Happy Thursday

Hello! I've been away so long, but not completely! I've been working more on updating and posting on my Morocan food blog. You see both of my boys are gone to grandma's for the summer! My baby is in Morocco with my husband's family and my big man is in Michigan with my grandparents. So I'm afraid to say we haven't been doing a whole lot. Also my darling husband just so happened to have left our camera in Morocco "on accident". So I guess that until I manage to get a new one I'm plum out of luck. BUT this may just be the right time to finally upgrade to a great SLR that I've always wanted. What do you think about this one? Other suggestions? I must admit I've been out of the camera market for sometime now and don't really have a fortune to spend. If any of my friends out there have good ideas I'm all ears!

Also we're moving! We've looked at a new apartment here in the area but we're also thinking about going back to Wisconsin if one of us can manage to snag a job there ahead of time. I started my next quarter of MBA classes Monday. One of the things that I really promised myself this summer was to do all the creative things that I have a hard time doing when the boys are home. Well I did manage to put together a photo album of all our wedding pictures when my husband was in Morocco but aside from that....nada. But Travelinmama is having a Traveler's Inspiration Challenge this summer. I can handle that I think... Tonight I'm alone until late so I'm going to quick clean up my house, throw some dinner and sit down to work on a project for this.

Here's to hoping I'll be able to make my blog sutainable! If you want to check out my Moroccan cooking page - hop on over!

Crab Cakes!!

I made some crab cakes (yay almost crab season here!) Sunday night and crab stuffed chicken breast last night here is my recipe:

Ingredients:

1 pound of crab meat - jumbo lump is best but mine was actually claw meat (little cheaper and ok for crab cakes)

8 oz fat free sour cream

2-3 tsp Old Bay Seasoning

2 tsp garlic powder

2 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp Paprika

1/2 lemon - juice squeezed

1/2-3/4 cup bread crumbs (depending on how wet it is)

1 egg

some people use some more spicy peppers, celery or onions in their recipe, I don't like the texture but you could add it!

Combine all of this and let it sit in the fridge for about a half hour. You can cook it right away but I like the flavor to combine.You can either fry or bake the crab cakes. To fry heat some olive oil in a saute pan, form the crab cakes into palm size patties and fry about 3-4 minutes each side. To bake, place onto a baking sheet and bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. They should get brown on top. I only used half this recipe (which makes between 12-15 crab cakes depending on size).

Last night with the leftover crab mixture:

Crab Stuffed Chicken

10 Chicken Tenderloins (you could use any breast or boneless thigh pieces)

crab cake mixture

bread crumbs

olive oil

Wrap a teaspoon of crab mixture with the chicken tenderloin and skewer --- I used a cupcake tin to hold them in a circle shape - it worked great!Top with a little oilve oil and sprinkle with bread crumbs.Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown on top.

Dipping sauce:

1 avocado

8 oz sour cream

2tsp mayonaise

2 tsp Old Bay

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1/2 cut lemon - juice only

Blend together in blender to make a smooth sauce. I served it cold with the chicken, as a dipping sauce. Very light and good for a warm summer day!

Served with blanced asparagus and a rice pilaf with green olives and almonds.

Guess who turned 5??

Little late right but better than never! M turned 5 on March 15th!!! I never in a million years thought that the time would go by soooo fast! My grandma and grandpa came to visit us for his birthday and while we didn't have an extravagant party it was a nice time for all of us and most importantly I think it was really important and fun for M.

M wanted to go to Chucke Cheese, definetely not my favorite place in the world but it's his birthday and that's what he wanted sooo we went.

Happy Birthday Little Man.....

Motivation anyone?

Well, it appears that my updating has not been as successful as I had hoped. I am still working with the boys on weekend "school" however we've had some setbacks as of recent. This past weekend I was sick with strep throat (thank god no one else has any signs of this yet - thank you Lysol disinfectant!) The previous weekend we started on A Story About Ping. I got the books from the library and made sure to get plenty of supplemental books about ducks, China, and rivers. Would you believe that they didn't want to read the Ping book at all??? I continued to suggest we read it and they instead picked every other additional book! This threw me way off track and instead of rolling with it and more activities I just lost focus. We read and that was about it. M did some writing work but we didn't end up doing much else.

My biggest frustration right now is getting K(2) to stick with one thing for more than 2 minutes. He's a lightning ball. I tried to do some boxes with activities just for him, except M (5) finds that K's boxes are more interesting than his own and ends up into the activity upsetting K. I did find that a few packages of beans and some sorting toys sure kept them busy for an hour! But alas it lasted only one day for one hour. The next time they wanted to try it there were beans everywhere and it was "mom he took this" "mom he did that" within 10 minutes.

So now I'm trying to decide to go ahead again this weekend with Ping and some revised activities, or to give up and move onto a different subject matter. After our first weekend I felt like things were going great, now I'm just a little disapointed.

On another note I did get several activities from the dollar store - different shaped balls, art supplies, sorting toys, and plenty of small toys (easter baskets yay!). I even got boxes to organize everything. I may have to hit them up again to see what else I can find!

I'm going to post some pictures from M's birthday and the bean extravaganza. Hopefully I can remember my camera tomorrow.

Weekend School?!?!

I've decided that my boys need just a little bit more in the way of education and really quality time with mom and dad. We spend the better portion of our weekends either a) running around trying to do errands or 2) sitting at home watching TV and trying to stop them from fighting. Either way I end up exhausted, frustrated and more stressed out and the boys well they're bored and irritated too. There are times I wish I could stay home full-time and homeschool them, and there are times when I'm really glad to get out of the house. I think the best solution for us would be if I could work part-time but for now and I anticipate for several years down the road that won't be a possibility.

M can't get enough of school. Even though he is in a full day Pre-K program, he comes home and asks when he can do homework. And even though K is only 2 he copies his brother and wants in on the action too! So last week while trying to think of things we could do this weekend I started thinking about homeschooling. Most parents do it fulltime but we can't afford for me not to work. But certainly I could do supplemental schooling on the weekends right?? So a plan was born! I found a great curriculm called Five in a Row. This is perfect for us because M and K love books! What I like about this is that the whole curriculm is based off of one book. From the book you can spin off all the other subjects while keeping it as the central theme. The object is to read the book for 5 days and play off the other subjects with the book. Perfect! Even if I can't actually do work with them on the weekdays I can read to them and do 1 or 2 other activities. On the weekends we can do more.

So what did it look like??

Saturday morning - we had talked about "school" the night before and the boys were really excited! They got up and we started with Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you See?

I read it first to them and then M read it to us. He had used this book in Pre-K and knows it just about by heart. Then we went in their room, to their work table. I had printed out all the characters and M started coloring them all the color they were in the book. When he got stuck I let him go back to the book, find the animal and then find his color. K was "coloring" too but his was not as neat! M cut out all his characters and stored them (we needed sticks for them to be

puppets!).

We had breakfast and K was done with school. I gave M some simple addition problems (he likes to use the calculator). He did so well! I was really surprised at how fast he caught on, as I had never introduced him to addition but he grasped it right away. I read with K while M did some copywork, the letter B and C, and spelling bear and cat. He really doesn't like this but he did it. K was ready for his nap and M and I went through magazines looking for B letters, words and pictures. He cut them out for his "b" book.

We had wanted to take them to the National Zoo in the afternoon but just got too busy and the weather was soo windy!

Before bed we read A Visitor for Bear. Very cute both of them really enjoyed it!

SUNDAY: We got the sticks to finish the puppets so M made sure he taped them all together. We then worked on putting them in order smallest animal to biggest animal. This was a little bit hard for him because he wanted to put them smallest to biggest pieces of paper, but I tried to encourage him to think of the size of the real animal.

I think if we would have gone to the zoo to see all of them it would have been much easier for him to visualize. We read Brown Bear again, and we also read Polar Bear, Polar Bear What do you Hear? and The Teddy Bears' Picnic (K LOVED them both). I ended up re-reading these to K about 5 times! Mikhail tried to read Polar Bear to us too, he would keep getting stuck on Hippopotomus but I was so proud of him because he kept trying so hard to pronounce it!

M also did some work in his shape/color workbooks.

During this week we have been easing off because it was our test week. Every night M gets home and says "is it time to do school again??". Tuesday night he made a bear cave, complete with food and bear poop for his bear but he asked Daddy to draw the bear for him. I think the best part of all of this is that Daddy is really behind it. He's sitting and reading the books to them at night too!

M and I have been reading this book at night. It is HUGE when I checked it out I was worried but it is full of really wonderful graphite drawings. He has no issues sitting through chapter books and begs me to read more!

We're just getting the hang of this but I hope to keep it up. I have next week planned so watch for updates! I also hope to update more than once a week but we'll see what time permits!