King and King

One of our favorite outings is to the library. There is one about 2 blocks from our house that we walk to for story times or just to pick out and bring home new books to read. Some of them are better than others by far, but it is really hard to tell from the cover what a children's book will have to offer. We generally just pick random ones off the shelf and decide if we like them or not once we get home. I picked up one really neat looking book called King and King, that had artsy decopage looking illustrations for us to read, all gathered around on the big stuffed alligator on the pretty kids rug. The story goes something like this: A queen is tired of being queen and tells her son the prince he needs to get married. He reluctantly agrees, so the queen sends off to kingdoms far and wide to bring all of the eligible princesses for him to meet. There are funny looking ones and ones who do crazy things, as is the story in most of these type books. Finally the last princess comes in and she is the blonde beautiful one as you might imagine, and for her long jouney she has brought along her brother. The book says something like, "finally the prince's heart started beating wildly and a wedding was planned for the next day" or something like that. I was still just reading along not really anticipating anthing when, BAM, the next page says, "The two princes were married and they were called king and king, and they ruled happily for the rest of their lives." on the last page was a picture of two kings kissing. I was totally in shock! I was just reading along expecting the prince to pick the blonde as usual and then WHAT???? In this children's book, I am not kidding. Mia said she liked it and wanted to bring it home, but that one went back up on the shelf.

I bought this big bag of fun looking stuff at goodwill for a couple of bucks; it has pipe cleaners and leather strings and sequins and pompoms of all different colors and sizes. I had forgotten about it but recently found it and thought it would be fun for Mia to play with all of the pretty things. Last night we dumped it out and Rex just kept saying, "Oh poor Mia is going to get in so much trouble when she won't pick all of this up when mommy tells her to." Well, happily she did pick it all up with our help, so this afternoon after swim lessons I decided to let her play with them again. Lets just say I'm glad Rex wasn't here to gloat! I wasn't fussing at her to pick up, I just calmly reminded her that until every last thing was put in the bag she couldn't have anything to eat or drink or play with or no nap or no computer games or no TV. About 2 hours later, with her crying that I was hurting HER feelings because I wouldn't help her and how mean I was, she got a spanking and went to bed and I cleaned it all up with the broom and hid them in the closet. Maybe when she is 5 we will get them out again. I had left her to pick up while I went and nursed Eleanor upstairs and she came in all sad that she didn't have any friends to help her, and she had on her saddest of the sad faces and I couldn't help but laugh.. picture this, cute little blonde with stringy messy hair from swimming with her sad face on, wearing nothing but her My Little Pony panties that were on backwards because she did it herself, so the baggy part was in the front and the tushy part was mostly hanging out, then on top of that add sequins stuck to said tushy from her sitting around in the pile, then add one black dress shoe and one tennis shoe that she put on while stalling and not cleaning, and I just had to laugh. That didn't help the situation I suppose, but if you can't laugh at a stinky little 3 year old, what can you do?

Finally, another yummy freezable meal... Spinach Quiche!
So saute an onion in olive oil until is it clear, stir in one package of frozen spinach (thawed out and drained really well), then I added chopped up ham, but you could add another meat or veggies or nothing else at all.
-Press one store bought pie crust into your baking dish. Sprinkle with shredded mozzerella cheese (1/2 cup) and 1/2 cup parmesean cheese.
-in a bowl, wisk together 4 eggs and 1/2 cup cottage cheese.
-Spread the spinach mixture over the pie crust and cheese and pour the egg mixture on top. Pop in the oven for about an hour or until the middle isn't jiggley at all and will cut clean in the middle. The cheese will get nice and toasty on top when it is done.

This is so so easy to double, just add two of everything as you are doing it, spread in two pie pans, bake both at the same time, eat one and freeze one! Yum yum.