I thought I would share an Ara made lunch! A chicken/provolone sandwich on ww, chips, toasted sea weed, pickles.

She’s going through a sandwich love affair at the moment. Once she found she could make her own, she asks to make them for lunch, snack, and dinner! She even makes them for me, such a sweetie.

So here’s the deal on 6 year olds making their own lunches; they can!

Ara grabs what she needs from the fridge, puts her lunch together, puts everything back, and wipes up the counter area. I think it’s important to know what you can expect realistically from each age and it just hadn’t occurred to me that she could and would happily make her own lunch. The idea came from a Mom of a school friend who mentioned that her kids make their lunches everyday. Ara doesn’t make her lunch everyday, it depends on how late we have activities going (let’s face it, we’re not morning people) so I still get to make a few lunches!

Here is the little bento maker now! Ara had an infected hang nail on her big toe that landed us in urgent care this week. We drew on the bed paper again and it seemed to piss off the doctor. He was a short tempered man who only spoke to me and never even looked into Ara’s face. Not my favorite doctor but he got the dead skin off and got her toe started on the road to recovery. She was very brave when he came in with a scalpel to cut open the would and remove the dead skin. She’ll be hobbling around for a little while and she’s on oral antibiotics, yuk!

We recently added two more tragedies to our aquaponics… this time we had one commit fish suicide (a jumper) and the other died with clear indications of the fish disease Ick. Neither death was the fault of our system but with 6 fish deaths now I’m starting to feel cursed! I need to find a different source of fish I think, we’ve been buying the feeder goldfish from Petsmart and they just don’t seem healthy.

While we were in Petsmart, Ara fell in love with one of the cats up for adoption from a local rescue group. I wish our big cat, Kuku was so affectionate, but he’s too old to change his ways now!

I keep looking at the Pima Animal Control facebook because I’ve fallen in love with a smiling pit-bull named Chico. We don’t have a fenced yard for a puppy like this but I so want him to find the home he deserves!

Chico’s story is that he was brought in as a scar covered stray. Taken from the streets to live in a kennel for 2 months. The stress took a toll on him and he had to go to sick bay for a while. Then he was given a clean bill of health and featured as one of the 48 dogs of the month last month. Because he was featured, he had a groomer come and make him look his best. The volunteers say that he stood still and patient as the water went over his head! I look at his pictures and I feel like he believes his new family is on the way to finally give him a safe and loving home. I really really need that hope to not be in vain! Look at his trusting face!

I’m the new/temp poster of bentos on Bentocentral.com and since I’ve been looking through some of the most creative bento photos online I’ve become motivated to do more than pack a functional lunch. For starters I gave the Laptop Lunch box the day off and used the fish shaped box from the Disney store (which broke today boo). On the left I have apple slices, pickles, baby carrots, and rolled up chicken/provolone sandwiches. On the right I have restaurant left over breaded chicken that I added sweet and sour sauce to.

It’s been a WHILE since I tried to take an artistic photo of a bento and you can see I tried some stuff… and well, it’s a head scratcher isn’t it? Oh well, that’s what happens when you wait until 8:05 am to take a picture when you have to be out the door in 10 minutes!

Our first carrot! I think I’ve mentioned that we are new gardeners before, but if you didn’t believe me before, here’s some twisty carrot proof! The tops of the carrots were starting to look impressive and even when we exposed the top of the carrot it looked pretty good sized. So.. I told Ara she could yank one out of the pot! It was an exciting moment, let me tell you! It turns out the carrots could use a little more growing time. Ara took this little carrot guy to school for her show-and-tell anyway. She couldn’t be more proud of her gardening success!

We also picked a mini red bell pepper! He’s cute, isn’t he?

After all that harvesting work (one carrot, one pepper), we whipped up some breakfast. I have been trying alternatives to coconut milk because even though I love it, it actually angers the gallbladder-less digestive system! Sad. Our favorite alternatives are orange juice and almond milk. Almond milk is so healthy and tasty but I was avoiding it in the daily smoothies because I wanted to keep it 100% fruit. The funny thing is that I feel great after an almond milk and fruit smoothie. So.. let’s go with it! On this morning, Ara put our ingredients’ together (our smoothies are like snowflakes!), we had mango, pineapple, strawberry, blueberry, frozen banana (so important for texture and sweetness), and a little bit of Trader Joe orange juice. The result was a tropical tasting explosion of flavor! She is quite the smoothie chef!

Here’s a thin sandwich  bread for you! I used a rolling pin to make some WW bread nice and flat so I could roll up chicken and provolone cheese. I remember my Dad telling me this ‘grandparent hack’ a long time ago. When he would watch my nephew it was always a struggle to get him to sit down and eat. So my Dad would take a piece of bread, spread a little peanut butter on it, then squish it into a ball. My nephew, Joey would pop the little sandwich ball into his mouth without a struggle! I laughed and laughed when my Dad told me this! So this is a little fancier version of that.

I also added pickles and baby carrots, the box came back cleaned out! So I know it was a hit .

This weekend is our staycation! I’m so excited! Alex and I are going to stay the night in a local resort while Ara spends the night with family. Alex won the tickets in a work raffle and at first we couldn’t really see the point in using them ourselves. After a while I started to come around to the idea. No dishes in the sink or clothes in the dryer. No mental list of “TO DO” as I look around. That might be nice! So in honor of Alex’ Birthday and Mother’s Day, we are going to go crazy.. and relax.

On a Wednesday park playdate, our friends were running behind so Ara agreed to pose for a few pictures. I love that her ‘smile’ is so weird when I point a camera at her. Hilarious girl.

We’ve already had a few days over 100F here so our park play dates may soon become swimming play dates. Ara passed the YMCA swim test a couple months ago and is now considered an independent swimmer. Because of her age I’m still required to be beside her in the pool, which I would be anyway. She gets to wear the ‘big kid’ colored swim bracelet and if we happen to go to a YMCA with a pool slide, she can go down it! These are important things!

I’ve only ever seen this bird at Reid Park, and every time I do I wonder what the heck it is! Does it look lost? Does it think this shallow artificial lake is the ocean? I love it’s one long head feather and super intense red eye.

We recently enjoyed a bounce house Birthday Party. Watching the kids so occupied and happy (and in no danger of drowning) I started to think that’s the way to go. Of course Ara’s Birthday is in August, which means it will be WAY TOO HOT to bounce outside. Something to think (bounce) on though. I was just wondering when the grown-up bounce time was, I think I could have some serious fun in there!

The perennial issue at Birthday parties.. the artificially colored cake. I told her she could scrape off the red part pretty easily. Which she did.. she scooped it cleanly off with a spoon, straight into her mouth. And she looked pretty please with herself about it too. I let her make her own choice there. Usually she chooses not to eat artificial colors, sometimes the temptation is too great. I do know for a fact, if I forbid her to eat them, she would ALWAYS eat them when I wasn’t looking. I occasionally remind her that she gets the ‘crazies’ and ‘laughing mouth’ when she eats artificial colors and that she should be aware and use her self control. Those might not sound like bad things but they are basically our code for out-of-control Ara. As she gotten older she seems more capable of handling herself. It’s still a challenge though. Plus, they’re gross.

Our weekly trips to the library have involved lots of deep sea information. We are fascinated with Sperm Whales and Giant Squid at the moment. Did you know that more people have been to the moon that the deepest part of the ocean? There are whole eco systems down there that never see an ounce of sunlight. I could go on and on, Ara and I can’t get enough of BBC documentaries about it! Alex surprised us with the Deep Ocean Blue Planet and the entire Planet Earth series. I love the movies but one of my (secret) favorite things about it is that we watch them over and over and I get so sleepy. It’s the combination of the smell of Ara, the soothing voice of the documentary and BAM I get the greatest mini-naps ever! Don’t tell anyone, ok?

We’ve had some creative lego moments waiting for gymnastics class to start at the YMCA.

Our planter and aquaponics gardening efforts are still going well. This grasshopper is thankful to us. He was so nice to let me take zillions of photos of him, we let him hop off happily on his way. We are a no-kill garden so far. Although I wouldn’t mind if some ladybugs happened to want to eat all of our aphids.

Pretty, our live Christmas tree was decorated in mini flowers so that Ara’s dinosaurs could have a Christmas in May.

Now that I look at the picture I guess it was a dino/sea mammal Christmas.

The herbivores seemed especially joyous.

And, that’s it for this GIANT update on our daily comings and goings!

We had a sub Zumba teacher today and I realized party of my obsession is with my teacher! Creepy, Mindi, very creepy. My teacher is this energetic lady from Columbia with 2 kids. She seems so exotic and dances like she loves it! She literally smiles the entire class, even when she yells, “it’s hurts”! I think part of me wants to BE her…

So today when the sub showed up I was struck by my lack of motivation. She was a fit person, of course, but she taught Zumba like an exercise class. She yelled out the moves and occasionally did a weird “woo haa” like a cowgirl. Her choreography was similar but the music wasn’t loud and she did the moves in such a tame way. With her grey hair and sterile moves I kept glancing at the clock and wishing it was over. It’s not her fault, she was a great teacher actually, but I didn’t want to be her.. yeah that’s not getting less creepy.

Now I understand why people will travel across town to be with a specific teacher. The teacher who can capture that “party” feeling for you!

Meet my file cabinet! I painted this in chalkboard paint back in December and let me tell you, it’s pretty much awesome. I use it weekly to keep track of our lives as you can see. Which is great.. until you accidently erase part of it with your bag that you carelessly drop in front on the floor.

As you can see from the “Be Better” drawer I’m still showing the YMCA what a ridiculously uncoordinated person looks like in a Zumba class. I’ve even cut off the seems of my shirt for tomorrow so I can look awesome (or like I have too much time and scissors).

I’m kind of embarrassed that this was the menu I chose to take a picture of, it was a ‘eat cheap’ week and beans and eggs are cheap ok? Besides the fact that I RARELY stick to my weekly menus. I always get to the store and start improvising. Which is code for buy things that aren’t on the list while forgetting things that are on the list. Oh, but how I adore my lists.

Aquaponics-ly I never mentioned that we added fish, and then a week and a half later they all died. It was my fault for thinking I could manage the spiking ammonia of a new tank and 4 fish. I feel terrible! So since then I’ve added plants and let the system cycle fishless for a couple weeks. Alex bought me a PVC cutter as a surprise present today so I can make my last little modifications to the drain syphon! And then in May I’ll try again with fish. Woo Hoo!