Spring = Blog slacking

It's raining right now. Thundering and lighting, too. My babies are sleeping soundly and I've been looking through oodles and oodles of pictures from the past couple of weeks. And I promise that the faces looking back at me are. not. starving. :)  But the pictures of food are. definitely. lacking. I found one set of food pics, though, that I want to share. It shows the ease of making a "kids meal" out of a "grown up" meal.

I wandered around the grocery store alone a few days ago and as I meandered to the check-out, I took notice of a mom beside me. More accurately, I took notice of her shopping cart. There were lunchables. And those frozen PB&J sandwiches, with no crusts and what appeared to be white bread. And fruit cups - the kind with canned fruit: peaches, pears, and an occasional cherry. I saw juice boxes and kool-aid. Frozen pizzas and frozen chicken fingers. Pop-tarts. In theory, that shopping cart hit many of the food groups: meat, grains, fruit. Each and every bit of which was contained in a box, with an ingredient label, and a whole lot of unnecessary. 

My point is that cooking for your kids doesn't mean buying food that is made for kids. Does it mean adapting some of your tastes and preferences in order to make sure your littles ones eat a hearty meal? Absolutely. Here's where I'm going with this:

On Mother's Day Eve (I personally view Mother's Day as a 3-day event), John fixed us dinner. We had fresh spinach from the farmer's market, some local chicken, and organic sweet potatoes. John and I were going to have a nice spinach salad; the girls are not really into leafy greens yet. So they got some green beans as their veggie, strawberries, mashed sweet potatoes, and chicken. Couldn't be simpler... or tastier.

And how about a few reasons why, on this Mother's Day, I continue to be the luckiest momma around:

• At the dinner table, after telling a story about a little boy who had a bee in his shorts, stinging him:
• Abby: "What you talking about?"
• Me: "A little boy who got stung by a bee."
• Abby: "Oh. What color?"
• Me: "The bee?"
• Abby: "No, the little boy's shorts."
• While heading out to run errands with just Elise, after dropping Abby off at Gran and Grandpa's for a playdate:
• Elise (on the pretend phone): "Hi Gran. This Elise. I running errands with Momma. Abby stay with you but if I don't go running errands, Momma be too lonely."
• At the library. I was down one of the aisles looking at books, when I heard a familiar little voice talking to the librarian, Ms Jane:
• Abby: "Ms. Jane who wrote Mary?"
• Ms Jane: "Excuse me?"
• Elise: "Who the author that wrote Mary?"
• As I came around the corner, there are my two little ladies, behind the circulation desk, at the librarian's computer, inquiring about who wrote Mary Wore Her Red Dress. Ms Jane kindly told them the author's last name and took them to find the book. Sweet Ms Jane - thank you for sending a book home with us... AGAIN... to be read 14 million times. Oh, how we love Mary and her red dress. :)