June 16-23

You're so jealous of my new meal planning calendar.  I bought a regular K-2 change the date calendar, made my own cards, and voila!  I wrote meals on one side of cards (a different color for each kind of meat and green for veggie) with ingredients listed on the back so that I know what I have to buy.  I put the cards in with the ingredients showing and when I have everything then I flip them around and Bryan can rearrange if he wants to.  When we're done with the leftovers, the cards go to pockets at the bottom of the chart so that we don't reuse the same meal a bunch of times.  I also made taller cards with numbers on them to let me know if we're having company (+1 to +a crowd) and cards that let me know when we're traveling and don't need a meal.

One of my garage sale finds this week was a little slide.  Check another thing off of Bryan's "fulfilled childhood" list.  Olivia thinks it's pretty much the greatest thing ever and refers to it as "guul liie."  She's always sad when we make her get off her liie so that she can come in to eat dinner.




Last weekend was the parish picnic at Bryan's home church, so we went to his parents' house to join in the festivities.  There was a kids' tent where Olivia won some prizes by picking rubber ducks from a wading pool, pulling suckers out of styrofoam, and playing plinko.  The ducks were her favorite until she learned how plinko worked.  Her biggest prize was a beanie baby (remember when those were supposed to be huge collector's items?) that she got because the end of her sucker had a dot on it.  Bryan wisely steered her away from that game afterwards so that she wouldn't be sad the next time she pulled a sucker out and wasn't allowed to choose a stuffed animal.  There was also a balloon man (the same one that was at the wedding), and he made Olivia another swan hat.  Bryan just asked him to make his favorite hat, and that's what he gave her.  Olivia was thrilled.

My parents stopped through to see us a couple of times on their way to and from Louisville for a conference.  That was fun, and Olivia enjoyed reading books and coloring with Oma.  My mother's reaction to seeing my meal calendar in person was everything I had hoped it would be.  :)

Pictures:
My Calendar:

Tummy time with Gretchen:

My attempt at keeping the bangs out of Olivia's eyes:

Olivia's hats of choice for our walks this week.  She has a cute pink sunhat, but she won't wear it:

Gretchen being smiley:

...And then pretending she wasn't:

Olivia has a wonderful sense of fashion.  Note mom's running shoes, the upside down pacifier (because she doesn't know how to use one, she's just jealous of Gretchen's), and the sock that she's trying to put on her hand.  Then note that she's wearing (on a different day) a pair of Gretchen's pants on one leg with some leg warmers as socks.

Gretchen and her toys:

Olivia and Oma: