Foster Family Fabulous Feast-Dr. Seuss' birthday!

Back in January when I decided to start having Foster Family Fabulous Feasts, I knew right away that Dr. Seuss' birthday, today, March 2, was going to be one of our feast nights. All of my kids love Dr. Seuss (They each have their favorites-Foster Child 1-Hop on Pop, Foster Child 2-Ten Apples Up on Top, and Foster Child 3-Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?), and I, as a reading teacher, love celebrating Dr. Seuss, the author of over 60 books!

Just some of the books in our Dr. Seuss collection. We couldn't fit them all on the sideboard!

Our celebration started early as before dinner we made Cat in the Hat hats. These were made with paper plates and I got the idea from here



I also purchased some eyeliner for us to create cat whiskers and Cat in the Hat's black nose.
What I love about my children is their eagerness to take the excitement and fun to the next level. Having hats and whiskers weren't creative enough for them as they scrounged through their dress up bin, winter gear bin and closet to complete the Cat in the Hat look (notice the gloves, tail, cat ears, and umbrella in the below photo). Foster child 1 even said, "Mom, we should use that pen and take off our clothes, and draw fur on ourselves so we can really look like him! You know, like a cat!" (She was dead serious by the way.) When I gave her a strange look, she said, "Well we'd keep our underwear on!" (Yeah, that whole idea was nixed!)

Our dinner consisted of Green Eggs and Ham, and sliced apples. But before dinner we had a Ten Apples Up on Top contest, but only using 1 apple per person, although Foster Dad, since he's an adult tried to get 2 up there!



The family consensus for green eggs and ham-
Say!
We like green eggs and ham!
We do! We like them, Sam-I-am!
All except Foster Child 3
Who we let be
Eating his fruit
Cause he's so darn cute!





Of course, we had to read Green Eggs and Ham during dinner.

After dinner, and before dessert Foster Child 1 and I read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, before partaking in our Red Fish, Blue Fish cupcakes.





Aren't these cute? The scales and eyes are M&M's and the mouths are gummy Life Savers cut in half.


And we ended the night snuggled together watching Horton Hears a Who, except for Foster Child 3 who was in bed already.

This night totally exceeded my expectations. The kids were hilarious. Foster Child 1 was just like a teacher as she read to us, and she even said, "You know, you can laugh, cause this is funny stuff! And if I had a dollar for every time Foster Child 2 said, "I like Dr. Seuss Day!" I'd be a millionaire, but wait, after tonight, I feel like a million bucks!

Fess Up Friday

When I'm home by myself I usually keep such good watch over my children never letting them slip out of my eyesight. (Can you catch my sarcasm there?) Foster Dad was home one day, so I wasn't in tune to what my kids were doing, or where they were, assuming that Foster Dad was watching them. Then Foster Dad says, "Honey, I don't know where Foster Child 3 is. I haven't seen him in like 5 minutes." And just prior to Foster Dad saying this, I do recall him calling out to Foster Child 3, but to no avail. So we both start calling out to Foster Child 3 and I rush upstairs to look for him. No Foster Child 3. As I come down the stairs I can see that the pantry light is on between the stair treads. Right away, I go to the pantry, open the door and see Foster Child 3 stuffing his face with Trader Joe's Yogurt Star cookies.

And of course, before we disciplined him for not answering us, I had to grab the camera and take a picture!

Foster Family Fabulous Feast-Backward Night

My friend, Kim has been having silly suppers at her house for awhile, and I decided to join in on the bandwagon, since most good ideas come from someone else anyway. Why do you all think Pinterest is booming? Seriously though, it's that I have been convicted to be more intentional in my parenting and creating special family times for us. This age and stage does go by so fast, and I want to make sure we truly treasure together time as a family.

In February we had backwards night. The kids were all too eager to put their clothes on backwards, and even some clothes ended up inside out. Charlotte drew the line at putting her hair backwards, like I did! They even wanted to talk backward and Foster child 2 decided to walk backward into the dining room, trying to get Foster Child 3 to do the same, but unfortunately his 20 month old self wasn't capable of doing that!


This was the perfect night to cash in on the free Papa John's I won, since pizza would be a perfect eat-backwards food, but we went a little more backwards than that and ate pie for dessert first. (Also a very good backwards food!) Not only did we eat our meal backwards, but we also flipped our chairs around and we ate our food out of cups and drank our drinks off of plates!


The kids were VERY confused as I put their pie in the cups, then wondering how they would drink from their cups. When I poured the water onto their plates and gave Foster Dad a straw to demonstrate, Foster Child 1 was convinced this was a good idea. Foster Child 2-not so much! He threw a major fit because that was way to backwards for him! He also didn't eat the pie, and was just so focused on eating Papa John's pizza, from the plate!




And Foster Child 3 had one thought on his mind and it was "Peeeee-za! Peeeee-za!" After he was done with his pizza he made it very clear that he wanted water to drink and also from his plate, saying "Water, water!" while pounding his plate!





We ended our meal with prayer. (However, Foster Dad did start praying before dessert and I had to say, "No, not yet!" I'm sure God understood!)

Backward night was not over with dinner, however! I told the kids we were going to play a game, and they were all excited saying "We're gonna play a board game backward!" I told them that was a good idea, but I had a different game in mind. We were going to play Seek and Hide (Sardines!) The kids were all for it, although it took a couple of rounds to understand the concept. As soon as Foster Child 1 found me, she yelled, "Mommy's in here!" And playing with Foster Child 2 is hilarious because he knows he's supposed to be quiet but always whispers loudly!

It was a great night and I'm sure we'll do this one again, but with some variations. I read one idea about having a hot dog split, and putting the bun in the middle, which I know my kids would get a kick out of. We'll also play Unmusical Chairs.

Next up though, is Dr. Seuss's birthday (on Friday), so we will have, what else? Green eggs and ham for dinner, with apples (For Ten Apples Up on Top). We'll conclude the night watching Horton Hears a Who while eating fish cupcakes, for One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, and will make Cat in the Hat hats once Foster Child 1 comes home from school! Pictures of course will follow!

Valentine's Day

Since we have a new computer, I'm hoping blogging will be so much easier! It has to be, since I uploaded pictures from our camera in SECONDS! (However, today I discovered other things on the computer aren't so easy-like we don't have Word, Excel or Powerpoint anymore. Ugh, off to the Apple Store I'll go Monday!)

* As a side note, it was NOT easy to upload pictures to blogger, which is why it has taken days to put this post up. One quick 45 minute One on One session at the Apple Store helped me to figure out how to export my photos from iphoto onto the blog, and now it IS easy!*

Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday! I love what it celebrates and I love showing my husband and the Foster kids how much I love them. This year's celebration include heart shaped pizza and strawberries

and a treasure hunt, which I found on Serving Pink Lemonade.

The clues were: Do you believe in magic wishes?
Head to the place that cleans your dishes.

Now I know that you're no fool,
This is where your drinks keep cool.


Maybe you have super powers
The next clue will be where Dad takes his showers.

Are you having fun with all these clues?
Look in a place that we keep shoes.

Now it's almost time to rest your head.
Look right inside the smallest bed.


In each spot there were either Hershey kisses, or Valentine Snickers (free from Walgreens!). At the end, there were some valentine books that I had gotten from Target after Valentine's Day last year on clearance.

We ended the family portion of our Valentine's celebration eating strawberry ice cream sandwiches, with chocolate cookies as the "bread." The cookies were soft and moist because I used a cake mix to make them. Needless to say, they were a big hit!

Too good not to share!

Foster child #2: Mom, I know how to spell YMCA.
Me (stifling lots of giggles): Really?!? How do you spell it?
And then he proceeded to spell YMCA incorrectly (although I don't remember exactly what he said)

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