*Make sure you read the post before this one, if you haven’t already*

The thing about life with little kids is that it goes on… loss, big decisions and all, life with little kids still retains some normalcy. Know what I mean?

We got a box of goodies from our far away family on Friday. Dress up clothes for the kids and real clothes for me. It was definitely a happy thing to receive, but the kids were busy when I opened and I forgot to show it to them until Saturday…

They had a blast going through it.

Even Josie had to see what was in it for her (nothing, sorry Jos!).

We had the cowboy and the little southern belle.

On Sunday, Reed asked me for two pieces of paper– black and yellow. He colored two pictures, a sunny day and a stormy day. Now, this is what’s so funny, look closely at which is which! The stormy day is on yellow paper and the sunny day is on black paper!

We had dinner at Danae and Kyle’s on Sunday night. This has become a weekly thing. It is a nice way to end the weekend and start our week. Anyways, Danae made us quesadillas. They had all sorts of toppings and Reed wanted to try the jalapenos. Danae was like “noooooo!”, but I just warned him that they were hot and eating them might hurt. He still wanted to try them. So, I took one and cut a tiny little piece off. He ate it. Then he finished the rest of it and asked for some more! He said he liked them. They were “tamed” jalapenos and both Lena and Aaron ate them without crying, so they must not have been too hot. Still, I am surprised and impressed that he likes them!

This face doesn’t show his true reaction.

Then things just got goofy.

This is how I found them this morning when I went to wake them up. This makes me happy.

He got a muddy kiss from a dog. He didn’t care that he got it… just that I had to wash it off.

Today was a beautiful day… 67 degrees here! Aaron was home early and we all went out for a walk.

I’ll be so sad when she starts to run normally. I love her joyful hops with arms out behind her.

I needed a photo with my little silly.

And with my medium silly.

And with my big silly.

R drug this big stick across the road. Then L pulled it off to the side. This stick was HUGE, and I loved her determination to move it. ALL BY HERSELF.

Reed picked up this stick and said “Hey guys, check out my junk!” And then I said “What you gonna do with all that junk?” And then Aaron said “all that junk from a tree trunk.” If you don’t get why that’s funny, that’s probably for the best and it means you are a way classier person than us.

Battering ram!

The long lost Olsen triplet!

Cutie.

These next few pictures could be titled “My Children are Best Friends.”

Aaron got to try out the baby carrier and Lena got a ride for the last part of our walk.

Baby A ALREADY got a present. Danae made him a soft photobook that we can put our own pictures in. I love it! Thank you, again!

The bad part about blogging a photo every day is that you realize when your kid wears the same shirt two days in a row. But apparently Aaron washed it, so we’re all good.

Today was a fun day. We went to the bank this morning and got some papers notarized. Hopefully the last stuff we’ll need to get notarized for awhile, except for some paperwork to leave with Aaron’s family while we are out of the country. Hopefully the last adoption-related paperwork. Yay for that!

Danae and Kyle came over for dinner tonight and Danae brought sugar cookie dough. The plan was to roll out the dough and cut them out with cookie cutters. That didn’t go so well, so we just made them into little circles.

Trying to scoop them out.

Decorating cookies is hard work… you need to focus.

It was a lot of fun and we have a lot of colorful, yummy cookies to show for it. Thanks, Danae and Kyle!

Project 365 is turning my blog into a diary of sorts. I have found that I am taking way more photos throughout the day, to make sure that I have one with a semi-interesting story behind it to share with you. So, I am going to do a little photo dump of the last few days.

This picture is actually from Friday night, but it was so funny that I have to share. I made fajitas in the crockpot. I am a vegetarian, so I am obviously not going to eat beef and chicken fajitas. Well, the kids each got a fajita, ate it, saw that I had a bowl of cherrios and decided that they wanted one too.  I gave them new spoons with their cherrios, because the idea of mixing fajitas and cherrios sounds downright disgusting to me. Lena decided to use BOTH spoons to eat her cherrios. She may have even tried to put both spoons in her mouth at once!

Saturday was a low-key day. I had a lot that I needed to get done around the house and Aaron had to work. So, the kids got to watch a couple of movies. I thought this moment was so cute… one of our dogs climbed up on the couch between the kids. Reed moved over so he was practically laying on her. This boy loves dogs a lot and he is developing a healthy knowledge of how to act around dogs. He has come so far.

This was our dinner on Saturday night. The porkchops are nothing special… everyone said they were good, but the recipe was not extraordinary.  But, the casserole dishes. Wow! I made Broccoli Quinoa casserole for the first time earlier in the week and HAD to make it again. For the record, all of the blue pan got eaten and the other pan was dipped into, as well. That is a lot for two grown-ups and two preschoolers to eat! It is pretty healthy and it’s easy to cook extra broccoli and quinoa to make it a couple of times, which is what I did. This is a double batch, because it is really yummy the next day, too.

This happened after dinner. I think he’s being a ninja soldier? Something like that.

I had a moment of parenting genius last well. We got home from somewhere?… maybe the day we lost our key, and Reed told me he was hungry. It was late, I couldn’t come up with something easy to eat, so I asked him what he wanted. We opened up the fridge together. No ideas. Then I had a moment of parenting genius… “Who wants pizza roll-ups?!” We had leftover pizza sauce, ground beef and sausage mix we use on pizza, mozzarella cheese and a ton of tortillas. I just dumped everything in a tortilla together, folded it like a burrito and microwaved it for a minute and a half. Lena ate two, Reed ate 3. Actually, these are all my kids have eaten for lunch every day since. Reed eats 2-3. Lena eats 1-2. They are fantastic because they’re easy to make and are as healthy or unhealthy as you want them to be. Don’t tell me someone else already invented them… I don’t care.

We had dinner with Danae and Kyle tonight. It is always a great time with them. My kids love both of them. Kyle was playing hide and seek with them, and Reed ran up to Danae and asked her “Where’s your Aaron?” Then, a couple minutes later, he said “where’s your dad?”

Kyle plays with Reed and Lena… not just tolerates them or entertains them for a minute, but actually spends time with them. I think Kyle and Danae are going to be really awesome parents.

Of course, I should acknowledge that my own husband is a rockstar and took the kids out to a playground and geocaching for 5 hours today. And took the dogs out for a walk. And ran to the grocery store twice. And helped set-up/tear down for church. Love that man! Just had to make sure he didn’t feel left out.

After dinner, we played Monopoly Deal. I am grateful for friends who tolerate me when I feel the need to tell them that “Reading” in “Reading Railroad” is pronounced like “Redding”. I only know this because I grew up going to the outlet malls in Reading, Pennsylvania.

So, these cookies. You see how the one looks like a normal CCC, and the other looks like baby poop? I made regular chocolate chip cookies and mint chocolate chip cookies. Don’t make mint CCCs. Just don’t. Unless you want to gain weight. They are SO good. They taste like thin mints with the texture of chocolate chip cookies. I saw this recipe on pinterest, but dough from a tube isn’t really my thing. So, instead, I took my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe(I use this one halved) and add 1/4tsp mint extract and substitute half of the chocolate chips for mint chips. Mint chips can be a bit of a pain to find, but I made my husband go to Walmart. You can see if your Walmart has them on Walmart.com, before you make the trip. I also added green food coloring, thinking it would add to the novelty of the mint chocolate chip cookies, but I wouldn’t recommend that!

As some of you know, today was the day we thought we were going to get our court date. Unfortunately, we did not get it today and court will be a couple of weeks after we had hoped, hopefully early February. But, the reason why it’s later is because the judge wants to make sure that all of the paperwork for Helen is in order, to save us from any headaches while we’re in country. We know Helen is in great hands, so waiting a couple of extra weeks will not be too bad.

Our poor friend Danae. This girl has known us for 3 months and I treat her like my friends I’ve known for years. She and her husband helped with our dogs while we were away in November. She was also the one who found our dog sitter for us. Then, on Monday, when we had the whole runaway dog incident, I called her. She wasn’t available, but I know she would have been out there with us if she was.

And then, today, my house key disappeared. I exhausted all of the options and searched everywhere, but in the end, I had to call Danae. And she was so sweet… she made me not feel like a total dumbo for calling and bugging her. We drove over to her work and she not only gave us the key, but also Starburst. Oh, and she asked if she could give it to the kids, and not right in front of them either… major points for that!

Of course, while I talked to Danae, I forgot to tell my kids to take the wrapper off the Starburst before eating it. OOPS! One kid figured it out, one kid didn’t.

I promptly found the missing key when I got home and started unloading the groceries.

Do you see it?

I didn’t even think to check inside the grocery bags! It seems so unlikely that the key could even fall in the bag without me noticing… and fall so perfectly in there that it was way down on the bottom.

This evening the kids were bored, and I thought about a fun thing I found on pinterest. You microwave a quarter of a bar of ivory soap for 3 minutes. The kids were fascinated and loved watching it get bigger and bigger. Then, they hauled it off to the bath and turned it into snow and played with it. They lovvvvvved it.

Cut up your bar of Ivory(it MUST be Ivory). It’s very easy to do with a butter knife.

Put it in the microwave. Microwave it for 2-3 minutes. We did it for 3 and I don’t think it needed to be quite that long. It got a tiny bit burned on the bottom.

This what it looks like when it’s done. It’s not hot to touch, except on the bottom where it was touching a plate.