Precious times with Grandma and Grandpa

Grandparents have always been an important part of our family.  The other day we were blessed with the opportunity for my sister and I to make a trip up to Casa Grande to visit my Grandma and Grandpa and bring them dinner.  We always have such a great time with them just hanging and enjoying wonderful memories.  It was so fun to watch Mr. Cooper with Grandpa as they played trains together.  Those are memories that I will never forget.  Grandpa just sat there for about 5 minutes and him and Cooper pushed Thomas the Train back and forth to each other.  It was so cute to watch.  Thanks Grandma and Grandpa for letting us come and visit we had a wonderful time and we love you both so much.  You are both so special to us and we love all the memories we are able to make with you both!!!

a peachy keen recipe

I had a super sweet Pampered Chef girl that gave me like 10 pounds of peaches.  I was so excited to make some yummy peach recipes. They all turned out so super yummy.  So if you have lots of peaches try this recipes it is delicious. 

Vanilla Peach Syrup (From a Great friend of mine, Christie McMillian)

5 cups peach puree (peel and puree in blender)

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 tsp lemon juice

2 tsp vanilla

Combine the peach puree, sugar and lemon juice in a pot. Bring to a boil then turn down heat and simmer for 5 minutes (it will come to a boil pretty fast). Then add the vanilla. Stir and serve! If you are like me and don't like your syrup so sweet only add one cup of sugar.

*To get the skins off easy, get a pot of boiling water and a bowl of ice water.  Put peaches into boiling water for like 45 seconds and then put directly into ice water.  After the ice water remove them and the skin will come right off. 

Milk bubbles

Sometimes watching my kids play and hang with each other just makes me miss being young again.  The other day they wanted chocolate chip and bananas pancakes (Mickey mouse of course) and chocolate milk for breakfast.  I hemmed and hawed for a bit and said okay what the heck.  So they helped me mixed the pancakes up, add the chocolate chips (one to the batter and one to the mouth), and then flip them onto the plates.  As they were eating I was finishing up making the rest of the pancakes just listening to them and smiling.  I almost got upset at them, but decided to just sit back and relax.  They were blowing chocolate milk bubbles with their straws and seeing if they could get it to overflow.  I remembered doing that with my sister and loving every minute of it.  We had some great memories growing up and I hope my kids have just as many wonderful memories as I do.  I love seeing them smile and enjoying life as if they don’t have a care in the world. 

Whip em’ whip em’ good

Today I just wanted to turn on that old 80’s song by Devo “Whip It” I know you know the song.  Doesn’t it just make you want to get up and dance.  I did since I got my kids to do house cleaning without having to do anything drastic.

My friend Sarah introduced me to a website called Goal For It.  This is a great site.  You can go there and make a chore chart and the kids get Moolah buck and earn rewards for doing chores.  It is way easy to do and my kids were so excited to do chores today when I told them about it.  They were zooming around the house doing anything they could; emptying out trash cans, making their beds, cleaning their rooms and best of all folding, hanging up and putting away ALL their laundry.  Can you believe and they were happy to do it.  I didn’t even have to yell or anything.  They did it with a smile and Brielle even went into Cooper’s room and helped him finish.  It was a beautiful thing. 

So if you’re looking for something to get your kids motivated to start doing some chores around the house without grumbling give this website a try.  Thanks Doyle you are a lifesaver. 

Look out girls here he comes

My handsome little devil started preschool on Friday.  He was so excited he could hardly contain himself.  He was ready to go backpack and all.  So we got our pictures and headed out to First Presbyterian (where Brielle also went to Preschool) for Cooper to show them what he’s made of.  He ran right in and said hi to his teachers’ Mrs. Erica and Mrs. Kathy like he owned the place.  I have to admit I was nervous at first that maybe my shy guy would come back wanting mommy, but he didn’t he was ready for me to leave.  Then I went from nervous to sad.  My little guy is getting to be BIG!!!  I left and he did wonderful.  When I picked him up they said he was wonderful and did a great job of paying attention.  Way to go Cooper, you’re the best.