2020: Food, Fun, and our Zoo

Happy 2020! We've been back in Texas for 10 days and somehow the mountains seem SO much further away than that. But that could be because I've been obsessed with finding a swimsuit I like for our Spring Break beach trip in March. Vacations. They are vitamins for my soul and planning for them is sometimes what keeps me going.

It's a skin cancer free kind of sexy 😂

But back to life in the Fort. On NYE we had big plans for our fancy homemade dinner (this year everyone got to contribute a favorite item or ingredient for the meal and it all ended up going together pretty well!) followed by a stop at a friend's house two streets away for her impromptu New Year's party.

Along with the collaborative menu, we had a collaborative playlist that was QUITE eclectic as it bounced between Metallica (James), P!nk (me), Disney Junior Musicals (Claire), Taylor Swift (Cora) and Post Malone and Baby Shark (both Landon).

Baby Shark was the surprise hit of the night, prompting all the children to get up and dance anytime it popped back up on the speakers. In about 10 years a DJ is going to drop that song in a club and the place is going to explode.

After our meal was consumed and cleaned up and Baby Shark was retired for the night, a scratchy voiced James looked longingly at the couch and the fuzzy blankets piled there while the kids and I were excited to go out. So James and Maggie remained behind (though Maggie totally wanted to party, I'm sure) while we headed over to our friends. I was wearing the leggings my sister had given me for Christmas and the tunic I'd ordered on Amazon specifically to match them which had arrived in the mail that day. I would wear this exact outfit for the next five days. These are great leggings (the solid color version has pockets! I now have them too).

May 2020 have as much time as possible with all my mamas, we need each other!

The plan was to stay for the East Coast countdown, something none of our children have ever made it to before, but after we celebrated that, we kinda just kept hanging out. This is what happens when the parent who is a stickler for bedtimes (his own, mainly) isn't part of the entourage.

Next thing I knew it was midnight central time and Cora and Claire were partying hard.

Landon was slumped half-asleep in front of the TV waiting for the countdown. Poor guy had had a sleepover the night before, back when we never thought we'd let the kids stay up this late. He barely survived it, while Cora was having intense conversations with her bestie near the balloons and Claire was out playing basketball in the backyard. I had my mamas and a bottle of champagne and I can't imagine why I actually thought we'd leave at 11.

And then it was midnight! In CENTRAL TIME! Happiest New Year to us all.

The next morning, James and I didn't exit our room until 10 (no idea when the kidss were up, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't much earlier) and we had a very late breakfast of James's famous french toast. In a nod to the occasion he even bought brioche bread to make it with instead of the hearty whole wheat and grains bread he usually insists on. Sprinkles and whipped cream were also involved. Happy New Year!

[Side note, but look at this throwback to New Year's Day 2014. I adore this picture and miss the days when we were so much less spread out.]

From the archives! All the hearts and tears

To make up for the white bread lapse in nutritional judgment, we took a very long walk with Maggie in her stroller and the kids on their bikes. James brought along his skateboard (and helmet! Helmets for everyone always and forever amen) so he could scare me when he goes down big hills.

Once at the park the kids found friends and a big game of Hide and Seek was commenced. Maggie tried her hand (paws?) at some skateboarding and I'm taking her energy, focus, and can-do attitude with me into this year.

And her heart. I would love to love like Maggie does.

I had gone back to work starting Monday, December 30, which was a bummer since the kids were still out of school. Luckily, at least from a logistics standpoint, James's pool closes to match the ISD schedule, so he's home whenever the kids are and can handle life on the home front, but it also makes me wish I was there too. New Year's Day being in the middle of the week was a fun bonus, but it made that Thursday and Friday even stranger. As of this week everyone is back in school and work and pools (except actually not because a pump broke, but that was still kind of nice on the logistics because our after school nannies aren't back in town until TCU starts up next week) and so things feel back to normal, though I can't believe it means that Landon is halfway through his time in 6th grade and Cora is on the back half of her Kindergarten career.

On the Friday before everyone went back to school I spent my lunch in the passport office with the kids getting their passports renewed for March. Five years goes by so fast, and yet when I look at these photos it seems a lifetime ago!

We got those done for our Jamaica trip in 2015 and I can't believe they were so little. They seemed so big and grownup when we went!

Now they scooter gang around the street all by themselves and Cora reads and writes her own thank you notes and we talk at dinner about how Landon turns 16 in 3 years and will probably drive my current car when he does and wtf, none of that math seems right.

Scooter gang member, initiation phase, 2015

Speaking of reading and random snapshots of the home-based half of our winter break, the photo books are a huge hit and I can't tell you how warm and fuzzy it makes me feel inside whenever I catch the kids reading them. Blood, sweat, and tears go into those volumes and I love that they love them.

Landon is reading Catching Fire in that picture. I got him the Hunger Games trilogy for Christmas and he finished all 3 that week they were home and he LOVED THEM. I'm so glad he's accepted fiction into his life because I've got SO MUCH MORE where that came from. He also received the Legend trilogy, The Maze Runner series, and The Lord of the Rings. He's already read all Rick Riordan, the Eragon series, and Harry Potter and I love every time he wants to talk about a plot point. Particularly since that's one more minute he's not asking me to quiz him on spelling bee words...

On Sunday, in an effort to fulfill my New Year's Resolution to schedule more family time on weekends (something we never had to do because family time was ALL THE TIME, which we loved, truly, but is now decidedly not the case), we went to the zoo!

It was a throwback to when we used to drop by the zoo all the time (it's a few miles from our house and we drive by it near daily) and I realized poor Cora doesn't remember anything about when we did that.

It was really fun. We need to go more often, especially since everyone still enjoys it so much.

Every animal reminded me of Maggie in some way, but none more so than the hippos. Don't you just see it? If Maggie was water safe? I feel like she'd be so at home in the herd here.

I'm going to put my resolutions in a separate post so I can refer back to it without having to dig through all the details of our first 10 days of the year. So, instead, here's the food we have eaten/plan to eat so far this year! We've pared our eating out down to only 1-2x a month last year and though it's not a resolution, it's something I definitely plan to stick with this year. I'd love to find some recipe sources, so if you have a favorite recipe blog please pass it along!

A few of mine are:

• Budget Bytes
• Pinch of Yum
• Gimme Some Oven
• Chelsea's Messy Apron
• The Garden Grazer
• Skinnytaste

Meals: Last Week and What's Ahead

• Saturday: Big Salad Night! (ALL the veggies, hard boiled egg, avocado, nuts/dried cranberries, goat cheese, roasted beets, kalamatas) with homemade Balsamic Vinaigrette (balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, spoon of dijon mustard, squeeze of honey, minced dried onion, salt/pepper). I chopped everything up and let the kids make their own, which always delights them even though they use every veggie I would have added anyway (they did forgo the beets because they don't yet appreciate their magic; one day they'll learn and they'll regret).
• Sunday: Veggie Turkey Chili (I used this recipe as a base particularly for the spices, sub ground turkey, add in diced carrot and red and yellow bell peppers), corn bread.
• Monday: Black Bean Spinach Enchiladas, served with sliced avocado on the side and brown rice mixed with cilantro and lime juice. Always freaking delicious.
• Tuesday: Tacos! I introduced the Taco Bell double-decker taco concept with the refried beans spread on a flour tortilla wrapped around the outside of a crunchy shell to the kids and they were amazed. Plus it means the taco can't fall apart when you crunch it! Three cheers for the taco bell concept team.
• Wednesday: Instant Pot Turkey Meatball and Ditalini Soup (though we baked the meatballs and used a regular pot, along with rotini instead of ditalini). My sister made this for us before we left Boulder and it was so good!
• Thursday: Cilantro Lime Chicken, Black Beans, Mexican Side Salad. This was great!
• Friday: Pesto tortellini with grilled chicken, tiny balls of fresh mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, and fresh spinach. Cora and James's favorite meal.
• Saturday: The kids and I will be in Houston with Maggie and my family; James will almost certainly eat pasta, but who knows, he could go crazy and eat pasta AND a salad.
• Sunday: Winter Grain Bowl with Balsamic Dressing, crackers. So excited about this one! Various children's bowls will not have beets and/or goat cheese.
• Monday: Chicken Meatballs with Peppers and Orzo. LOVE this recipe. I toss the orzo with a hearty scoop of ricotta and it is perfection underneath the sauce and meatballs.
• Tuesday: BBQ Chicken Sandwiches (Frozen chicken breasts, half a bottle of bbq sauce, cook on low 8-10 hours, shred). I have a PTA Board meeting, this will cook while I'm at work, and James and the kids will eat it after swimming with chips, fruit, and pickles.
• Wednesday: Mexican Fiesta Quinoa Bake, made with leftover shredded BBQ chicken if there is any, otherwise I double the beans.
• Thursday: Slow Cooker Balsamic Chicken, over whole wheat angel hair pasta and fresh spinach.
• Friday: I'm going out with a friend, so whatever James and the kids feel like making. Probably tacos.