Open Gym

I am going to try to stard blogging about places that I take the kids during the day for play dates or entertainment.  We can all agree that this time of year we get CABIN FEVER and want to get the kids out of the house.  Gymnastics Unlimited (link) has what they call Daytime Playtime for children 5 and under during the week.  Here are the specifics:

• For children 5 and under
• Wednesday 12:30-2:30, Friday 9:30-11:30 and every 2nd Saturday of the month 1:00-3:00pm
• $5 for first child, $3 for each child after (all children that are considered mobile you have to pay for)
• Includes big bouncy, hula hoops, bars, rings, trampolines, foam pits that you can jump or swing on a rope into, slides, soft shapes and toys that little ones can play with while older ones are running around.  Small slides, balance beam, small tramplines, expandable tunnels to crawl through.

Review:  I took my son (3), my nephew (4) and my daughter (1) to play the other day.  There were about 20 parents and their kids there.  We got there right at 9:30 and stayed until the very last minute.  The kids could have played even longer.  They LOVED every minute of it!  It was fun for me too because everything is a contained area that is not too crowded so I didn't worry about losing the boys.  The only drawback for me was paying $11 for all three kids.  I know $11 is not a lot compared to other pay places you can go to, but when you live on one income, money spent has to be scrutinized.  However, comparatively I think it is a good price!  The other thing that I don't like is that you can not bring kids over 5 and during their other friday night open gym for ages 6-18, you can't bring any kids under 6 so I can't bring all three of my kids at once :( 

Butternut Squash Ravioli

Okay back to food for a minute-I KNOW-since when have I been a source of food secrets?  I am just trying to spice things up a bit so my blog isn't ALL about "my amazing offspring", even though that is the title......they are my main focus and are still amazing but I also want to blog about things that are relevant to me as a stay-at-home mom and woman in her, ummm upper 20's, ya 20's-something like that. Well, maybe 30, but not a day over!  Sooo...I took part in this survey where I had to taste test and report on a Lean Cuisine meal, Butternut Squash Ravioli.  I have been wanting to toot it's horn for a while now but keep forgetting......It is really good!  It is, I quote, in a creamy sauce with walnuts, snap peas and carrots.  Now, if you don't like snap peas, walk away now, because it is heavy on the snap peas.  But the actual ravioli is AWESOME and I feel so healthy aftewards with all the veggies, PLUS it means that I can eat a healthy lunch for only 270 calories plus it has no preservatives and the following other nutrional information:

Fat:  7g
Fiber: 5g
Protein: 10g
Sodium: 590mg
5 weight watcher points

And if you watch your local stores ads for sales you can stock up for $1.50 per meal.  Enjoy!  Or don't.....your choice.  Blogs to come:  reviews of places to take kids to play.......and of course amazing offspring updates!  I'm thinking of sharing my quote book with you too of things the kids have said that make us smile.  I don't know, we'll see if I feel like getting a little crazy!

Christmas in January!

The family celebrations continued into January when we got together with my dad's sister (Aunt Jeri & Uncle Jim) and mom's brother (Uncle Kurt, Aunt Anita, cousins Kristen, Josh & Gavin and Neal, Kate, Clayton & Hallie).  It is always good to see family!  I must not have had my camera when I celebrated with my dads side b/c I couldn't find any pics-it was fun nonetheless! Here are a few pictures of our celebrations!  I even added a few in from the past of the Walther family Christmases to see how our family has grown!  We really missed celebrating with my Nana this year but she decided she was going to stay in the warmth of Florida instead of coming home for Christmas.  This is the first Christmas in my 33 years that I did not see her for Christmas.  So things were different this year but we all had a good time and talked to her on the phone.

Christmas 2002 

Cha-Ching

Christmas 2007 (4 kids now!  And I'm a brunette-who knew?)

Christmas 2009 (6 kids and I am back to blonde, sorta)

My, look how we've grown!  9 kids and counting.....

Ali talking to Nana, Gavin wants his Momma, and the two cutie baby girls!

Mom and Kurt carried on the tradition of splitting change up for all of the kids!  We put ours in our jar to save for our trip to Disney World.

Aunt Anita & Gavin

The Neal-Monster.  Please do not notice that Connor is wearing Claire's bow.  That's a story for another day.



Noodles in Sesame-Soy Sauce

Since I am on the subject of food, I think I will stick with it!  This recipe is from the Weight Watchers cookbook but it used to be one of my favorite things  to eat!  The kids did not so much like it, but I have picky eaters, so yours might!  I have some other, longer posts I would like to blog about (family Christmas in January) and I want to get started on a project listing all the things to do with kids around the area, reviewing them as I go, but that is a longer task to tackle, so for now, enjoy the recipe!   So easy and quick to make!

Makes 6 servings

2 TB reduced-sodium soy sauce
1 TB Asian sesame oil (use the dark or Asian rather than light)
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp white wine vinegar (when we are out I just use plain white vinegar and it is fine!)
4 cucumbers, peeled and julienned
3 cups hot cooked vermicelli or rice noodles (or fettucine or angel hair, whatever you have!)
6 scallions (green part only), chopped  (Todd doesn't like these so we serve them on the side)

Combine in a small bowl:  soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar and vinegar
Combine in a large bowl:  noodles, cucumbers and sauce-toss to coat and then sprinkle scallions on top. 

This dish has the following nutrional content:  140 cal, 3 g fat, and 3 WW points.  I am sure that is probably based on rice noodles so may be higher if other pasta is used.  Enjoy!  I just had leftovers for lunch which inspired me to post this.

Healthy tacos!

Well the healthiness of the tacos ultimately depends on what you put in it but I found the best tortilla wraps that are healthy AND good!  I was so impressed with their nutritional content, I had to share!  They are Ole Mexican Foods brand and called Xtreme Wellness High Fiber Low Carb Tortiall Wraps. I got them at Kroger and they are $3.09 for 8 not on sale but I purchased them on sale for $2.89.  I know this is high considering you can probably purchase 10 wraps in a store brand for $1.99-ish, BUT it depends on how healthy you are trying to be.  These would be great for lunch meat wraps or breakfast burrito wraps also. 

Nutritional values:
SERVING SIZE = 1 TORTILLA

Calories     71
Fat              2g
Cholest.      0mg
Sodium       234 mg
Carbs          5g
Fiber          12g
Sugars        0g
Protein       8g

Here is a link to the picture-I couldn't copy and paste it from the website for some reason.  http://www.olemexicanfoods.com/OLEmenuTortillas.htm

2010 in video

Please enjoy this video I put together of our 2010!  Connor turned 3, Claire turned 1 and Taylor turned 7 this year.  It was a year of continuous blessing for our family! Sorry for the poor quality-I am new at video-ing and have no idea how to fix it of yet! 

New Year Aspirations...More or Less

First let me admit that I am totally stealing this idea from my friend Melissa's blog!  Only mine is the long version.  I didn't have any specific resolutions that I wanted to hold my self accountable for, because let's admit it, I will inevitably fail.  That's what we humans do best!  BUT, I always want to be reflecting to do things that will ultimately result in better quality life for me and my loved ones!  So....here is my list of things I want to do MORE or LESS of!  Parentheses explanations provided for viewers purposes-I already know what they mean!

For those of you wanting the shortened version, here it is.  In 2011 I would like to:  exercise MORE, organize MORE, purge MORE, cook MORE, clean MORE, read MORE, individualize MORE, play MORE, drink MORE caffeine!  I would also like to:  worry LESS, eat LESS, yell LESS, get frustrated LESS, pay LESS and Plan LESS and Do MORE! 

In 2011 I would like to:

exercise MORE
organize MORE  (this is by far my greatest weakness in life)
purge MORE (get rid of crap!  it is okay to throw away the broken can opener-the chances of finding time to try to fix it are SLIM TO NONE!)
cook MORE (frozen pizzas, McDonalds and PB&J should not ALL be on our weekly dinner menu)
clean MORE (I should not still be contemplating how to restore order in my house two weeks after Christmas)
read MORE (It's one of my favorite things to do but I need to find good books that can be checked out from the library)
finish MORE (If I start folding the laundry at 8:00am, I should probably finish it before 5:00pm. Or if I start cleaning out a closet, it is probably a good idea to finish it instead of leaving everything sitting outside the closet to do "later")
individualize MORE (spend more time with each child and husband by themselves!  They relish the individual attention they get and I need to pay more attention to the importance of that.  This also means more date nights with hubbies or at least staying up past 9:00 to spend time with him after the kids go to bed.  I would like to also include spending more time with ME!  I crave ME time, yet seldom, if ever, get it!)
Play MORE (I catch myself getting busy doing so many things around the house that I forget to DROP everything and sit down and PLAY with the kids as much as I can!  They will be big enough one day that they won't want to play with me anymore and I will have lost that time!)
And last, but not least, in order to accomplish MORE of anything I will also need MORE caffeine!  So while most are cutting caffeine out of their diets as the new year begins, I will be adding MORE, without guilt-because I will need it!

This year I would like to:
Worry LESS (thanks to happy pills I am already leaps and bounds ahead of the game!)
Eat LESS
Get frustrated LESS (i.e. realize that Connor is 3 and it is okay if his shirt is filthy after only being awake for 1 hour)
Yell LESS (okay, I admit it-I am not the perfect parent!  Wew, glad I got that off my chest!)
Pay LESS (this is where my new fascination with extreme couponing comes in!)
And last buy not least, Plan LESS and Do MORE!  (I am fabulous at planning anything!  I can sit here on the couch with my little notebook and write out all that needs to be done-in no less than 3 different lists.  I should probably spend less time writing it all out and more time doing it!)

I will hang these up (in simple form, no explanations) as a reminder for myself and hope to accomplish some of them.  No pressure though, because they aren't RESOLUTIONS.  So I will not be one of the 45% who break their resolutions by the end of January.  I have the rest of the year to do MORE or LESS of what I want to make quality of life better for me and my loved ones!  I would love to hear what you want to do MORE or LESS of-so please share!!

Ringing in the New Year...at 8:10pm!

On New Year's Eve I get together with all of my friends from college whom I love dearly.  When we graduated college and lived in different cities we sometimes celebrated in different cities. Everyone has since moved back to Indy (except Breeze) and we all now have families, but still try to spend New Years Eve together with our families.  Our New Years Eve gatherings sure have changed since our 20's.  For example, our champagne toast happened at 8:10pm (yes you read that correctly) this year!  And we now have 14+ little ones between us! And when they are ready for bed, meltdowns are not pretty!  This year, The Straws hosted and Ian's mother-n-law Beth made dough for us to make homemade pizzas.  Fun was had by all (they have a basement so we shoved all of the self sufficient ones down there)-did I say shoved?  I meant asked them nicely to please play downstairs.    Here are a few pics from this year AND New Years Past!  I hope we continue spending New Years Eve together and look forward to all the fun times to be had-even if we are all in bed before the ball drops!  Maybe we will get a second wind when our kids are older and our parties will last a little later!  

 New Years Eve 2010 toast-at 8:10PM!

 Connor & Taylor making their pizzas NYE 2010

 

 New Years 2009 (toast at 9:00pm that year-we were CRAZY)

 New Years 2008 (Craig and Taylor are boxing each other on Wii)

 New Years in Indy 2001 or 2002?

 New Years in Indy (2001 or 2002?)

 New Years in Houston (99 or 00?)  See Becca's head poking in the back there?

New Years Eve in Chicago (have no idea what year!)