Eyeball Taco Salad

This was our dinner last night. It's just a basic taco salad with an eyeball twist! Layer your chips, beans, taco meat, cheeses, onions, & then lettuce. Then on top of the lettuce put 1/2 of a tomato slice as the eye socket for each eye. On each tomato do a scoop of sour cream for the white of the eye & then an olive for the pupil. My girls LOVED this. I love October. I'm getting a kick out of these dinners.

(I got most of my ideas off of the taste of home website)

Curious George (I mean Curious Taya)

Taya is just always getting into trouble because of her curiosity. The little imp wanted to see what happened when she put her baby carrier over her head. Well, it got stuck & it took a while to get it off. Poor baby was screaming from both fear & pain. Poor thing. But mommy eventually got it off & her head was still intact.

Pumpkin Brains

So I made pumpkin brains for the kids the other night. They all had fun with this one.

First you get an orange bell pepper & take all the insides out. Keep the top though so you can put it on top of your brains. Then CARVE your pepper with a jack-o-lantern face just like you would a pumpkin. Each of the kids' "pumpkins" were different. It was fun carving them with their different "Personalities."

Then you cook some spaghetti any way you like it & fill your pepper pumpkin overflowing with the BRAINS! Put the lid on top & you've got yourself one FRIGHTFUL dinner that the kids will love! Plus you get them to eat a pepper!! VEGGIES!! Anything to make VEGGIES fun right?

Homemade Pumpkin Hot Pockets

Here's what I made for dinner tonight! Homemade Pumpkin Hot Pockets. I got it off the taste of home website if you want to look it up. It's super easy & tastes great. And the kids like that it's a pumpkin.

Just get refrigerated pie crusts & cut out pumpkins with pumpkin cookie cutters. Put a layer of honey mustard on the top of half of the pumpkins. Add lunch meat, green onion on top of the mustard.

Add shredded swiss & monterey jack cheeses on top of that. Then put the other pumpkin cut outs on top & seal it with a pastry cutter.

Take 2 egg yolks & add some red food coloring & paint it on to make your pumpkin's orange. Then take one egg yolk & add green & paint the stems.

Bake for 20 minutes & you've got a fun Halloween dinner! Enjoy!

Big Boy

Like I mentioned before, Bladen is now in 9-12 month clothes because he's such a big boy. Here's another ADORABLE outfit I found in the 9-12 month stash. Can this kid get any cuter?

Lunch with Cadence

Occasionally I take Taya & Bladen to Cadence's school at lunchtime so we can each lunch with her & her class. Cadence LOVES it. So does Taya. Taya idolizes Cadence & she loves to eat, so to her it's the best of both worlds. Every morning when we get ready for the day, Taya grabs her Wall-e lunchbox & brings it to me. Most of the time I have to tell her no, which makes her sad, but every now & again I can find the time to make the trip to the school so I get to tell her YES! So Friday morning when Taya brought me her "box" (that's what she calls it), I took it from her & said "What would you like today?" She started jumping up & down excitedly with a huge smile on her little face. "Sandwich!" So I added the sandwich. "Juice!" I didn't have juice box, but I put a box of chocolate milk inside. "Nack" which means snack. I pulled out the snack bowl & she picked out a nutragrain bar. "Grape" so I added some grapes. I zipped it up & we put it on the table until it was time to go.

We met Cadence in her classroom & walked with her to the lunch room. I love eating with her. I love talking to her teacher & to her classmates. And I just love to be there to listen about her day & snuggle up to her. Taya loves it too. We really need to do it more often.

Off to the wedding. . .

My friends got married this week & they invited me to the actual wedding ceremony. It was here at the German courthouse in Speicher. So I got to take Bladen & Taya with me. Bladen is growing right now & so I just had to get out the 9-12 month sized clothes & found this suit coat in it. It's obviously a little big still, but I had to get a couple pictures anyway because he's so stinkin' cute. He'll grow into it.

Taya's Pals

Taya is a stinker. She HAS to sleep with her 3 B's: her bunny (heaven forbid we ever lose that bunny), her baby, & her bear. She can hardly hold all three of them, but boy does she wail if she doesn't have all three in her arms when she goes to sleep.

"Mummy" Made It!

So for all of October, I try to make fun Halloween themed food for dinner. I'm trying to take pictures of it so I can post it on here, but I keep forgetting. But here is my "MUMMY" dinner.

All you do it take a pork loin (the long kind) & a ton of croissant dough. Season the pork loin to your liking & then wrap it in strips of the croissant dough until it looks like a mummy's body. Then I cut an apple into a head shape & wrapped it with the dough as well & placed it at the top for a head. Then you bake it for about 45 minutes & voila! You have a mummy for dinner!

Fruit Loop Tree

I've started taking Taya to a group on base called Creative Critters. It's for the little kids who don't go to school & it is a blast. Each time you make a craft, eat a snack, have some kind of a activity (song time, story time, etc.), & then play in the gym until it's time to go. Taya loves it.

For the craft this week we did leaf rubbing with crayons. . .Taya just colored on paper. She didn't have the patience for the rubbing. And then we made fruit loop sand trees. She LOVED this. Mommy drew a tree on a paper & then outlined it in glue. Taya crushed up fruit loops into sand & sprinkled it all over the glue. When it dried, it was in the tree shape. She thought that was SO COOL! She was very proud of her creation.

Then we ate fruit loops, sang songs, & played with balls in the gym. It was a ton of fun. We'll definitely be going back for the next one.