A little potato hockey is always fun…

Camryn was right in the middle of it all, having a blast.  Connor seems to really like having her around at his school, and it makes my heart so happy.

After field day, I headed out for a maternity photo shoot.  We did this shoot just in the nick of time because baby Claire was born the very next day!

That night, we loaded up the party van and drove to Arlington.  We arrived at 11:45 p.m.  Talk about a long day!

We spent Saturday with Derek’s parents, Nonny and Pops.  We went to the Ft. Worth Botanic Gardens, saw some amazing butterflies at a special exotic butterfly exhibit, and enjoyed a gorgeous day outside.

Just one of the many butterflies we saw.  They really were amazing and I could have stayed in there for much longer taking pictures of them!

After a yummy lunch at a hamburger place, we headed back to spend the afternoon at Nonny and Pops house.  They boys headed with Derek and Pops to the park, and I headed to a photo shoot.  She was such a sweet little 7 month old!  I love this age.

Sunday after church, we went to my parents house to spend the day.  I finally got to meet my newest nephew!  He is such a little chunk of love, and a precious, precious (and loved!) little boy.

These kids had a blast playing together.  Cousins are so much fun.  I have such fun memories with my cousins, and I’m so glad that Connor, Logan, and Camryn will have to the same kind of memories.

Monday morning, we packed up and headed home.  Our good friends Ryan and Maggie are in Houston visiting, and this week is going to be as busy and fun-filled as this weekend!  This spring break is going to be a good one!

]]> http://www.mookarama.com/megan/2010/03/16/spring-break-part-1/feed/ 1 http://www.mookarama.com/megan/2010/03/11/mom-to-mom-from-my-kitchen-to-yours/ http://www.mookarama.com/megan/2010/03/11/mom-to-mom-from-my-kitchen-to-yours/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:56:00 +0000 megan http://www.mookarama.com/megan/?p=2016 One of my friends from high school, Jessica, had an idea for all us moms to post recipe and food ideas.  I’ve been lacking on blog material lately, so I thought it might be fun to jump in and play along!

First, let me just be honest…we eat the same things over and over again but I’m okay with that at this point!  Food is one area where I do not stress.  I am a big believer in choosing my battles, and for the most part, it’s a battle I choose not to fight.  I have one great eater, willing to try anything new (Connor), one pickier eater who is slowly and surely trying new things but most of the time still not liking the new things (Logan), and one that I just never know what her food mood will be (Camryn).

I do try to feed my kids healthy, wholesome foods.  I don’t buy organic unless it’s cheaper than than the regular, which is very rare.  We do eat whole wheat bread items for the most part.  I don’t buy special high fructose corn syrup free foods.  I bought the natural peanut butter once, and Derek asked me not to to that again.  Since he eats a pbj sandwich every day for lunch (and has for the past 10 years!), I didn’t fight it and bought the man his Jif.  We do eat fast food, but not every day.  I would say that my food philosophy is “everything in moderation.”  I have never been one to buy into diet or health food fads.  If you are looking for all organic, all natural food and recipe ideas, you are definitely not in the right place.   Just felt like I needed to say that right up front.

Breakfast
–half of a bagel toasted with butter or cream cheese
–strawberry fruit bars (nutri-grain bars, but I buy the store brand)
–granola bars (fiber one are the favorites, but we also eat good old Quaker granola bars)
–cereal: Raisin Bran, Cheerios (all the different varieties), and those new mini wheat chocolate squares. Those are a big hit!
–English muffins with Brummel and Brown strawberry spread. I eat those almost every day, but the kids like them occasionally too. I buy the high fiber, whole wheat english muffins.

Lunch
–PBJ for the boys almost every day.
–Deli meat for Camryn
–Turkey hot dogs or all beef hot dogs.
–baked chips
–fruit snacks, or our new favorite fruit leather/smooshed fruit. I like those better because they have a half a serving of real fruit in them.
–fruit: applesauce, mandarin oranges, grapes, apples, strawberries, sometimes bananas, frozen blueberries, canned peaches and pears, etc. I always have canned fruit on hand. (I like the ones packed in fruit juice the best.)

Snacks
–Goldfish all the way. We love them.
–Snyders big pretzel rods, sometimes dipped in Nutella.
–Granola bars or fruit snacks if they haven’t already had one that day. I only allow one of those per day or we would eat them faster than we already do!
–raisins, sometimes plain, sometimes yogurt covered. Camryn especially loves raisins.
–other crackers: cheez-its, ritz (the new cinnamon ones are yummy!)
–Peanuts or cashews
–fruit

Dinner
Varies. I don’t think I do anything that great or exciting with dinner. I don’t love to cook; I do it out of necessity and for my husband who loves to come home to a hot meal. We eat a lot of spaghetti, tacos, chicken casseroles, etc. I am not good at vegetables. We mostly eat canned veggies or a salad. This is one area where I am hoping to improve. I try to serve the kids a vegetable or a fruit with dinner, and probably more often than not, it’s a fruit. Connor likes a lot of different veggies. Logan, not so much. He will eat lettuce with ranch dressing, potatoes, and corn, but that’s about it.

My big thing with dinner is I am not a short order cook. They eat what I make. There are a few exceptions, but 98% of the time, they eat what I cook or they just go hungry. I don’t worry if Logan misses a dinner. He won’t starve overnight.

The kids only eat dessert on occasion. I’ll usually treat them with it if I see that they both ate a really good dinner without any complaining.

I guess that’s about it! It’s nothing very exciting, but it works for me.

Let me just say, for the record, that I really love taking pictures for other people.  Really love it.  But taking pictures of my own kids?  Don’t love it so much.  Love my kids…no doubt about that…but I find it so much harder to take pictures of them!  I flat out offered Connor and Logan $1 each if they would just listen to me, cooperate, and have fun.  We did have some moments of fun and got a handful of cute pictures.  But we also had many moments like this.

I feel your pain, sister.  I feel your pain.

When I got back home, I was feeling very frustrated and hungry (which is never a good combination.)  I was so happy when I downloaded the pictures and saw several that brought a smile to my face.  And while most of these won’t be enlarged or put in a frame, I love them.  And that’s what photography is all about for me.  It’s not about the perfectly posed picture.  It’s about capturing my kid’s personalities in a still frame.

No children were hurt in the following picture.  You go, Camryn.  She holds her own, that’s for sure!  And the bored look on Connor’s face cracks me up!

I love this next one.  My kids are for real a crazy bunch of little people, and this just captures it perfectly.

Sweet brothers.  Today was one of those days where they were the best of friends.  I wish I could say that is normally the case,but not so much.   But today was a good day.  They played and played and played at home all day, and then they played and played and played in this field.  It was great.

Is he a handsome kid or what?  Love this picture of him.

So, while it wasn’t as fabulous a photo shoot as I had made it out to be in my head, I will still count it as a success.  But it did confirm what I had been feeling for quite some time: it is so much easier to take pictures of other people’s children!

Tonight, Derek caught a glimpse of my desktop and commented on how much stuff is on it. I had to agree that it is looking a bit cluttered…

So I started taking a closer look at what’s on there and realized that I have pictures resized and saved on the desktop so I can blog about that time we went to the farm and cut down our own Christmas tree.  Yes, it was 3 months ago, but I always like to think it’s better late than never.

It was our second annual Thurman Family Christmas Tree Adventure.  We headed out to Dewberry Farm, which is a different farm than the one we had gone to the year before.  It was really fun with lots of extra things for the kids to do, but the tree was more expensive and I didn’t really appreciate the black widow spider friend that I’m pretty sure came home with our tree.  I’m not even sure I blogged about that.  I still get the heebie jeebies just thinking about the huge web it built under our desk (a few feet from the tree) and the sound it made as Derek stepped on it, and then the horrible realization that he had just killed a large, poisonous spider.  Yuck.

Anyway, one day many months ago, we loaded up the party van and headed to the farm.

We looked for quite awhile until we found the perfect tree.

And after a careful inspection, we knew this was it.

Camryn and I looked on as the boys did all the work.

And just like that, the Christmas tree hunt was over.  I also can’t decide if I’m sad this shaggy hair gone or not.  Connor’s hair is in a bit of a funny place right now…shorter than this, but not really short.  I had forgotten just how long and shaggy it had gotten!

We were one big, happy family, all ready for Christmas (and, judging by the short sleeve shirts, all this fun stuff happened before the Winter That Would Not End settled upon us.)

I have way more pictures of this day, but apparently this is as far as I got in getting them blog ready.  We did lots of the other farm activities and the kids played hard core for hours.  It really is a fun place to go.

Minus the black widow spiders, of course.

And with this post, I will officially declare the Christmas season behind us.  It’s time for spring.  (Do you hear that spring??  Come on already!)

(you may have already seen part of this on Facebook, but I had to put it on the blog for grandparents and non-facebook people, too.)

And perhaps just as funny as the dancing is Logan’s new favorite kind of music.  He keeps the radio in his room tuned to Tejano music and falls asleep every night listening to it.  I love it!