Great Weekend/Menu Monday

We had our first nice, lazy weekend in a while this past weekend. It was rejuvenating in many ways to have everyone healthy and happy and full of energy. We started off on Saturday by going down to Tyler. We went by Target to get a refill on Pattie's iron prescription. Then we went by Barnes & Noble so Jayme and the boys could spend their Christmas gifts cards. Raley and Clay got books from the "ology" series and Jayme got a book about gardening. We are hoping to put in a garden this Spring and he is studying up on the Dos and Don'ts. After the bookstore I ran into Einstein Brothers and grabbed a baker's dozen box of bagels. LOVE THEM!! I got cranberry, blueberry, great grains, whole wheat, potato, pumpernickel and chocolate chip. Raley and I are the only real bagel eaters in the family which works for me just fine. I also ran into Michael's and SCORED!!! All I went in for was some more candy melts to make more chocolate pretzels. They happened to be one sale so I got vanilla, chocolate, dark chocolate, peanut butter and dark chocolate mint. Can't wait to use them. We are going to dip pretzels and mini candy canes...yummy! While I was looking around I was thinking about how I have no calendar in the kitchen for my menu. I saw on the $1 bins a paper notebook/mousepad that had the days of the week with room for writing on it. I thought it would work so I grabbed one and then noticed in the next bin were some.......magnet notepads for posting a menu in your kitchen LOL! The only problem was choosing which design I liked best and in the end I bought 4 different ones. So cute!

Saturday night was the much anticipated Sweetheart Ball for me and Clay. His school does this every year near Valentine's Day. There is a time for Dads and daughters, then it's time for Moms and sons. I went with Raley when he was in Kindergarten and it was just like I remembered. The gym was all decorated with lights and a disco ball. They played slow songs and fast ones. They had taught the kids dance moves during PE/Music for the last month or so. They had cookies and punch in the cafeteria and a photographer to take our pictures too. Clay danced with his teacher and all the other teachers ran over and took pictures and told me how sweet he is. It definitely made me feel good about my sweet little guy.

Sunday was a bit warmer than Saturday had been and the sun was shining so brightly we decided to go to church. Now, we are not a church-going family so what we mean by that is we put on our hiking shoes and went to Tyler State Park to walk around the lake. It is a time for us to laugh and play and see the beautiful world God has created for us to enjoy. We highly prefer this to going and sitting in a hard pew listening to some one's interpretation of the scripture. After we finished our circuit of the lake, the kids played on the newly built playground. It was great to see our crazy little clones running and playing with each other and Pattie was right in the middle of it!


I had planned a nice dinner (for the grown ups at least since my boys won't eat it) of Taco Soup but when it came time to cook I just didn't feel like it anymore. I had made some of MommyDaisy's pumpkin cookies and they were so good! But I did feed the boys...crescent wrapped hot dogs. Not the best dinner ever, but they really like them. Even Jayme liked them, so that worked out well for me too.

This morning (I count Monday as part of the weekend because Jayme is off on Mondays) was our visit to an ENT with Pattie. As suspected, she needs tubes in her ears. We have been recycling the same ear infection since mid-December and she still has a lot of fluid in both ears. She goes in next Tuesday and hopefully all will go well and we won't run into any problems or complications. Jayme's Mom will come up to help get the boys off to school that morning if we need to be at the doctor's office too early to do it ourselves. We are excited for her to finally have that opportunity now that she is retired.

I figured I would go ahead and post our menu for the week as well today since it's a Monday kind of thing. I plan our menu from Friday to Thursday so we have had a couple of these already:
Friday: Breakfast (now that our chickens are laying again, the fresh eggs are irresistible)
Saturday: Fish Stick tacos
Sunday: Taco soup was planned, crescent wrapped hot dogs were eaten
Monday: Ravioli Lasagna (new recipe, I'll let you know)
Tuesday: Hoppin John
Wednesday: Breakfast (again...the eggs!!)
Thursday: Chicken and mac