MOPS

Due to weather conditions, the MOPS meeting for 2/5 has been canceled.

Thought I would give you a new breakfast idea. We loved this one. It came from a cookbook my mother-in-law gave me this Christmas. It is called, Taste of Home HOLIDAY get-togethers: 549 Festive Recipes to share with Friends and Family.
If you someone who loves getting new cookbooks I would put this one on a wish list somewhere. ;0) Okay, here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
3 cups frozen loose-pack shredded hash browns, thawed
1/3 cup butter, melted
1 cup diced fully cooked ham
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 cup diced green pepper
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper

Instructions:
1. Press hash browns between paper towel to remove excess moisture.
2. Press into the bottom and up the sides of an ungreased 9-inch pie plate. Drizzle with butter. Bake at 425 degrees for 25 minutes.3. Combine the ham, cheese, and green pepper; spoon over the crust. (nice little head shot of my son here...he thinks he has to help me cook everything. At 2 and a half, I have not trusted him to measure yet, but stirring is more his thing.)4. In a small bowl, beat eggs, milk, salt and pepper.
5. Pour over all. 6. Reduce heat to 350 degrees; bake for 25-35 minutes or until knife insert near the center comes out clean. (hint: If the eggs jiggles when you go to move the dish, it is not done.) Allow to stand for 10 minutes before cutting.

Yield: 6 servings, but for my family it was more like 4 servings. :)

Click here to print this recipe.

My dear friend gave me a copy of her grocery list that she prints off and uses each week to mark off what groceries she needs to buy. I loved it! I thought you might to. Click here to read more and print off a copy for yourself.

Dear Walters Wife,
Last evening I heard my children in the playroom. They were playing house and I was not happy with what I heard. My daughter was playing the Mommy and she kept raising her voice and getting angry. I'm afraid it sounded pretty familiar to me. Now I don't know how to take back what they have heard. Is it too late to turn my behavior around so they don't pick up this bad habit. Hearing it was like nails on a chalkboard.

Dear Chalkboard Mom,
My dear, every Mother can feel the challenge of raising children and loose it sometimes. I got into the habit of counting to 10 silently before I said anything in anger. Of course it isn't easy, but it is a choice we make. Little ones are like sponges, they absorb everything that touches them. Be cautious with words and the tone you use. Use a firm, yet soft tone and you will be much happier with what you hear when it is played back during their "roll playing".
It is never too late to correct a wrong. It lets your children know that we all make mistakes, that even big people make poor choices sometimes. We learn from them and strive to not repeat them again.

Are you doing anything this Saturday? Are you aware that it is Valentine's Day? :)

Some ideas you can do for/ with your children or for your huband:

Scratch off:
Make a personalized scratch and win card for them. Take a heavy piece of paper and draw hearts on it. Using a permanent marker, write something you will do as a prize in each heart. Color over the top of each heart with red crayon until the crayon is really thick and you can't see the words anymore. The rules are, only one out of three hearts can be scratched.

Love Pillow
Take a light solid colored pillowcase (you probably have one in the closet) and on one end write or sew special messages like, "Sweet Dreams", "True Love" or "I love you". Use your computer to print pictures of you both on iron transfer paper. Then iron the transfer pictures in the center of the pillowcase.

I love you bows.
This valentine gift idea takes a little planning but is a lot of fun. Give your valentine a card that says, "Whenever you see a pink (lavender, red, whatever color you like) ribbon, remember how much I love you." Put the first bow on their car, backpack or bike. Then drive or walk along the route to your lover's school or work and tie big bows on each tree, stop sign, bridge overpass, snowman, etc. Be sure to remove them later!

I found these ideas on UniqueHolidayGiftIdeas.com

Have fun this Saturday! For a breakfast, and a couple of dessert ideas you can also go here.

KNOW THAT YOU ARE LOVED THIS VALENTINE'S DAY!!! We love our MOPS MOMS!! We cannot wait until the weather cooperates and we can all be together again!

One of our very own MOPS mommies decided it was time to take action and start scheduling some play dates so we can get together more often! I hope you are as excited about that as I am. We have a great group, and it's always so much fun when we can come together. Be sure to be at our next meeting on the third Thursday in February so you can hear more details.

I will be doing this one for my husband on Saturday. He is a big breakfast kind of guy.
Here it is:

Ingredients:
Bread
Egg
Butter or butter spray
Salt and pepper to taste

Cut out a shape of a heart into your bread slice.

Heat a frying pan and spray with butter spray, or melt a little butter onto pan.
Place bread onto the pan and crack egg into the heart of the bread.
Allow the egg to set on the one side before turning to cook the other side.
Salt and pepper to your liking.

I served mine with salsa, because I love salsa. If doing this one as a Valentine's Breakfast consider serving it with bacon or sausage.

This week's entry is kind of meant to be a joke, but kind of not. We just did a Birthday party for my son who is a big 3 year old boy now. I wanted to throw him a real party with his real friends because this will be the first year that he will be absolutely thrilled about his birthday. (he was singing happy birthday to himself all day long) I thought about how they corral and entertain big groups of three year olds all the time at MOPS and at church. If they can do it I can too, thought. But no, I can't. They are saints and we all should thank those that take care of our itty bittys regularly. Okay, so here's my
TOP TEN THINGS I LEARNED FROM MY SON'S THREE YEAR OLD BIRTHDAY PARTY:

10. Keep It Simple Stupid. (KISS)
If you are throwing a one hour party, don't plan for like two months over the thing. Have a couple of things to make for cute pictures, and then remind yourself that when it's all over you will be glad you kept it simple.

9. For a three year old party, you might not need two whole hours. :) I read somewhere that two hours was a good amount of time for a party for kids this age. I had a couple of games prepared. I thought to myself, these should take a little while. For whatever reason, I imagined havoc everywhere that would make each activity take a half hour, but really we breezed through each thing in 5-10 minutes. I was done with our games and we still had a whole hour left. (It worked out okay, because some parents stayed and they did not mind leaving early, but ONE hour is probably a better idea if you are going to keep them all entertained in your house on a winter day)

8. Don't open the presents with the kids ANYWHERE near the birthday boy or girl. :) Preschoolers want the gifts they see being opened and lack the self control to hold back from ripping it out of the hands of the birthday person. I had the great idea to let them little ones play with the toys, thinking it was another opportunity to enforce that we share our toys. It was ALL over after that. If you are brave enough to try such a thing, make it the last thing you do. (but if they are three or younger, I don't advise it at all)

7. Remember to give out the grab bags at the end- not in the middle of the party. I mean, really, what was I thinking?

6. Don't play "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar" with a group of two-three year olds. My son looked at me like he was going to start crying, and said, "NO! I didn't!!" He would not play along and he did not want to accuse any of his friends of stealing the cookies either. (of course, what did I expect) The almost four year olds, on the other hand, understood that it was a game. I suppose I should be proud of his integrity.

5. Get one of those cake things from Michael's that has the design already done for you so all you have to do is decided what color frosting goes where. Or just buy it already made. I am not even going to go into details as to why my simple train cake idea took me all morning to frost. I finally finished frosting the cake and I asked Preston, "do you know what it is" and he smiled and said, "CARS with wheels!" And he loved it. :)

4. Let your kid help. Make the decorating about your kid, not about impressing everyone once they get to the party.

3. If it gets hectic, look up at the other parents around you and smile. Then breathe out. :) It's okay, kids are kids. Just laugh. And then take excedrin later if you need it.

2. A three year old loves it all anyway. You can totally mess everything up! You could have a train cake that looks like a pile of blocks and your kids loves you still and loves that he/she gets a cake! All those little details that you thought ruined the party did not actually ruin the party and your child LOVED IT!! That is the beauty of a three year old.

1. Don't be in the first trimester of a pregnancy when you throw your party, and if you are, lean on friends for help. Headaches and morning sickness are bound to strike on that day. The good news is that my strength comes from the Lord...and a few great friends. Thank you dear friends.

Walgreens: 20 free 4x6 photo prints--Friday, February 20, 2009 only

TODAY ONLY!!!

Walgreens.com is offering 20 free 4x6 photo prints (Friday, February 20, 2009) when you enter coupon code ONEDAY at checkout. Be sure to request to pick these up in-store so that you will also receive free shipping.

Go to walgreens.com to upload pictures and order your 20 free!

Ingredients:
2 cans of tuna
Mayo
green olives, black olives, or you could even cut grapes in half.
hot dog buns
pretzel sticks
a few round tortilla chips (if doing the butterfly)

Instructions:
1. Drain tuna and add about 1/8 cup mayo for every can of tuna used. (1/4 cup mayo if you are using two cans like I ended up doing. 2 cans made 5 sandwiches nicely)
2. Lay hot dog buns flat side up and spread tuna mixture over bottom halves of hot dog buns.
3. Shred cheddar cheese over the tuna.
4. Cook in a 350 degree oven for approx. 10 minutes or until cheese is melted and buns slightly toasted.
5. Put buns tops on and decorate, turning into a butterfly or a spider, depending on what kind of child God has blessed you with. ;) Preston gets a spider and watches me eat my butterfly.

Download and print a copy of this recipe here.

My son loves all the shows on PBS. I usually do too. Although, if we are being totally honest, (which is always a fun thing to be) I can really really REALLY do without Sid the Science Kid. At any rate, PBS is always throwing out the idea to the kiddos to jump on PBSKIDS.ORG. From time to time, I get on the computer with my son and do some of the activities with him. I have found that many of them require decent use of the mouse, which he has yet to master. For that reason, I usually end up helping with each step. Yesterday we played Word World's dog game and Preston laughed out loud every time as the dog would leap into the pile of letters. There are several downloadable coloring pages that I print every now and then as well.

Here's one for you if your child is too young to handle the mouse and you want them to feel like they are doing the game on their own.
Fisherprice.com
Click on Fun & Family Time (on the sidebar)
Click on Fun and Games, Online!
Click Infant, Toddler, or Preschool (I do infant for Keely, who is not quite one year old and toddler for Preston)

Fisherprice.com is great, because it has games where the preschooler, toddler, or baby can actually hit any key and something will happen, so the child does not have to really understand anything in particular to feel like they are in control of the game.
Preston (three years old) likes the top three that pop up: Count the Score, The ABCs Zoo, and The Musical Instrument Game.
Keely likes the Peek-A-Boo Games

Okay, now it's your turn. Are there any websites that you get on and play with your children? Leave us a comment and share with the other mommas. I would love to hear of some others out there that are toddler friendly, if you know of any. I am aware that several moms reading this are saying, "NO! My kid is NOT going to touch the computer!" I know that because I used to feel that way. As with all things in parenting, boundaries must be set. :) It can be fun! If you try it out for the first time, let us know how it goes.

You know when you start a recipe and you are half way through the recipe when you realize that you don't have one major ingredient that you ALWAYS have on hand...like sugar or something like that? Well, I have a list for you. It is a resource for you. It is a list of common foods you might need for a recipe, and things you can use to substitute that ingredient. Hope this is helpful to some of you mommas out there.

Click here to download, or print a list of substitutions you can use in your own kitchen.