Then tonight, we at the leftovers and it was even yummier!  That, my friends, is a winner.  Sorry there are no pictures for this post.  I don’t usually blog about food…I do cook for my family, but making spaghetti and tacos isn’t exactly great blogging material.  My recipe rotation has been especially boring this summer, so it was definitely time for something new.

Enter Mediterranean Chicken Wraps.
(recipe found in Parenting magazine)

You need (and it sounds like sort of a lot of ingredients, but trust me, this recipe is so easy and so fast!)
The Sauce:
–1 cup plain Greek yogurt
–2 t lemon juice (I squeezed half of a fresh lemon. No measuring needed!)
–1 clove garlic
–2 T of dill. Or if you’re like me and couldn’t find dill on your spice rack, Greek seasoning.
–1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and chopped
–Salt and pepper to taste

The Chicken:
–1/2 rotisserie chicken, shredded
–diced tomatoes
–kalamata olives
–thinly sliced onion
–Greek seasoning
–2 T olive oil

Toss all the chicken ingredients in a bowl. Serve on warmed (pocketless) pita bread and top with cucumber yogurt sauce and feta cheese.

So that’s it! It was so yummy, but the kicker is it was even better tonight! We ate all the pita bread last night, so tonight I just made a chicken salad sandwich, Mediterranean style. I spread the sauce on some wheat bread, topped with the leftover chicken mixture and lots of feta cheese. It was so good! Connor even ate it up. (Not Logan and Camryn so much, but 3 out of 5 of us liked it, so that’s winner in my book!)

Enjoy!

Sweet Camryn is always wanting to give her brother’s hugs and kisses.  Connor has been going to a day camp all week, and every morning Camryn insists on giving her big brother hugs and kisses good-bye.  It really is so sweet.  Last night while I was taking pictures, Cami just had to give Connor some kisses.   And if you are wondering about the hazy look to these pictures, it was really THAT humid outside.  It took several minutes for my lens to even de-fog and the pictures all had this hazy look to them.  Gotta love Houston!  Yesterday was one of the most hot and humid days I have ever felt.

Mud-speckled baby girl.  Looks like she really tried to eat the pie!

Thanks, Nonny and Pops, for the great toy!

And if anyone is looking for something new and fun for outside, I definitely recommend this toy!

When I see these pictures of my kiddos.

I was going to write about how Logan is such a ham in pictures, and cannot just smile a regular smile.

But upon close inspection, they can all make some good photo-worthy faces.

Although Logan still totally takes the cake as the craziest in photos.  (and life, for that matter.  He is non-stop!)

Man, I love these guys.  Even when they drive me cray.  Even when I can’t seem to get a “normal” picture of them.  What’s normal anyway?  To us, this series of pictures if totally normal.  And I love them to bits!

I am.  That’s who.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love my kids.  I love spending time with them, love seeing them play together, love the freedom during the day and the summer evenings spent outside.

But I’ll be the first to admit that I am already looking forward to the refreshing change that comes with fall.  I may seem like a fun-loving, spontaneous person on the outside.  But at my core, I love a good schedule, I love predictability, and I love having my own time.  My own time….ha!  What a joke.  But really, during the school year I can breathe a little easier with all my kids in school for at least part of the week.

So, here we are, mid-summer.  I thought it might be good to do a little post about what we’ve been doing, what challenges we’ve had, and what works for us to keep us all sane during the summer months.

The first thing that works for us is keeping up some kind of a schedule, especially at bedtime.  I’ve always been big on bedtime.  I learned very quickly (like within weeks of his birth) that Connor is a kid who needs sleep and a good schedule to function, and while he handles lack of sleep a little better than he did as a baby or a toddler, it’s just better for everyone if he is well-rested.    And he simply does not sleep in.  That means we stick to an 8:00-8:30 bedtime during the summer.  Yes, my kids go to bed while it is still light outside!  It works for us.  I am more of a morning person than a night person anyway, so this way I still get a few hours to myself (or with Derek if he is in town).  I need those hours, especially in the summer!

So the first step to Megan’s Guide to Summer Survival:  sleep!

Step two: Wear them out.  Boys are just like puppies.  They need to move, run, jump, and have a place where they can be crazy.  For the most part, that place is not my living room.  Sure, they get to jump on the furniture/bed sometimes, but we really try to keep the wild play outside.  That is a little bit of a problem in the summer since it is, as Logan says, “steamin’ hot outside.”  That is the number one reason we love to go swimming!  It keeps us cool and wears them out.   We love going to the YMCA Family Fun Pool that has slides, the neighborhood pool, and just setting up the little pools in the backyard.  We managed to swim every day this week!   I also just discovered a water park that is perfect for my kids.  I see us going back there a few more times this summer, and definitely getting season passes next summer.

Step three:  Activities.  I know some people like to just chill, lay low, and not plan things for the summer.  That flat-out does not work for us.  Connor especially requires a lot of attention and stimulation which is why he thrives at school.  I’m not even going to try and hide the fact that Connor is my most high maintenance kiddo.  Love him to bits, love his crazy smarts and excess energy, but he wears me out!  We can really only handle one stay-at-home day a week.  The rest of the week we are busy with trips to the library, pool, water park, YMCA, gymnastics, day camps, soccer camp, NASA camp, playdates, etc.  We are much busier in the summer than during the school year.  During the school year, I don’t like to have more than one activity per child.  But summer is a totally different story!  I love being busy and having activities planned for most days.  It works for us.

Step four:  Room time.  Since Camryn still naps every day, it’s pretty easy to have the boys have quiet room time every day.  Occasionally I will let them stay in the living room and play Wii or play computer games, but most days, from 1:00-2:00 (or longer) you will find the boys in the own rooms, doing their own things.  It’s a much needed break for us all!

Step five:  Summer rewards.  This was something new I attempted this summer, and I’m sad to say that I pretty much failed miserably.  I decided I wanted to play Summer Bingo with the boys this year.  I read about it on Stacy Julian’s blog last summer, and it really is a great idea.  The idea:  each week, the kids get a bingo card that I create with different activities/chores.  Each bingo earns a ticket, tickets earn prizes, and a blackout earns $5.  I think Logan was just too young to really get into it.  And with Connor, I found that I was constantly nagging him to do the things on his chart and when it came down to it, he didn’t care about the tickets or the money.  Connor pretty much only wants to do what he wants to do at any given moment and doesn’t really like anyone (especially me) giving him ideas or telling him what he should do.  He is very stubborn like that.

To wrap this up, so far we are having a good summer.  We’ve had some really horrible days and some really great days.  But I guess that is to be expected.  In the next 5 weeks, I suspect that the kids will really start to drive me crazy and I will be so ready for the first day of school.  But, until then, we are all going to do our best to embrace the summer fun.

Tuesday is gymnastics day, so after gymnastics, we had our friends over to our neighborhood pool for some swimming, cupcakes, and pizza.  No big party for Cami this year…sorry kiddo…daddy and I took a helicopter ride with your birthday party money.    It’s funny how even a small party gets pretty big in my group of friends.  We had 7 adults and 16 kids, and that was after two cancellations, one for a sick kiddo (missed you, alm!) and a baby (good luck tomorrow, dayanne!)  I am so thankful to have such a great group of friends with so many kids for my kids to grow up with.  And kudos to my brother for being the lone dad at the party.  The doctor schedule can come in handy for middle of the week events!

We really had a great time.  Summer+pool+friends=fun.

Tonight we continued celebrating our birthday princess.  Logan really did crown her the birthday princess.  He ran into her room to find this crown for her to wear.  She totally embraced it.  Too cute!

Once Derek got home from work, she opened her presents.  Like our wrapping paper?  Our sweet third born…with a summer birthday the week after being gone for 10 days, I did not get a chance to get her main present.  I sent Derek to the store on his way home from work, and we decided that bag totally made good wrapping paper for a 2 year old.

I’ve wanted to get her these counting cakes ever since Camryn (and Logan) played with them at Adelaide’s 2nd birthday party.  They were a big hit!  And they have the added bonus of being educational and not taking up much space.  Right now, I am all about toys that don’t take up space.

She opened her other little presents-a baby from Logan and a coloring book from Connor.

We had a little playtime, both inside and out, before dinner.

The birthday girl got to pick what we had for dinner, and she chose hot dogs.  She loves hot dogs.  Like she asks for them for breakfast and would eat them every meal if i let her.

There were cupcakes for dessert, of course.  Surprisingly, she really wasn’t a fan.  She doesn’t particularly love being messy, and let’s face it.  There really isn’t any way to eat a cupcake without making a mess.  She licked the top, therefore marking it as hers, and then did not eat another bite.

But she’s the cutest 2 year old I know and I love her to pieces.  I love her spunky attitude, her tender heart, the way she plays mommy with her babies, and the way she squints when she smiles real big.  I love that it’s not unusual for her to wear her pink crocs to bed, and that she has to have “two babies” (a.k.a all of them) and her blankets when she sleeps.   I love that she is so social and never wants to be alone in a room (it makes disciplining her pretty easy…)  I love her bright blue eyes, her super blond hair, and her big, fat belly and stubby baby legs.  I love that she is talking more and more, repeating anything we say to her, and that she already has a mind of her own but at the same time, she likes to please us.  I love the way she snuggles, the way she loves her brothers, and the way she totally keeps up with them, wrestles with them, and plays as loudly as they do.  I love the way she loves her daddy.

She is, simply put, a joy.

Happy birthday, my sweet girl!