InstaFriday - Back to Work {Kind of}

Oh boy this week sure did fly!  And even though I had to work for a few days of it {training, you'll see} it was one of the best ones of the summer, which happens to also been one of the best summers I have had yet...just sayin'!

Friday we started off our day at the ortho with full intentions of getting braces on that little mouth of Kyan's, but walked out without them on!  Woohoo!  Expander is doing its magic and they were not needed at the moment!  So just six more turns on that puppy and we were off to Target to get new backpacks for school!  Lola of course ended up with a Bieber backpack and lunchbox.  Not surprising!  Filled up my tank on the way home and saved 30 cents per gallon!  I always wonder why they ask if you want to use your reward points?  I mean, who says no?  And I listed five random things about myself, after I was tagged by a friend!

 I was surprised by my little bro on Saturday morning {after I came home from Urgent Care with a prescription in hand for some sort of bacterial infection in my throat - - ewwww, couldn't swallow to save my life and had the worst cough from a tiny tickle}!  It was awesome to be able to spend the whole day with him just doing nothing really!  We went to lunch and swam and watched a movie together!  He is in training a state away and decided to surprise me for the day!  It was awesome, considering I thought I said my last goodbye to him for the next two years a few weeks ago.  WRONG!  And the best news is that he may be back here if he can sneak away one more time before he heads overseas!  Saturday was my favorite day of this week.  

 I cut and prepped several meals for the week on Sunday, as I knew I would be heading to work on Monday morning and knew I would want the bulk of it done {if I could get it done} before hand.  Lola was so excited for Beverly Hills Chihuahua to come on later in the evening, she would sit in front of the clock several times during the day and just stare at the time, willing it to be 7pm.  I was secretly hoping that too, so I could watch the Bachelorette Season Finale!  I walked in the storm, but stopped myself after 2 miles, as I wasn't sure what it was going to do {AZ monsoons are crazy and I didn't want to get stuck in one}!  I am up to 42 miles, only 3 more to go to hit 45!  While watching the Bachelorette I put together my notebook for this school year!  Just a composition notebook covered in cork paper, scrapbook paper, some sort of special tape that I found in the clearance section at JoAnn's many moons ago, and a cute little sticker!  The front, back and insides of both are decorated!  Love it more than last years and I really didn't think that was possible!

 Monday was DIBELS training!  I did it about 9 years ago, so the refresher course caught me back up and I am ready to roll.  After I picked up the kids, we went swimming and what happens after swimming you ask?  Lola massages!  She gives the best ones out there!  While catching up on shows with the hubs after the kids went to bed, I painted my nails, after seeing a post on this blog!  If you have ever wanted to learn how to get that leopard print look yourself, go check it out!  So easy!!!

 Tuesday marked Day #2 of training!  This round was Fundations.  Ummmmm, I never knew how many ways you could say the letter u and all the rules for it!  Holy cow!  After two days of training, I still feel very overwhelmed, but only think that I will fully get it by teaching it!  So bring on those 2nd graders!!!  Grandma Donna stopped by right before dinner and brought each of the kids and myself a new book!  Lola's was extra special because the character's name is Lola and it talks about Lola's Lollipop!  She loved it!!!  I got a chance to do a little shopping for myself, by myself, Tuesday night as well {but forgot to take a picture}!

 Wednesday, after training, I went from being a blondie, to having brown hair.  With the way that I cut it, the line of blonde/brown in the back was just to stark for me so I went with what I am naturally {hard to believe I am that dark I know}!  Slowly adjusting to the new look!

 Thursday I put together a few banners for school.  I am going with a birdie theme and there is NOT a lot of stuff out there online, so I am creating my own!  The two banners that I made say, "Best of the Nest" {in lieu of Star Student} and "Something to Tweet About" {this is hanging over their best work}!  I have a baby shower on Saturday, so nothing like making receiving blankets last second!  I bought the fabric but didn't get a chance to start on them, so I will have to squeeze it in at some point before Saturday afternoon!  Hope she likes the fabric I picked out!  For dinner we tried out a new recipe and all I can say is that it was so refreshing!  Ancho Chicken Tacos with Cilantro Slaw and Avocado Cream I will make you again and again!  Like, I want to lick the screen they tasted that good.  The recipe is not mine, but if you would like to make them, click here {and trust me, you would like to make them}!  We had friends over for dinner and then just decided to make it a sleepover!  It took movies having to get turned off for them to finally fall asleep, but man did they look so cute cuddled together!  Best summer ever {I know, I already said it, but it is true}!

Linking up with Jeannett over at Life Rearranged with my week full of camera photos, because let's face it, I love my phone!!!

Happy Weekend Y'all!

InstaFriday - The Final Week

Was this really my final week of summer?!  Nooooooooooooo!  Ok, actually the answer is yes!  Three days of training next week and then a few days off, before I officially report back to school for meetings before the kids come!  Can't believe how fast summer has flown, but grateful for every second I got to spend with my kids at home!

Check out what we did last week...

 Hard to tell what that picture is on the left, but if you look close you will see that I have NO incoming emails!  I cleaned out my phone, school, and personal email accounts.  It literally took me over five hours, but I was getting myself prepared for this upcoming year!  Later that evening we celebrated my friend, Meghan's birthday at her house.  It was a great party and we laughed all night long!

 Saturday we headed to a birthday party for one of Kyan's friends from school, an indoor trampoline park!  He was dripping in sweat after an hour of jumping!  Lola was stuck at home, as she had to go to the doctor {I thought she had croup, but turns out it was an ear infection - her first one since tubes almost three years ago}.  In that middle pictures, she was delivering corndogs to her brother.  Corndogs in our house go fast, as they are my kids favorite food to gobble up!  I am still walking at night and documenting my mileage!  

 Busted out the grocery list and meal planning Sunday morning.  It takes forever, but if I don't plan out the weeks dinners, we eat like crap or we eat out and I am trying to avoid that!  So, even though it isn't my most favorite thing to do, I am trying to be good about it.  I walked by myself Sunday night and the skies were so pretty, as I walked a little bit later and caught a very beautiful sunset, but I had to go pee so bad half way through my walk, I could hardly enjoy it.  It made for the most uncomfortable mileage yet!  When I came home, Lola was being turned into a little gamer girl by her daddy and brother!  Watching her play is hilarious!

 I told the kids that they couldn't play video games until their rooms were clean on Monday morning, but when they woke up they were too cute begging me to go downstairs that I honestly forgot all about it.  When I finally remembered what I told them, I called down to them, only to have them answer, "we already did!"  Yep, turns out they cleaned the rooms before they went to bed Sunday night!  Sneaky!  Spent the day crafting away with my friend Meghan.  I finished up the B Frame/Wreath for my friend Lissette {no, not in business, but worked out a deal with her and finished her front door decor}.  When I had her stuff done, I worked on my birthday bloomers planter for school {birthday pencils topped with flowers, where I will write my students name and birthday and give them their flower on that day as my gift to them} and a dry erase frame for reminders to myself!  We also worked on curtains for Meghan's son, Easton's, room and crayon rolls!  It was a long day of crafting, but we had fun and the kids played great together!

 After the fourth of July, I took down my old front door decor, as it just didn't look right anymore {I am trying to get a post up from that party sometime before school starts}.  My friend Holly has reminded me every time she has come over since, that she has never seen my door naked!  I agreed and did something about it!  This wreath was super easy.  I took a styrofoam wreath and wrapped a piece of fabric around it and then added some flowers to it with hot glue!  Simple, but very pretty!  Later that night I walked using the new Camelbak my brother sent me!  It worked so much better than the one I purchased a few weeks ago, no leaking during my walks!  Thanks brother!!!

 With two full days of crafting under my belt, we laid low on Wednesday and just swam.  Lola tries to avoid her naps by bribing me to brush my hair.  It works every single time!  Later that night headed to Old Navy for some back to school clothes shopping and found those basic flat gems above on the right?!  $4.49 for three of the four and $3.87 for the last pair.  But that is not all folks, I had a 20% coupon!  I needed all four, duh!  If they would have had more colors in my size, trust me, they would have went home too!

 A few of the pairs of pants I got on Wednesday were a little too long, but oh so comfortable, so I spent the morning hemming them, and turning some old pants that didn't fit quite right anymore, into capris!  I think I am set for pants for the beginning of the year!  Now onto the top half of my body!  Lola thought it would be fun to watch TV upside down!  Then she proceeded to flip backwards about 500 times while I made dinner!  Tried out a new recipe to go with an old one; zucchini parmesan chips, they were pretty tasty and I cooked for the first time using Panko!  If you want to try them, click here.  I got the recipe off of pinterest and the blackjack bake house blog!  Summer sleepover with our friend Jax!  The boys do a great job including Lola!  After dinner, we headed to coldstone for a treat and then into the tent in our front room!  We set it up so that they could watch a movie while "camping" before they went to bed!  After it was over, I zipped them up and they went to sleep!  Lola cried {she was scared} and ended up on my floor, but the boys finally fell asleep after lots and lots of whispering!

Another full week ahead {I'm jenni_roseland on Instagram, if you want to follow}!  Getting back to the grind!

Linking up with Jeannett, over at Life Rearranged, again this week, because, let's face it - I LOVE taking pictures with my iPhone!

Have a great weekend!

Supper Club - Summer {2}

A few weeks ago, we hosted Summer Supper Club at our home!

There were two very special reasons as to why this supper club was a BIG deal.  One, it marked two years of planning meals and trying new recipes together and two, it was the last supper club that we would spend together as a "team".  For those that have been following what we eat for quite some time, you know that I have worked with the other three ladies in our supper club for the past five years.  You might have also caught that some of us our moving on with our careers {as hard as it was to decide that} and we won't be teaching at the same school or grade level any more {but that deserves a post all of its own}.  But, it doesn't mean that supper club is stopping!  We will just cherish our dinners even more now that we won't be spending five days a week together!

Couples:  Chad and myself, Adam and Holly, Kristin and Abel, Angela (who is expecting baby #3 this year) and Ryan

 Ladies in the club and some of my very best friends.

Holly and I, she likes to take pictures about as much as I do and this is our signature pose - you know the one where she holds the camera out if front of us and we cheese it up!  Always turns out to be our favorite!

 A really quick reminder on how The Supper Club works, now that you know who is in it and why we have only four couples...
1. No kids.
2. The host comes up with the menu and then divides out the recipes to each of the supper club members to prepare for the party (we have four parties per year, each couple takes a season).
3. The host always provides the main dish/side dish with a variety of beverage selections.
4. Remember that it is sometimes best to semi-prepare your dishes and do last minute baking, chilling, slicing, or arranging at the home of the host.
5. Menu items should be new and adventurous.
6. Portion sizes must be small so that you have room to taste every course of the evening, so feel free to reduce recipes in half where ever you see fit.

To me, the decor is just as important as the food, but we were hosting a fourth of July party just a few days later and my family was in town so it made for a very hectic, pulled together, last second decorating!  However, I loved the pictures of supper club pasts hanging up between the windows for couples to take home at the evenings end and the simplicity of the painted mason jars and fresh flowers on the table.  The wreath that I had hanging outside on the front door was perfect too for our Caribbean theme!

 How did I do the wreath?  Easy, stuck paper umbrellas into a styrofoam wreath.  Took about an hour to do and hopefully set the mood!  I totally didn't come up with this on my own, but found the idea here!

The painted mason jars?  Easy too!  I took acrylic paint in the different colors of turquoise that I had laying around, mixed some with white to get the lighter colors, painted the inside with a paint brush and moved flipped over every few hours to try to prevent runs!  For the most part it worked pretty good and unless you were inspecting it closely, you can't really see any imperfections!  To add fresh flowers, I used paper cups on the inside of the mason jars, as the water would just wash away the paint (over time).

Ok, you know who eats, you know the rules in case you want to start your own supper club, and you know what the decor looks like for this Caribbean themed dinner, but wanna know what we had to eat?!  Thought so!  Click on the name of the the item to take you right to the recipe! 

The drink:

Laua Coconut

 Holly did such a good job decorating the coconuts with everyone's names on them instead of shaving them!  Smart idea, as we needed to keep track of which drink belonged to which person!

Appetizers:

Plantain Chips with Warm Cilantro Dipping Sauce

Caribbean Meatballs

 Salad:

Black-Eyed Pea and Pumpkin Salad

Main Dish:

Jerk Chicken and Cinnamon-Honey Glazed Sweet Potatoes

*this jerk chicken should come with a warning label!  It is HOTTTTTT!  We put in half of the habaneros that it called for and it was still really spicy!

In between dinner and dessert {as we were stuffed} we went out for a dip in the pool, always the entertainment portion of our evening as we have the pool!  Probably why we have hosted in the summer thus far! 

Dessert:

Rum Cake with Rum Raisin Ice Cream and Island Fruit

Dessert was a perfect way to end our second year together!  Always fun to try new things and get together with a special group of friends!

***If you would like to host your own Caribbean themed supper club, I do have the menu to send out saved PDF, however, I don't know how to link it up here, but I would be happy to send it out to you, just leave me your email in the comments section!

If you missed out on any of the supper clubs so far and would like to start your own or get recipe ideas, please visit the Supper Club Tab under the main picture on my blog to see what we ate!

Linking up party food/decor at some of my favorite party places!

InstaFriday - Life As Usual

While family was here last week, it kinda felt like we were on vacation too!  So with the return of everyone to their homes, we returned to life as usual or as normal as possible anyway!

 Before life went back to normal though, we did get a few more days with the family!  Chad took the day off on Friday and we headed to the water park at my parents place (the kids spent the night Thursday night and just about every other night they could)!  Lola conquered the water slide and grandpa held on to both Ava and Kyan as the big dipper splashed down!  We enjoyed dinner on the golf course together.  The kids favorite part, as always, is to play on the green (no one is golfing usually - it is the driving range/putting green section).  They were very into playing freeze tag at one point and I was able to snap a picture of all four of them frozen, before the music (me) started up again!  It was a perfect day!

 Saturday morning I headed back up to my parents to hang out with my brother and his family for a few hours before they headed to in-laws for the night.  When I got there, Lola was playing with the Barbie and horse again.  She had been glued to that thing the entire trip!  It was a very emotional goodbye when it came time to say goodbye to Joel.  Lots and lots of tears were shed and promises this time were made to stay in touch.  Miss them lots already!  To take our minds off the goodbye, we headed back into the pool, where grandpa became a mermaid, after Lola taught him just how mermaids are!  She was Ariel, he became Jeriel!  It was adorable and my dad has the most patience in the world when it comes to his grandbabies!  He would seriously do anything for them!  After our swim, it was time to get the house in order and drive my parents to the airport.  Lola went with, as Kyan and daddy headed to the Diamondbacks game together.  Lola always wants to go to the airport and every time we pull away, she starts sobbing.  It is so sad.  Usually it takes her until we are half way home to get her to stop and this time it took just about as long.  Poor thing.  When we got home, we headed out for our walk in her new jogging stroller, courtesy of grandpa!  After our walk I asked Lola what she wanted for dinner and she begged for Ah-So!  That's my girl!  Her favorite thing to do is dip the shrimp into their soup!  And she isn't bad with chop sticks either!  We snuggled on the couch until the boys got home!

 Sunday was a day of rest, with Kyan sleeping in until almost 10am!  He was catching up on all of the late nights from the week before!  We hung out by the pool and I even got some alone time out there and enjoyed my book (Have you read the Divergent Series?  I finished book two this week- there are three and the next one doesn't come out until next year, boo...but they are so good!  If you liked Hunger Games, you should read them)!  Went for a walk with one of my former students that lives in the neighborhood!  It was very nice to catch up with Emily and she hung with me the entire time and got in some online PE hours!  I got a knock-off brand Camelbak and it seemed to do the trick pretty well, but had some issues with it staying cold!  With quite a few suggestions, I think I have it figured out!

 Monday began my crafting week!  I have a lot of stuff I want to get done for my classroom, so I started on a bunch of projects, including my pencil sundail welcome wreath!  I had a few visitors run errands with me before I walked (they swore next time to bring their walking shoes and not TOMS and flip-flops)!  It was hooooooooot out, and I felt all 111 degrees.  Ewwwwwww.  When I came home, Kyan was teaching Lola how to play Crazy 8's!  It was the sweetest thing ever!

 Tuesday I was feeling the effects of the cold I got from my daughter and I skipped walking.  I probably should have tried to sweat some of it out, but I just couldn't do it.  Instead, I cooked, well, I threw some yummy stuff in the crock pot and it did it's thing, while I crafted some more!  After eating some Hawaiian BBQ Pulled Chicken (click here if you want the recipe, and trust me you want to try this, so delicious)!  Lola wanted to go for a little dip in the pool before bed, so I took it as a perfect opportunity to sneak in a few pages of reading while she swam!

 Stayed up way too late reading and got up way to early to read, but I'm telling you I got sucked in to the book.  Finished my wreath for the classroom and can't wait to put it up next week!  I got the idea from here, but put my own little touches on it (birds, leopard print ribbon, flowery thumbtack)!  I will be able to pin new messages when I want to on it, as the circle part is made of cork!  Love to watch her sleep.  She fights it almost every day, and every day she zonks out almost immediately once she stops protesting her case!  The sky was beautiful on my walk Wednesday night.  I am at 28.8/45 miles for July.  

 We spent our day on the couch Thursday, something that I haven't done at all this summer.  Sure, I lay down and take naps with Lola on occasion, but we literally were couch potatoes all day!  The kids and I watched cartoons and I painted Lola's toes (she requested flowers, polka dots, and sparkles) and my nails!  Something I will probably not have the patience for myself ever again, but I love how they turned out!  Plus, I am trying to wait to get a mani/pedi right before school starts, so going to just stick to painting my own for a little while longer!  When we finally got off the couch, we headed to Panda for dinner before we went to watch our girl Alyssa swim at her final meet of the summer!  The kids did their best to cheer loud for her, but only lasted two out of her five races!

That's our week and now we are counting down the days until I have to go back to school for training before school actually starts!  Can't believe how fast this summer has gone.  I get my keys back to my classroom on Monday and I am sure a lot of my week will be spent there getting things ready!

Linking up with Jeannett this week over at Life Rearranged, who happened to just have a baby!  Congrats on the new addition to your family!  

Do you link up your life in phone pictures each week?  Friday is my favorite day of the week, love to look back and see what we did without having to drag out the big camera anymore!

Happy Weekend!

Extended Family Pictures

 This post needs to come with a WARNING!  It is picture heavy for sure!  

While my brother's family was in town last week, I asked my sister-in-law if she would be willing to take pictures of all of us!  She agreed and we did our best to get as many pictures in as possible in an hour (there are some that won't be named that don't have a ton of patience and they aren't members of my immediate family, eh-hem....dad)!

Couldn't be happier with how they turned out!  Don't think we have ever done pictures with all of us together ever, so it was a nice treat to give my parents.

 I mean, how cute are my parents?!  Love you mom and dad.

 The four of us.  I remember being little and having these done, but never as an older child.  Do you get family pictures done every year?  If not, you should.  The one below is my favorite of the four of us.  Think it pretty much shows exactly who we are.  Thank you Rae for capturing it.

I really love my little brother.  This trip out here for them made me realize how much I really miss him.  He and his family will be going overseas for the next three years (he works for Raytheon) and while I know it is what is best for his family, I am selfish in that I want he and his family to move next door to me.  Wishful thinking, but if I had it my way, I would live next door to every single family member, mine and Chad's.  I am lucky to be blessed with such wonderful family.

I really do wish you guys the best of luck!  What an experience y'all are going to have over in Saudi Arabia.  

And a few favorites of my family! Love them.

Was a hot and sweaty shoot, but couldn't be happier with the way these turned!

Love you BIG family.