Kids Archives - Page 9 of 10 - My Suburban Kitchen

I keep forgetting…

June 30, 2011 By Shannah Leave a Comment

We have a little problem in our house. It’s called forgetfulness. A day doesn’t go by that you don’t hear me say: “Where in the world did I put my phone?” or “I had something to tell you but I completely forgot what it was!” I’ve even been known to forget my ATM in card in the ATM on occasion.

While it can be a real pain, it isn’t a big deal in the scheme of things, right? Yeah, try forgetting the stroller and diaper bag when you are heading out with a 3.5 year old and 10 month old and not realizing it until you get to your end destination. Guilty. Or how about heading out anywhere with a 10 month old and no diapers, food or milk! Guilty.

In an effort to solve this problem and help everyone in our house (particularly baby E who always seems to bear the brunt of this forgetfulness…no I have never forgotten him!), I took the advice of a good friend of mine and found something that serves as a safety net: the car bag! Sounds fancy, right? It was until Mathlete deemed my original fabric choice too girly. Hoping it would actually stay in the car where it belongs, I conceded and went with his color choice. Now, it is a just a plain jane black Thirty-One Organizing Tote.

[Thirty One Gifts]

While it’s color isn’t much to talk about, it contains pretty much anything I can think of for going out with Baby E (minus the stroller because it wouldn’t fit!). Things like diapers, formula, changes of clothes…heck, it even sports toilet seat covers for H to use when we are out and about! Oh, and of importance to the parental units…Tylenol!

Sure, I still forget to the feed the dog sometimes and my cell phone has spent its fair share of time in the freezer but my child will never have to ride home sitting on a plastic bag in his car seat because I have no diapers to switch out his soaking wet one with again (sadly, a true story).

Do you keep an emergency bag in your car? Forgetful like us…any tips for keeping things straight (and your kids dry!) with two kids?

Beach, Beach Baby – Part III

June 17, 2011 By Shannah Leave a Comment

Wednesday brought a new adventure and we planned to go to the Bodie Island Lighthouse in the morning. It was a pretty short drive out and there was a lot of cool stuff to see once we got there.

My parents were coming to visit for the day and arrived shortly after we returned from the lighthouse. H quickly whisked them off to the beach for some fun while baby E took his nap.

After lunch, it was pool time for almost everyone. Baby E floated around while Hailey jumped into the pool about a thousand times. After she got tired of jumping, she grabbed one of the baby floats and floated around.

Dinner was something I had been dreaming of since day 1: crab legs and shrimp

We grabbed some ice cream with my parents before saying goodbye. Then, it was bedtime for the kiddos and Sangria for the adults!

Thursday morning we headed out to the Aquarium (do you see a pattern here…morning outing + afternoon beach/pool time?). H, E, and C all loved seeing the different fish. We even settled down for a little while to watch the divers in the shark tank.

The afternoon brought more beach and pool time. S and I snuck off for some thrift store shopping too where we scored a couple of awesome finds. I will share those later though.

Dinner was steak and wine for the adults followed by date night for the M family. They played mini-golf too and S has a pirate tattoo she is sporting as “punishment” for her loss. The tattoo for my punishment “mysteriously” went missing before I was able to apply it.

Since we were leaving on Saturday morning (early!), we didn’t plan any outings for Friday. Instead, we spent the day enjoying the pool and beach. We also packed up most of our stuff so that we could load the cars during afternoon nap time. Oh, we probably went to the grocery store too.

Although, there were a few non-nappers who were put in time out for not obeying the rules of quiet time.

We finished out our week with some watermelon martinis and a late night pizza order from the hot tub! We were too lazy to wash the glasses so we went with a good ole Solo cup for the martinis.

Saturday sent us on our way back home to loads of unpacking and mounds of laundry.

Beach, Beach Baby – Part II

June 17, 2011 By Shannah Leave a Comment

Monday we took advantage of the pool and beach most of the day. H loved having a pool right in the backyard so she could beg her daddy to go anytime.

In the evening, we all headed down to the beach to get some pictures.

Once we got back home, S made some more drinks while the men ~~played with fire~~ started the grill.

Exhaustion took over pretty early that night and we went to bed early with plans to go the Children’s Museum the next morning. After breakfast, we all hopped in the car to head to the Children at Play Museum which opened at 9am. Upon arrival, we were quite surprised because they didn’t open until 10am and it didn’t look much like a museum (or anything we were expecting). I don’t want to sound like there was anything wrong with it but it seemed very small and more like a Gymboree Play & Learn than an actual museum. I am sure it would have been fun but we weren’t about to wait an hour for it to open. So, we headed to the Wright Brothers Memorial instead.

The hike up to the memorial is pretty long and offers no shade.

Once at the top, we caught our breath and took some pictures before our descent back down the hill.

Our afternoon (as with most) were filled with naps, pool and beach time before we cooked dinner. I am clueless on what dinner was that evening (fish I think) but I remember that we made Cranberry Moonshine lemonade for our after dinner drinks (YUM!)…just a warning, don’t eat the cranberries!

After dinner, the mathlete and I headed out for date night where he ~~killed me~~ scored slightly more than me (for the first time ever!) in mini-golf. I have a pirate tattoo I have to wear as the loser of the game.

Beach, Beach Baby

June 15, 2011 By Shannah 1 Comment

As you know from my previous post(s) (here and here), we have been on vacation for the past week. We rented a house in Nags Head for some much needed R&R. We have kids though so we didn’t get a lot of either but had a lot of fun.

Now to save your eyes and my hands, I will break this up into multiple posts and only really hit the highlights. Let’s start with out traveling companions:

We all left (in 2 cars) very early on Saturday morning and headed down south towards cooler weather. Along the way, we stopped to visit my parents, drop off the pup and have some much needed lunch!

C apparently also needed an ice pack

We also got to visit with my grandmother who spent some time with Baby E while we fixed lunch. Although, he appears to be more excited to see the ceiling fan that her. He is only 10 months after all so it is the little things in life.

Honey settled right into her normal spot under their back stairs where the sand is cool and comfy.

After filling our bellies, we hopped back into the car for the final stretch of our drive. A few back roads and 2 hours later, we were at our home for the next week.

We quickly unpacked the car (as quickly as possible considering both of our cars were packed to the brim!) This was just a part of what we had to unpack:

We settled on Sonic for dinner since it was late and we needed to get the kiddos to bed. Nothing like a limeade and some chili cheese tater tots to start a vacation off right!

The week prior to our vacation I had spent a lot of time working on a menu and shopping list for us while we were there. My goal was to make it so we only had to go to the grocery store once or twice for the whole week. I promptly left said list and menu at home which meant we went to the grocery store almost every single day we were there. Our first trip was after we put the kiddos to bed. S and I headed out to the ABC store and Harris Teeter to get supplies. We unloaded the groceries and tried our best to make things look “pretty”

Then, we crashed into our beds.

Sunday brought rain (thankfully our only rain the entire week!) so we took the time to settle into the house, go to the grocery store (again!) and hit up the fish market for some fresh fish.

Fish was on the menu for Sunday night so S whipped up a batch of mint margaritas similar to these. They were so yummy and we almost finished off the entire bottle of tequila that evening because they were so easy to drink.

After the kids went to bed, we went out and hung out by the pool/in the hot tub. Oh, and ordered a late night pizza because apparently mint margaritas cause the munchies.

Don’t Stop Playing

May 31, 2011 By Shannah 1 Comment

5.31.11

While I was working on my own project, Mathlete hubby undertook the task of putting together the play set we purchased for the kids. The interweb is filled with accounts of how putting together one of these things can take 10-12 hours with two people working on it non-stop. I was pretty worried because I knew that we wouldn’t realistically have the time to undertake a project like that unless it spanned over several days. So worried that I almost purchased the play set from one of those places that charges a lot more but will deliver and assemble the play set for you. Mathlete hubby insisted though that he could a) do it mostly on his own and b) do it in less than 10 hours.

So, we purchased the play set and it sat in our basement from February until this weekend. To be fair, we were waiting on our HOA approval before beginning the task…not just being lazy or procrastinating.

Here is what we started with

And here is daddy’s little helper (prior to daddy being rescued by our neighbors who invited H over for a play date…isn’t she charming?)

The backyard has full sun until mid-afternoon so Hubby suffered a lot more than I did for his project. By lunch time, he had made some pretty good progress.

He kept working until it was time for the barbecue. At one point, he said he was going to skip the barbecue because he was determined to finish the play set in one day! We talked him down from the proverbial play set ledge though and he joined us for the cook-out. He quickly snuck off to work some more though after we ate.

He worked until 8pm or so on it and got to the point of attaching the swings. He stopped though because the whole thing needs to be staked down for security and he didn’t want to attach the swings prior to staking it down. Here is how it looked at the end of the night.

Fast forward to this evening when he spent another 30 minutes or so on it (staking and hanging swings) and you have:

And this is where you could find H for the rest of the night.

Total time: 8.5 hours. Hubby 1, Play set 0

Re-Style My Ride

May 26, 2011 By Shannah Leave a Comment

5.26.11

Mathlete Hubby and I have been car shopping for a little while. I don’t know why I refer to it as “shopping” because it isn’t like we have been comparing vehicles and test driving all different models. We pretty much went into the process knowing only one vehicle on the market would really suit our needs which are pretty specific in nature. If there were some tool online and we plugged the following in, I’m sure it would be able to spit out about only one (maybe 2) vehicles that are currently available.

DVD player + air controls in the 2^nd row (that one is pretty easy)
Electronic rear lift gate
Rear section, behind the 3^rd row, with plenty of room for our puppy to ride
Seating for 7 (specifically a configuration for 3 car seats and 4 adults)
Ability to pull a car trailer with a car on itß(this one is the “problem” requirement)

As you were working your way through that list, you were probably thinking a mini-van/mid-sized SUV does this…until you got to #5 right? Honestly, #4 is probably a challenge for a lot of vehicles when you add that 3^rd car seat in (oh, and to clarify, the 3^rd car seat is definitely not ours…we are staying at 2!). So, why the need to pull a trailer with a car on it on such a regular basis that it dictates what kind of vehicle we will purchase? The answer:

You’ve learned a little bit about what my hobbies are by now (cooking, wine, organization, working on decorating our home, etc.). That little car is hubby’s hobby. From that picture, it probably looks like any regular Miata that you would see on the street but it really isn’t. The inside “luxury” items are gone and have been replaced by racing gear. He doesn’t get to do it as often as he’d like but Hubby uses it to run in road races at a semi-local race track. He participates often enough, though, that it only makes sense for us to have a vehicle that can easily haul people AND haul the car.

Up until now, we’ve been using our Envoy for race car duty and it works great! It doesn’t fit enough people to solve our other problem leaving us taking 2 cars whenever we go places with other couples/my parents/anyone outside of our immediate family.

Any ideas on what vehicle can replace our wonderful Envoy? Did you find that internet tool to tell you? No? Ok, I’ll just tell you now: a Suburban.

Now, before I go any further I want to address something that might bother ~~a lot of~~ some people: gas mileage and the impact on the environment. We try pretty hard to limit our impact to the environment in pretty reasonable ways (recycling, combining errands, re-using, etc.). There are LOTS of people who do a lot more than we do such as driving hybrids, biking places vs. driving, only having one vehicle, etc. Unfortunately, some of those things just aren’t practical for us as we both work outside of the house and we work in completely opposite directions. In addition, we don’t live close enough to bike or walk most places..it’s the downside of living in the ‘burbs. The Suburban does get pretty horrible gas mileage compared to many other vehicles on the road. However, we do not plan to use this as our every day vehicle. Just like we did with our Envoy, it will be a “family” car that only gets used when we are taking the entire family (or race car) somewhere. For everyday use, we tend to stick to our smaller, compact cars that get much better gas mileage. Could we do even more for our environment by not driving this or Hubby not racing? Sure, but that could be said about just about everything people do. We try to strike a reasonable balance with things of this nature (hehe..see what I did there?!) Ok, with that out of the way, I’ll move on.

After months of talking about our purchase, Hubby and I finally decided it was time. We are headed to the beach with our close friends/family soon and we wanted to be able to take one car (see…already limiting that environmental impact 😉 ). After many hours of waiting and signing paperwork, we brought home our newest addition:

It’s bigger than our Envoy so we I will definitely have an adjustment period with that but I can confirm that it fits 3 car seats and 4 adults very comfortably. Oh, and just in case one of those 3 kids or 4 adults gets cranky, there are 2 dvd players

The Iron Fist

May 23, 2011 By Shannah Leave a Comment

5.22.11

Our to-do list has a lot of projects that are focused on decorating and personalizing our house. Of course, there are some items on there that are just “must-dos” to keep the house in tip-top shape. We started tackling one of them this weekend: repainting the basement egress railing and bricks.

The exit to our backyard from the basement has bricks on each side and black iron railing. Though the house is only a few years old, that whole area looks pretty terrible. The railing is rusty and the bricks have a lot of the rust residue on them marring the pretty white paint.

I finally made it to the store a few days ago to pick up the Rustoleum and masonry paint needed for the project. Quite surprised to have been asked for ID when buying spray paint but maybe that is just showing my home improvement naiveté. With supplies gathered, I set off to start this project figuring I could get the railing piece done in 2 evenings after work…famous last words of course.

The first step was to sand the railing to remove the rust and prepare it for the paint. Mathlete hubby supplied me with some sand paper and I set my muscles to working. When the sun went down, I had made a little bit of progress but was definitely nowhere near ready to paint.

After a week of monsoon like rain, we finally got back into the project yesterday. Wanting to speed things up a little so that we had even the slightest chance of finishing, I did a little bit of research and decided to buy a new tool:

The brush was just more efficient at cleaning off the rust so I was able to ~~speed~~ move along a little faster. I was no match for Mathlete Hubby with the wire brush tool though. He had one entire side done in the time it took me to unload the dishwasher (we were switching off time with Baby E).

Baby E was busying himself with his new pastime – straddling the air conditioner vent so the air will blow his hair around.

Baby E went down for his nap so I headed outside to start the painting on the sanded side. We chose the spray paint version versus the brush on version strictly in the interest of saving time. I was pretty efficient until I ran out of paint forcing me to go to Home Depot looking quite possibly the worst I have ever looked when out in public! I picked up some brush on Rustoleum while I was there too for touch-ups and the lower railings.

While Baby E took his second nap, I took H up for a little moon-bounce fun to stay out of Hubby’s hair so he could finish sanding and painting the railings.

Next up was painting the bricks with the masonry paint. I volunteered to start this part of the project so Hubby could ~~take a break~~ play with the kids. So, with my gigantic roller I set to work.

Rolling on the paint wasn’t quite as easy as I imagined as the roller quickly became filled with paint and got HEAVY! I was making good progress though when I switched off to cook dinner for our family Sunday dinner.

It took us until 9pm (including stops for lunch, a small rain shower and dinner) but we finally finished it.

Snakes On a Plane…or just at a Picnic

May 22, 2011 By Shannah 1 Comment

5.21.11

This little blog ,which was meant to be mostly about our housing projects, has turned into mostly about anything but a housing project! I promise that we have actually been doing stuff around the house and will share more on that stuff later.

Saturday, though, was a non-house related fun day! We are part of an awesome dinner club made up of a few families from H’s pre-school class. Each month a host sets a date, picks a theme and we all provide courses that match their main course. This month’s theme was a vineyard picnic and the weather was perfect for it! We all met at Quattro Goombas Winery.

After getting the kids settled with blankets, toys and juice boxes, the adults got down to the real reason we were all there…food and wine! First up was the appetizer course which was cheese and charcuterie.

I love Humboldt Fog cheese so I was excited to see it on the cheese board. Yum!

We had the salad course so I made a trio of salads: Succotash Salad, Orzo Salad (minus the chicken) and Asian Slaw Salad.

Before we could get there though, we were ~~interrupted~~ visited by a friendly (terrifying!) snake. Someone was definitely not.a.fan!

The men chased away the snake so we could get back to our picnic. After her courtesy piggy back over to the table, we handed over two glasses to help calm N’s nerves! She shared with her husband 🙂

Our lovely hosts, L and C, had provided the main course: several different types of gourmet sandwiches. And, so everyone knew what the choices were, L made great name tags for all of them.

The side dish was a pasta salad which was so delicious! Baby E loves corkscrew pasta so he really liked N’s choice of side dishes.

Dessert was ~~wine slushies~~ bundt cake which I sadly didn’t get a picture of because I think I had enjoyed one too many of these (cue all the dinner club members shaking their heads at my epic failure of a menu recap!):

The parents talked and ate while the kids enjoyed the beautiful scenery and grounds.

If you live in the area, I definitely recommend you stop by! We didn’t taste any of their wines that day so we’ll be going back but the atmosphere (and wine slushies) was great. It also didn’t hurt that the company was fantastic too!

Next month: Barbecue theme with M+J

To-Don’t List?

May 16, 2011 By Shannah Leave a Comment

I must have jinxed myself by putting up my to-do list because I haven’t had to time to really work on anything from it. We’ve got one project in the works but keep getting hampered by the constant raining. It doesn’t look like it will get any better until Saturday…

By then, it will probably take another week to mow our lawn because it is likely to look like this:

Even though I haven’t tackled ~~any~~ much of the to-do, I have been really busy. Our neighborhood had a community yard sale this weekend and we participated. I love the feeling of purging our house of unwanted/underused items. It was cold and drizzly that day too but we stuck it out and managed to sell a good bit of the items we had out there. What we didn’t sell went straight to Goodwill.

Sunday, we had back to back birthday parties. One was for a good friend’s one year old little girl. The other was a four year old’s Princess tea party. The tea party was so fun that I only managed to snap one quick picture of the table.

Lots of fun but not very productive!

The Butterfly Effect

May 12, 2011 By Shannah Leave a Comment

5.12.11

A lot has been happening around our recently with grandparents visiting for long periods of time (an awesome help to mom and dad!). My mom is a big gift giver to the kids and likes to get them little things to play with. Butterflies (or their larvae) came with her for her last visit. Wanting to do a special and fun project with H, my mom bought the Insect Lore Live Butterfly Garden

The kit comes with just about everything you need to “grow” 10 butterflies. It takes about 4 weeks or so to complete all the steps. It was exciting to see H so interested in it…especially for Mathlete Hubby who is really into scientific stuff. She would come home each day and run over to see what was happening. Once the butterflies emerge from the cocoons, you feed them orange slices or sugar water until their wings are strong enough to fly.

The butterflies will sit in the netting with their wings together, vibrating, for a few days. This is how they prepare their wings for flying.

Last night, all of our butterflies were ready to fly so we had a small butterfly release “party” with our neighbors, ages 4 and 7. Someone was very excited about the butterflies…

H did the honors of unzipping the container to release the butterflies.

We stayed out for awhile watching all of the butterflies fly away. Then, the kids got antsy so we decided to celebrate our butterfly success with cookies! (Don’t worry…we cooked these first!)

Tomorrow it is back to the to-do list…

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