More shots from our quiet time in the Butterfly museum that’s part of the Houston Museum of Natural History…
What a super fun place to have a camera, no?
And because I’m loving this shot of the T-rex, I’m posting it again. Because I can. RAWR!
I’m linking up to Darcy’s Sweet Shot Tuesday this week…
stop by and check out some REALLY great shots!
Monday morning was our first day of school. We brought our teachers a yummy apple cinnamon oatmeal muffins. These are the muffins I like to make ahead, freeze, and then warm up in the microwave for a fast breakfast.
Start with 2 Fiber One apple cinnamon muffin mixes prepared by the box directions , add to the mix one large apple (diced), 2Tbs. of ground Flax seeds, 1/4 cup steel cut oats, and an additional 3Tbs. of water. Bake at 400 for approx. 15-17 min.
After the muffins have baked, remove them from the pans and allow them to cool completely on a wire rack. If you’d like to freeze and heat them, store them in a gallon sized freezer bag. It only takes around 30 seconds or so in the microwave to warm them.
For the muffin toppers, I printed free ones from Scribd, cut out the circles, and then glued them to toothpicks.
Fast, fun, and in my opinion, WAY better than bringing a plain apple for the teacher!
I’m linking up with Kim at Today’s Creative Blog!
Browse through the link party and find even more fun projects!
Friday was our last weekday before school started back. Levi had Friday off so we decided to spend the day in the city. Did you know that if you live in the suburbs of Houston, one really never does need to go into the actual city? At least, we don’t. But it was a special sort of day and we didn’t want to waste it by doing laundry and other such nonsense.
We took the kids to the Natural History museum.
RAWR.
Jillian loved the fossils….
And Daddy loved the fossils…
But Abby sat still, without fidgeting, without blinking, without breathing for 15 minutes trying to get the butterflies to land on her…
I’ve never seen her so still, so quiet, so frozen before… she didn’t even smile while I was giggling at her for being so still and so quiet and so frozen! She took her butterfly enticement very very seriously…
And I had a ball taking pictures. I even got a really fun sun flare.
On Thursday, I proved that one can indeed live Murphy’s law. From an early morning PMS fueled rage because Walmart didn’t have what I needed (as usual), to construction crews cutting our neighborhood power line mid-day when it was 1000 degrees outside and I was just preparing to bake a cake for the next day’s teacher desert bar, to the same crew later cutting our gas main and trapping us into our neighborhood on the same evening our girls were due at Meet the teacher night… and trapping Jillian OUT of the neighborhood because she was at a friend’s house playing when it happened. It was a never ending awful sort of day.
After hiking a few miles in ridiculous heat we were able to escape our neighborhood and then hitch a ride to the school for the last 10 minutes of Meet the teacher. I got to explain to Jillian’s teacher that the lady who brought her was in fact NOT her mother, I was, and here’s your cute little box of goodies that Jillian is going to be so mad about not delivering herself. I was sweaty and stinky but I put on my very best “trying not to be humiliated that I’m meeting my kids teachers looking like this” face and got it done.
So there.
At school, after finally retrieving Jillian, 1/2 of our neighborhood was milling around wondering if we were allowed to get back in, how to get back in, and who the heck had a car that so and so could hitch a ride in. We decided to table the idea of sitting in the heat and hit the neighborhood Mexican placed for margaritas instead. Truly, tequila was the only thing left to have. It was far FAR beyond time for a drink. We hauled 25 people into the restaurant and sat and enjoyed ourselves for a few hours.
We had dinner with a few couples we knew, and met a few new similarly inconvenienced neighbors and let our kids eat loudly. We were all so exhausted from the day that we just didn’t even care.
Outside of the restaurant we even let our kids play on the statue… because usually, that’s SO NOT my kids playing around in and outside of restaurants… The sunset that evening was a gorgeous reminder that some days, you’ve just got to trudge through and get it done however you can and eventually…things do indeed get better.
