Thursday, August 12, 2010

Things I Love Thursday - Local Grocery Store


I love Kingma's Market. It is right around the corner from my house and we probably stop in their twice a week, at least. We go there for their cheese, jerky, beer, free cookies for the kids... wow do we sound like a healthy family. Basically we go there for those items that weforget to pick up at the grocery store that week. I will also admit that I go there sometimes just to look around. It is the type of store that carries random items that you wouldn't find at large, chain grocery stores. If you live in the Grand Rapids area, I recommend that you stop by Kingmas sometime... I promise that you'll love it.




This post was linked to Things I Love Thursday at The Diaper Diaries

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Top Ten: Family Time in the Summer

Top Ten {Tuesday}
Well I figured if I'm going to start posting again, I'll start with the top 10 things we like to do as a family in the summer time. I'm going to stick to places in Grand Rapids because I don't think I could keep the list to only 10 things if I included the entire state of Michigan!

1. We love going to John Ball Zoo. I recently met up with some friends from church and let the kids wander around the zoo. The kids had a blast checking out the animals and I had a great time chatting with other adults! :)
2. We have spent a lot of time in our pools this summer. We are currently on our third pool of the summer. The first one was old and had a small hole it in. The second pool was ruined by the second day we had it. I won't mention any names, but the only other person in our house that drives opened his, I mean his/her, door and popped a huge whole in the side of it. We are now on our third pool and the kids could spend all day in it. I feel a little WT, but a quick way to fill up an inflatable pool with air is by using a leaf blower. I can get the entire pool pull on air in less than one minute (sorry about the tangent). They really love it when their dad joins them. :)
3. Andy and I took the kids to Grassfields Farm for a farm tour. The farm is family owned organic dairy and chicken farm in Coopersville. The girls loved seeing the cows, chickens and turkeys. There was a little calf, Annabelle, that Molly was obsessed with. Layne and Abby also liked petting Annabelle, as long as I was standing next to them.
4. We love going to new restaurants, especially in the summer when it is too hot to cook. Well, I love going to new restaurants... the girls would be happy if we went to BW3 everyday of the week (and Andy doesn't mind that either). We went to this great new restaurant this week, Twisted Rooster. It was fabulous. The girls had a wonderful time and people weren't staring at us because we were too loud!
5. The Grand Rapids Children's museum is fabulous! We ended up purchasing a family pass because my kids like it so much. The pass also has great summer options. Every summer month you can get into a different place for the month. August is unlimited visits to John Ball Zoo (which is why we went to the zoo last week). My girls could spend our entire time there in the kitchen, store, bank and cafe section of the museum. I have to force them to visit other spots of museum.
6. We love spending time at Andy's parents house. They live on an apple and peach orchard and the girls love going on Ranger rides through the orchard. They are currently building a store to sell their produce, so the girls like watching the barn go up. Last week we all got to our hand prints on the floor of the store. The girls were all very excited about this, except Molly who would not make a hand print, but instead made a fist print. :)
7. The girls and Andy love going to the airport viewing area. It is a pretty neat place to have a picnic dinner and watch planes take off. I would much rather sit at a park and do this, but Andy (and the girls) get so excited when they see planes land and take off.
8. Grand Rapids Township Park is the best park that I have found for my kids. It is fabulous because they have toys and equipment for all ages. I can be playing with Molly on the smaller toys and still watch Layne and Abby on the "big kid" section. The playground is also my bribery tool for the girls while I am grocery shopping. It is right across the street from Meijer, so if I want a guaranteed pleasant grocery shopping experience I will pull out the, "if you want to go to the township park, you need to be quiet and not touch ANYTHING!" Works like a charm. :)
9. Frederik Meijer Gardens is an awesome place to go in the summer time. We also have a family pass here because if pays for itself in like two visits. They have the coolest children's garden that my girls love to explore. They have a huge tree house, an old fashioned log cabin, a huge sand area, a large replica of the Great Lakes that you can steer boats and sea-doos down, and a splashing area for the kids to get wet. That is only a few of the great areas for the kids to play in. I learned quickly that I need to pack an extra change of clothes for the girls because they always end up soaking wet from the Great Lakes replica and the splashing area.
10. The last place that we spend family is probably where you will find us most of the time: in our backyard. Our backyard isn't huge, but it is the perfect setup for our family. We have a large driveway that the kids can ride bikes and shoot hoops on. We also like to play soccer and baseball on the grass. I love that my kids can be playing outside all day long and I don't have to worry about where they are. They love our backyard and spend hours there everyday!

This post was linked to Top Ten Tuesday at OhAmanda.

It's Been Awhile

Wow, I can't believe that it has been over 5 months since my last post. Oops! I guess life got pretty busy and this blog got put on the back burner. I'm hoping to start posting again, but I'm not going to try and catch up with pictures from the past five months (sorry kids). Here are a few things that we have been up to:

Layne's birthday
Layne finished school
Cottage
Cottage
Abby learns to ride a bike
Cottage
camping at Wabasis Lake Campground (how could I forget that, Cheri?)
Cottage (you get the point)
Molly learned to walk (she is very fast)
Layne learned to ride a two wheeler
Molly's birthday
playing
Zoo
Frederick Meijer Garden
Children's museum
playing
Library

As you can see, we've been busy playing outside and relaxing at cottages (thanks grandma and papa, and grandma and grandpa) this summer. Now that the crazy month of July is past us I will hopefully try and find some time to sit down and write some blog posts. We'll see how much time I can find while chasing around a 4 year old, 2 1/2 year old and a one year old. :)

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Calvin Basketball Video

Here is a video I found made by students at Calvin. The shots are pretty cool, but I wonder how many attempts it took to make this 2:30 video.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Monday, February 15, 2010

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

A Year in Photos: February 9, 2010

Dancing!

Slug Bug

I love Super bowl commercials! I thought that this year there were quite a few good commercials. I really like the Betty White commercial for Snickers and the all of the baby Etrade commercials were hysterical, but my favorite commercial was the Volkswagen commercial with Stevie Wonder. This was so funny for many reasons. I grew up doing "slug bug" to my family members whenever we would see a VW Bug (ahhhh childhood memories). My family had an awesome VW Van when I was little and I drove a VW Golf (with no heat or AC) when I was in college, so I think that VW's are pretty great. I even tried talking Andy into getting an VW Eurovan when we were van shopping last spring, but he shot that down real fast. The best part of the commercial was when Stevie wonder said, "Red one," and then slugged Tracy Morgan. Hilarious!! What were your favorite Superbowl commercials?


Saturday, February 6, 2010

A Year in Photos: February 6, 2010


Abby thinks it is fun to pretend that she is a piece of paper!
Good things it's washable.

Friday, February 5, 2010

A Year in Photos: February 5, 2010

Layne - double ear infection
Abby - single ear infection (I thought we put tubes in her ears so she wouldn't get these anymore!)

Fun Friday Finds

These chicken enchilada roll-ups look easy and great! (Annie-Eats)

This Valentine's Day skirt tutorial looks adorable (At Second Street)

These wool felt crowns would be great for kids birthdays (Frontier Dreams)

I love this idea for a scratch and sniff valentine's bag (Frugal Family Fun Blog)

These Valentine hair clips would look great in little girl's hair (Make it Do)

I wish I had this much luck at garage sales. The lamps turned out so cute (Buzzings of a Queen Bee)

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Monday, February 1, 2010

A Year in Photos: February 1, 2010



Tired after a long day of traveling

21 Days to a New Habit

I've heard that it takes 21 days to start a new habit. I figured that if I posted what I want my new habit to be, then I would be more likely to follow through with it. So, what is my new habit? I want to try and get up by no later than 6 am everyday and be dressed and ready to go before my children are up. Some of you might be thinking why would I want to do that or that 6 am isn't early, but I find that my days go so much better when I am up and dressed before my kids are up and usually my kids rise around 6:30, so I figured that would be enough time to get dressed and mostly ready. I'm going to try my hardest to do this, but that will mean that I have to be disciplined at night and go to bed at a decent time... not so easy for me. I'll try to put up weekly updates throughout the month to let you know how it is going.

*** I haven't forgotten about my daily pictures, but I lost the cord for awhile and then Andy took the camera out to Colorado, so I'm going to try and update some pictures tonight!

Sunday, January 31, 2010

A Year in Photos: January 31, 2010


Tired after 3 days of skiing

Freezer cooking day


Here is my list of food that I made this weekend. I'm hoping that by prepping items it will make my afternoons stress-free from prepping dinner.

10 - 2 cup bags of chicken cooked and cubed for quesadillas, fajitas, and pizza
pizza dough x3
corn chowder x2
chili x2
chicken marinated and frozen
taco meat x2

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Monday, January 11, 2010

Saturday, January 9, 2010

A Year in Photos: January 9, 2010

Happy Birthday!
Andy doesn't like getting his picture taken, so I had to use a picture from when Molly was born.