for our kids to get teachers that will be perfect for them and their needs in 1st and 4th grade.  Just 2 more days until Summer break here!

Friday Favorites

Happy Friday!  We're in the home stretch wrapping up the school year and are ready for our last 3 days of school next week.  We had some sick moments for the boys this week, but lots of sweet moments in between.  I hope you had a good week :)

The highlights were:

1 // Happy Plates

Did you know that I collect plates?  I have a good variety of different dessert plates and melamine dinner plates.  They're so fun to mix and match.  And they're basically indestructible.  Perfect for guests or kids or anyone.  I found these happy plates at Hobby Lobby.  They're in the Spring section and 50% off right now.  How can you not be happy eating off these giant smiles?!?

2 // Climbing Dome

We asked the kids to name one thing they'd love to add to our backyard and they said a climbing dome.  We talked my dad into coming over to help Kevin put it together and the kid have been enjoying it every day.

3 // Bounce

Our neighbors mentioned that they were renting a big bounce house for the day and that we should stop by and bounce.  We said yes and got to know our neighbors a little better.  Win-win.

 4 // Upside App

Have you ever heard of Upside??  My husband told me about it and I've already earned almost $30 after using it 4 times.  It works at my local grocery store - Schnucks and gas stations.  The deals change every day.  You upload gas receipts and then plug in your card information as you're checking out at the grocery.  It's awesome!

If you want to try it out, I have a referral code: HRQV25

 

5 // Nana Bakes

We had Kevin's parents & his Nana over for dinner.  She'd never been to our new house so it was sweet to give her the tour.  She came with treats she knew we'd enjoy Molasses cookies (Olive's favorite) and PB fudge (Kevin's favorite).  We grilled out and had a nice evening.

6 // Water Fun!

We had our neighbors over for some water fun.  The kids loved the little pools, water tables, sprinklers and popsicles.  We are trying hard to get our sod to grow so hopefully all this water helps.

7 // Oh Leo

This wild man has been getting himself into all kinds of trouble this week.  I heard him yelling "I stuck!  I stuck! from the other room and went into my room to find this.  He was totally stuck in our foot board.  And it took me some serious arm muscle wiggling to get him unstuck.

8 // Bench

We had been waiting for months for our kitchen table bench to arrive.  It arrived in April and unfortunately it was broken :(  The worst part was that it was discontinued and their furniture repairman said it was unfixable.  Insert: My dad.  He looked at it and said he could definitely fix it.  So we got a partial refund and he fixed it for us.  Now we all fight to sit on the bench.  Not Pearl though.  She's a proper cat and prefers to sit in the chair.

9 // Walking

We had another great week of walking!  Leo has started clapping at the end of our walks together.  He's probably glad we're done, but it makes me feel good to think he's clapping for mom.

10 // Blackberry Surprise

When Kevin's Nana was visiting she pointed out that the flowering bushes lining one whole side of our property were blackberries!!  The smell wonderful, but I had no idea they were berry bushes.  Now we are just wondering what this means for our first year of berries here.  Send me all your blackberry recipes because we are hoping they're delicious to eat.  Stay tuned.

11 // Toddlers

See what I mean about this guy giving me a run for my money this week!?  I'm impressed with his balance and worried for his safety all at the same time.

12 // Sick Days

Poor Leo was sick a couple days this week and then Fletch spent a day at home yesterday.  I'm hoping they are all on the mend by the weekend.

13 // Make Your Own Sunshine

Lots of things didn't go as planned this week, but I tried hard to make my own sunshine.  One easy way was asking Kevin for help.  Both boys were home sick and I wanted to get in a good walk for the day.  He stayed home a little longer in the morning and I got to exercise. We're a good team.

14 // School Lunches

We're on our last week of packing school lunches.  I found a new protein that the kids like - grilled chicken!  We had some leftover from dinner and they were happy to eat it cold.  I feel like proteins are the hardest part of school lunches so this was a big win.

15 // Crochet Club

Olive has been working really hard on crocheting this week.  My mom taught her how to get started and she's been crocheting in her free time.  It's fun to see her learn something new even though I'm no help to her.

I hope you have a fantastic weekend!  See you back here on Monday.

Linking up with Momfessionals

Family Goals

I love a good goal to work towards and I'm always thinking in terms of goals and to dos.  

When we relocated in December, Kevin and I set some goals for our family.  I don't think I ever shared them here so I'm going to talk about them with you today.  I got the idea to do this because we hit a fun milestone that made us feel like we were making progress after moving in the winter.  That is a hard, lonely time of year to move.  I'll go into that another time.

Back to our family goals!  I don't have them posted anywhere, but we talk about them and pray about them as a family.  We currently have 5 goals and some are specific to relocating and others are just normal for us.

1. Make New Friends

It's been hard on everyone to move and have to start over in the friend department.  We all have friends that we are missing.  The kids have done great at school connecting with other kids.  We're working hard to connect with neighbors, church friends and build on relationships with cousins/family nearby.

Do you see this picture above??  This was the fun milestone I mentioned.  Some new friends knocked on our door after dinner with a delivery of warm donuts for us.  We were so surprised and it felt good to know new friends were thinking of us and wanting to do something nice for us.  The kids just kept saying that they were shocked to get a fun surprise like this.  We are usually dropping food off to people so it felt great to have someone going out of their way for us.

 

2. Find a Church Home

We have been going to the same church since February.  We have gotten into a good Sunday routine.  The kids are all feeling comfortable in their classes and are connecting with teachers/friends there.  We have lots of opportunities there so we are trying to figure out the best way for our family to connect.

 

3. Make Our House a Home

We are pretty much unpacked (although things like craft paint and our balloon air pump are still missing) so now we are working on arranging things like we want and figuring out what each room needs.  Our attention is being focused on yard stuff right now - grass, trees, plants and landscaping.  All those things are helping our space to feel personalized.  We have some inside projects on our radar that my dad will be helping us with and we need to hang stuff on the walls.  I'm also working on decluttering.  I dropped off a huge van load of stuff this month and plan to keep doing the same in the months to come.

 

4. Adventure Awaits

I'm always reminding myself that there are tons of free things and fun things I can do with the kids to take them on adventures.  Now that the weather has gotten nicer and school is almost out, we will be able to enjoy some new adventures together.  We've got big summer plans to find favorite parks, explore some new areas and find favorite things to do in Evansville for our first summer here.

5. We Can Do Hard Things

We still have conversations about missing our old city, our old friends and our old Summer routines.  We are super open with the kids and tell them that we miss our favorite things, too.  Kevin is missing his golf league, I'm missing my mom's group and our activities - we all have things that we miss.  But we're focusing our sights on the future and are determined to work together to make Evansville feel like home.

 

6. Eat Good Food

We all have our favorite foods so we try to incorporate a little something for everyone in the menu each week.  I'm packing good lunches, planning healthy meals, shopping for all our favorites, Door Dashing dinners to try new restaurants and grilling up some new things. I'd say we're all foodies in our own ways so we enjoy eating good food each day.

We're working together on all these things and helping the kids to see that goals help them get places!  Is your family working on any goals right now?

3 Things

I've got a random post of current things for you today.  3 things from each person in our family.

Olive:

1. She loves coffee, fun drinks and thinks it's the coolest when Kevin takes her to Starbucks.  He saves up all his rewards for fun drinks for her.

2. She loves all crafty projects.  She's currently learning to crochet.  The cats are thrilled with her yard collection and I wake up to yarn being strung all over the house courtesy of the cats.

3. Olive loves to chat.  When I tuck her in at night and ask what she wants to talk about she usually says, "SO MANY THINGS!"  She hung out with my parents last week and said she talked to Mimi nonstop.  haha

Fletcher:

1. He cannot wait for his 100 day weekend (AKA Summer)

2. He is a little fish in the water.  He ended last Summer as a pretty good swimmer and he's already a little fishy this year.

3. Fletcher is super tender hearted.  Leo hurried to the window to wave goodbye to us one morning.  It brought Fletch to tears to see him standing there all alone waving bye.  He's the first to tear up during sad parts of movies and he worries about sad things that happen at school.

Leo:

1. He's a toddler tornado.  He gets into all the things all the time.  His newest trick is running away from us so if you see me running like crazy to save him you'll know why.  He's in his stroller or in the cart when we are out and about because I can't trust him to stay with us.

2. He loves cars and anything with wheels.  Anytime we walk past a car he asks me What's this? and wants to know the color of the car.  So if you hear me saying red, black, gray, white as we're going through parking lots it's because I am naming colors for him.

3. Leo loves to play with rubber bands.  Give him a bowl full of rubber bands and he'll be happy for a good chunk of time.

Kevin & Whitney:

1. You might see us driving around town scoping out pretty trees for our yard.  Our tree guy is giving us addresses to go and see and we're making plans for our yard.  It's been a headache to work with our yard/sprinkler guy and we (mostly Kevin) is doing everything he can get keep grass alive and grow grass this first Summer in our new house.

2. It's fun to see Kevin doing a job that he loves.  He is working on exciting things, making new connections, being valued for his expertise and dreaming big dreams for his department.

3. We've got some summer trips on our radar and two weddings.  We are working hard to map out our Summer with a good mix of travel, adventure, routines and activities for the kids.  What is your go to wedding gift these days?  Shop from the registries, money, something sentimental!?  Give me all of your tips.

Nanaimo Bars

Have you ever had Nanaimo Bars?

I have seen recipes floating around for Nanaimo Bars (a Canadian treasure apparently!?) and after making them a couple of times, I have gotten my recipe just right!  Some recipes are nut free and some are coconut free.  Mine is heavy on the nuts and has coconut in them.  I will say that I do not LOVE coconut so don't be scared away from this recipe.  I like coconut a little and I love these bars.

 

I started with this recipe from Just So Tasty for Nanaimo Bars.  She goes into lots of details and made it my own.

This recipe has 3 steps (one for each layer) that require refrigeration after each one.  I promise they're simple and delicious.  It feels like a very fancy treat without all that much work.

Look at this slice of yum!  I love a thick bottom layer and pecans on top.

Ingredients:

Base/Bottom Layer:

1/2 softened real butter

1/3 c cocoa powder

1/4 c sugar

1 t vanilla

1 egg

1 1/2 c crushed graham crackers

3/4 c shredded coconut

1/2 c chunky chopped walnuts

1 c chunky chopped pecans

 

Middle Layer:

6 T real butter softened

2 T custard powder (I ordered mine from Amazon)

3 T Vitamin D milk or whole milk

2 c powdered sugar

 

Top Layer:

6 oz semi sweet chocolate chips

1 t crisco

2 T real butter

1/4 c chunky chopped pecans to sprinkle on top

 

Directions:

Chop all the nuts, crush the graham crackers and measure out all the ingredients so you'll be ready to dump them in.  Melt butter, cocoa, sugar and vanilla.  Stir until smoothly combined.  Add in the egg and mix nonstop until the mixture is smoothy and shiny.  Remove from the heat and add in the rest of the ingredients.  Stir until well combined and put in a greased 9x9 pan.  Press flat (if this layer is flattened well it will help the rest of the dessert layers to be nice and even) and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

Add all the ingredients for layer 2 into your mixer.  Mix until well combined.  It'll look like a thick buttercream frosting.  Add to chilled layer 1 pan and chill for another 20 minutes.

Add all the ingredients for layer 3 into a saucepan and still until everything is melted smoothly.  Poor on top of layer 2 in the chilled pan and then top with pecans.  Refrigerate until you're ready to serve.  Slice into small pieces.  This treat is rich and bite size is the best size.  Enjoy!

Here's the step by step process in pictures.

 

I've shared this treat with several coconut lovers and they LOVED it!  I hope you give it a try.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Friday Favorites

Happy Friday!  I hope you've had a good week.  It all the sudden feels like Summer in the Midwest and we're wrapping up all the things to finish up the school year.  We are all ready for Summer break.

The best parts of our week were:

1 // In Person Events are Back!

We got invited to an end of the year party for everyone at UE at the president's house.  It was nice to get to meet some of Kevin's coworkers, enjoy a night out by ourselves (thanks Mom & Dad!) and get to actually go to an event!  Yay!

Date night accessories feel like a nice change of pace from my usual backpack full of kid stuff!  And don't you just feel extra good when you've got a new dress to wear!?

2 // Limping to the finish line

There are so many school things to remember and do this time of year.  I feel like we're all limping to the finish line.  It's all fun, and we're super thankful for all the festivities, but it's a lot.  Leo agrees :)  I couldn't quit laughing at him.  He insists on doing his own sunglasses.

3 // Water Challenge

I mentioned over on IG (@polkadottyplace) that I was trying out a new water drinking challenge.  Every time I refill my Hyrdaflow water bottle, I add a rubber band.  It helps keep me accountable and I am definitely drinking more water.

4 // Slow Mornings

I love slow mornings at home with Leo.  He's asking What's this? for the millionth time.

5 // Zesty Tomato Salad

This is the perfect Summer side dish.  It's so fresh and delicious and healthy.  If you didn't see my recipe earlier this week, click here for the recipe.  You can add in avocado right before you serve it or leave it out.  It's totally customizable for your tastes.

6 // Cat & Jack

I just love the Cat & Jack clothing lines for toddlers, boys and girls.  The options are so cute for all the kids!  We stocked up on some new tees, new tops and new swimsuits.  Isn't this toddler outfit so cute!?  I love all things floral so I can't wait to see Leo in this outfit.

7 // Home Hack

If you're trying to track down workers for projects at your house, I have a tip for you.

We have had trouble connecting with some workers as we are trying to finish up things with our new build.  I knew a worker would be coming to work on a particular spot, but I didn't know who would show or when they would come.  I wrote this note, weather proofed it in a ziploc and then taped it down to the spot they would be working on.

It worked like a charm!  The worker knocked on my door just like I asked.  I got to ask him all of my questions and he pointed me in the right direction.  He could do one job and then I needed to call our plumber for the second job.  Hooray!

8 // Star Student

Fletcher got to be the Star Student this week!  Moving mid year meant that some of the things we had hoped to get to do might not happen.  I was thrilled that his teacher worked him into the rotation :)

9 // New things

Leo is learning new things all day, every day.  He woke up one morning and gave me a big thumbs up.  He's learning new words and new tricks.  2 year olds are wild and fun little people.

10 // Pool Party

We got to go to my sister's house for a pool party for my nephew.  He turned 14 and the kids had a great time swimming & celebrating him.  He blew out his candles poolside and then we all enjoyed a cookout.  Both Olive and Fletcher have turned into such good swimmers!  Big kids are fun.

11 // Walking & Biking

Leo and I have been going on power walks most days.  We briskly walk through the neighborhood and then he gets to ride his "go go" (bike) when we get back home.  He's getting better and better at his balance bike skills.  Make deals with your kids to get exercise in.  We walk and then we bike.  Or my older kids can scooter/bike with me when I walk.  That way you're working together to get your exercise in every day.

12 // Organizing

I'm slowly, but surely making my way through all of our closets.  We moved so quickly and tried to settle in fast which meant that lots of boxes and stuff got shoved into closets.  My big kid's closet was a mess so I spent less than an hour fixing it this week.  Look at the difference!  We are all so much happier with this space.  Onto my big pantry next.

13 // Kids Say

Fletcher calls soft taco shells TACO BUNS and I love it.

Olive says Opposed instead of Supposed.  He's not opposed to do that.

Leo calls his bike his GO GO.

14 // Construction Zone

We've had a front row seat to construction this week.  Leo has been thrilled to watch all the vehicles come and go.  We have some big plans for tree planting in our backyard soon and the road work doesn't seem to be that close to being done.  Win win for this car loving guy.

Cheers to the weekend!

I hope you have a fantastic one.  Linking up with Momfessionals