peep this!

Who loves peeps?!! If you do, this is a great project for Easter. It is from
one of my favorite craft blogs called MADE. You can see the tutorial here.
I know eating these goes against my promise of only natural, whole foods...but with this project, you don't have to eat them!

air joaquin

Basketball is definitely his love right now.

Bam!

In light of our new eating resolutions...I mean revolution... I happened to check out this cookbook at the library. It is pretty good and the recipes are super easy to make. It is great to cook with real ingredients, and I've even bought things I don't normally buy, like real ginger root. We've made five of the recipes already. Two breakfasts, one lunch, one dinner, and a dessert. The cool thing about these recipes is that they are from countries around the world, so they are all pretty different, and we learn a little about other cultures while we're eating.

Now, I cannot take pictures of food for some reason, but I thought I'd still post them.

This is a German Apple Pancake that was DELICIOUS.


And tonight we had Kung Pao Chicken...I modified it so it wasn't that spicy, but it was still good. This was not the kids' favorite, but they still ate it.

I'm very proud of them for trying new foods, and when they help prepare them, they always seem to eat more. Isabela loves to be a little cook...Joaquin is just starting to get interested in it. Even though I'm spending more time in the kitchen these days, I think it's worth it. Mealtime is exciting. I'm not sure how long I'll keep this up, but it's fun for now!

cascarones

Joaquin came home with lots of crafts from his last spanish club class. The cutest thing, and quite "eastery" were these confetti eggs, called cascarones. They are real, blown eggs...so just the shell...and filled with confetti and decorated.


A willing participant.


crack!


...and a shower of confetti! There was a lot of confetti in there!



I love Joaquin's face in this picture...enjoying his sister's reaction.


He did it to Dad, too! I think we'll have to make more of these.

revolution!

At a meeting on Monday, some friends were talking about a new show... Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution... that was on last week....about how bad school lunches are for kids and junk we eat in general. I went home and immediately watched it with Juan Pablo on the computer...and was shocked. (Gasp!) That very same day, I had sent the kids with $2 dollars to buy their lunch!!
It also impressed me that someone is actually trying to change something we've taken for granted for years.
I mean, we all known school lunches are disgusting. We ate them. And now we're letting our kids do it. There is rarely anything fresh in it, and if there is, it's not eaten. The food is taken out of freezers, been processed and full of who knows what, and is basically not nutritious. I can't believe we've accepted this for so long. Is it really that hard to serve yummy nutritious food?

So, when the show was over, I jumped out of my seat and started throwing food away...the not- good- for- you, but- tastes- good- stuff...well not all of it, but a couple of things. And I prepared myself to start making hot lunches for my kids to take with them to school in their quite expensive new thermoses we had recently bought.

The next morning, I woke up and started cooking. Cooking lunch at breakfast. I told them all about the show and about all that yucky food and that they wouldn't be eating it anymore....Isabela started crying and Joaquin began his protests. Then I told them about how some ingredients in that food are almost like eating plastic. Joaquin said it didn't taste like plastic. And I responded, "That's because it's melted." This seemed to make more sense to them. I sent them off to school that day pleased with their healthy lunch and wondering if they'd be starving when they got home.
Later that afternoon, I had to cook dinner. Cooking again! But really, what else did I have to do that day? Cruise the aisles at Target? Check Goodwill for any deals?

Did they eat the food? Yes...except for the cooked broccoli I had put in a baggie. Now doesn't that just sound gross? They actually love broccoli at home, but not after it's sat in a bag getting cold and mushy for a few hours.

Flash forward to tonight, Isabela had soccer practice. Their coach had thoughtfully provided a snack for everyone...it was a rice krispie treat. I was secretly happy they had something to eat on the ride home, since they had run around for an hour...and luckily, I had already shoveled the healthy stuff in before we left for practice.



Joaquin had taken two bites, then said, "Mom, I'm not going to eat the rest of it because it has plastic in it."
"Good for you," I said.
"Well, maybe I will.. just this one time," he says, staring at his treat.

But I think it's a good start. He knew it wasn't good to eat. We're going to keep making changes.

We're joining the revolution.

a beautiful day

It turns out I'm spontaneous. I thought I was always a huge planner, but friends have informed me that that is not so. We all know it was a beautiful day yesterday. There are so many things we could choose to do on a day like that...and we all want to fill it with wonderful memories.
We decided around noon to head down to a park in Williamsburg to have a picnic and play around.

Diego spent most of the day like this....I hope that doesn't mean he's going to be a football player.


Joaquin climbed and climbed.


Isabela swung and slid. Slid? Is that a word...as in went on the slide.


After we ate and had explored the whole park, there was still time to fill in the gorgeous day. So we headed over to Yorktown Beach to walk in the sand. Diego was in heaven. The kids, too. They poured water on the sand to make sandcastles that never materialized and saw one jellyfish.


This leaves me with two questions:

Did we fill the day with memories? Tucking Isabela into bed, I asked her what was her favorite part of the day. Her answer... reading the bedtime story.

And question number 2...
Are we spontaneous?
Perhaps.

a curious george birthday

This party was so much fun to plan...and that is always my favorite part. I think the most stressful thing for me about parties is the food...I'm not great in the kitchen...knowing how much to make, what people will like, timing when to make it. But I love doing the decorations. Here are some pictures:

The banner on the mantel says "Happy 1st Birthday Diego".


The hat was left over from a Halloween.


A fun way to do streamers, junglelike.


A year of pictures, one from each month, strung on twine to look jungly, too.



The table before the party...the tree I got in a yard sale last year...it's actually a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree with velcro letters that go up it.



The Food: Isabela helped me make monkey bread, our first time ever!! It was actually a disaster which I somehow managed to salvage. We put way too many biscuits in the pan, and they overflowed when they started cooking, spilling onto the bottom of the oven and filling the house with smoke an hour before the party. Then when they were done, I took the pan out, and only the ones on top had cooked! So I pulled out another pan and split the batch in half and cooked it all again...it did turn out yummy. We also had ham and turkey rolls, fruit salad, deviled eggs, chips, cookies, banana bread that I had made and frozen earlier in the week, and I think that was it.


The birthday boy finally woke up about an hour into the party.


The activities: we painted on a sheet...curious george always likes to do messy things. We were going to do splatter paint, but I hadn't warned the families ahead of time, so this was a better option.


Then we went on a scavenger hunt around the house. The clues were written on bananas that were hidden around the yard.


The treasure was under JP's car, Curious George's favorite color, yellow.


Our little monkey, himself, sitting with his foot up in the air.


One flop was the bubble idea...I guess they were cheap bubbles. I thought the kids could blow them around Diego and he would love it, but the bubbles wouldn't blow very well.


We played some fun games. Monkey see, monkey do. Diego was the monkey and everyone had to copy what he did. He seemed to think this was kind of funny.


Then everyone became firefighters, and George mixed up their boots then ran and hid a fake fire. Once everyone found their shoes, they had to run and put the fire out with the hose, which was a jump rope. And we had to play monkey in the middle, too, with a huge bouncy ball.


I tried to get everyone's picture behind the Curious George cut out...but the big kids got away without doing it.


Instead of cake, we had a banana split bar. Diego wasn't too sure at first....


...but he got into it. Really into it.


The favor was a jar of cookie mix...called Curious George Messy Cookies...which are supposed to be mixed by hand. We also gave away a beach ball and some little notebooks from Target that had Curious George on them.



And this was us pooped after the party.


And I must mention, we had one celebrity show up, my cousin Kate...and her man the Dan!! Thank you guys for coming out!

happy birthday, Diego!

A year has passed. What was once this...


Has become this. Happy birthday to our sweet boy.


His favorite things:
balls
music
putting things in boxes
taking dishes out of the cupboard
baths
his taggie
being outside
banging things
...oh, and eating paper. Don't leave your homework laying around at this house.

Joaquin has invented new words to go along with his little brother:
Nickname: Dieg...and Hutter (don't ask why...it somehow rhymes with brother)

and I've added some as well:
Food: Yummers
Bed: Nighters

We have enjoyed every minute of this first year with Diego. He is an absolute blessing to our family. We wish him many more years of laughter, discovery, and love.

balls!

Daddy's hopes remain alive. His passion for soccer has been passed on to Diego.


oops! Or maybe it's basketball.


...Or volleyball?


These pictures were all taken within five minutes of each other. If he could have figured out how to pick up all three balls at the same time, he would have. Our yard is scattered with balls, and he has the eagle eye for spotting them. As soon as he found one, he was on to the next.


Aren't balls the most wonderful toys for babies?