Keeping in Teutsch

This past Wednesday was Juliette's 5th birthday. We celebrated by going to Chuck-E-Cheese's, as we have for the past two birthdays as well. (We'll be having a birthday party for her after Labor Day down here.) She was so excited to turn 5!

I can't believe how fast the years are going by and I'd now like to stop time!
Hopefully the next five years will go by much slower!

With Juliette starting kindergarten, the problem/question of what to pack for her school lunch on the days when the cafeteria is serving food she doesn't eat has been on my mind a lot. I'm all about being organized. I love lists, charts, planners, any organizational tools. So I was over-the-top excited when I ran across these printable charts on Martha Stewart's website to put together a magnetic lunch chart.
First, though, I had to brainstorm some ideas on what to pack (especially since Juliette doesn't really eat sandwiches) and I used Martha's chart to guide me by making a list based off the symbols she used: sandwiches (or in our case, main dish); fruits; side items; and desserts.

In case you are looking for ideas, here's what we'll be packing this year:
--The Orange Row (main dishes): cheese quesadillas, mac & cheese in her new Hello Kitty thermos, turkey roll-ups (turkey rolled up), diced ham, grilled cheese sandwich, grilled chicken (she would eat that cold/lukewarm), yogurt, and diced cheese to go with the cold meats
--The Green Row (fruit): apple slices, strawberries, grapes, applesauce squeezer, raisins, peaches, mandarin oranges, banana
--The Blue Row (side items): pretzels, chips, granola bar, cereal bar, goldfish, crackers
--The Red Row (dessert/snack item): cookie, chocolate chips, yogurt covered raisins, granola bar (if not eating as side item), muffin

I also made magnets to use when she is going to buy her lunch at school. If you want to use these print outs, just go to the link above, print out the chart, and then open the page with the colored squares, type right on the squares, and print them out. Then buy some magnetic paper or magnetic strips, cut out your squares, and affix them to the sticky side of the magnets. I made ours smaller so that we could fit multiple things on one day. (For instance, Juliette doesn't like any raw vegetables, but if you child does, you could put those on the fruit row as well, so you'd need to cut your squares smaller so you could have room for both a fruit and a veggie in that square.) We taped our chart to the front of our fridge and are storing our extra magnets on the side. If you have a stainless steel refrigerator and don't have access to the sides of it, then I suggest making a magnetic board (or buying one) to hang in your kitchen (or inside your pantry or a cabinet door). You can Google how to make those.
Hope this little organizational chart helps take the headache out of fixing school lunches! Too bad it can't help me teach Juliette to eat faster...she only had time to eat her cheese quesadilla today and ate the rest of her lunch when she got home. I'm sure she'll learn!

Matt was up super early and at church by 6:45 am, while Juliette and I slept in until 9:30 am. (It was nice!) We made it to church just in time, and after church, we came home and ate hot dogs for lunch. While we were eating lunch, I multitasked and worked on finishing up our weekend project. (See Monday's blog post.) Around mid-afternoon, I went and picked up the school-themed cookie cake I had ordered and when I got back, Juliette helped me out by dusting everything while I did some laundry. Around time to fix dinner (and set up for our back to school dinner), I sent Matt and Juliette away, so it would be a surprise when Juliette came back and saw the table decorated (and so I could mop and not have them walking around the apartment). They went to Wal-mart to look around and I decorated. (Details of what I did are below each picture.)
The circle garland was made out of card stock. Circles were hand cut (as they were a last minute addition and Matt had to reprogram our computer over the weekend, so my Silhouette software wasn't available at the time). I sewed the circles together on my sewing machine. We got "The Night before Kindergarten" and the 1st day of kindergarten card at Target. The "individually yours" cookie cake came from The Great American Cookie Company.

Each person had a "placemat" that was made out of cardstock and paper that I had on hand, using my Silhouette to cut on the letters, numbers, and apple. The pencil art and the notebook art came from a teacher's bulletin board pack that I bought at Target for around $3.

For the centerpiece, I used fabric I had on hand, wrapped three books in brown paper, tied with a ribbon I had on hand, and used apples that Juliette will be taking to lunch later this week. The mini-Composition notebook was something I had on hand as well and will serve as the place where we write down what Juliette (and any future kids) are looking forward to that year at school.
For dinner, I fixed Juliette's favorite: tacos and refried beans. If you look closely, you will see that I made little straw decorations also out of paper I had on hand, using the Silhouette to cut them out. Then I used white scrapbook stickers that I had in my stash to put our first initials on them. Total cost to do all this (not including dinner, since I would have cooked regardless): approximately $25. And the placemats and garland will be reused each year for our new annual tradition.

While we ate dinner, we talked about school and then I read "The Night before Kindergarten" while we ate cookie cake. Juliette told me I was the "best" no less than six times this weekend!

The fun had to end after dinner, though, as the end of our weekend was quickly approaching and I still had lots to do. I was hoping to get the kitchen and bathroom completely cleaned as well, but it didn't happen and I ended up only having time to completely finish the laundry, wash only the larger dirty dishes, and iron a shirt for Matt. I then called my mom back and talked with her for a little bit and then headed to bed, not looking forward to my 6 am alarm!

We've had a good week and I hope you enjoyed the play-by-play. Maybe I'll do this ever once in a while.

This morning Juliette woke me up at 8 o'clock wanting to watch Disney channel. I turned it on for her and told her to come get me when the show was off so I could get a few more minutes of sleep. I don't think I really even fell asleep before she was back in the room, so I just got up and cuddled on the couch with her for a little bit. (Well, she didn't cuddle much, opting after a few minutes to instead hit and kick those balloons from last night for what seemed like at least 30 minutes.) After a little bit, Juliette decided she was ready for breakfast, so I fixed us some waffles (out of the freezer) and Matt got up around the time we were eating. After breakfast, we didn't do much, and then I finally (in the late morning), went and got a shower so we could go to the Games of Acadiana.

Games of Acadiana is an event where companies pay/donate money to sponsor games for the Miles Perret Cancer Center. The companies are donating to a good cause and the community gets to come out and show their support and play those games for free. First thing in the door, Juliette had to have her face painted, and she decided to get some hearts on her arm as well, so she was all decked out. Then, we took her to the kids area where she hit more balloons around (except these were really big ones) and then she participated in some football themed games where she got some of those under eye stickers like the football players wear.

Matt and I also played some games too. Juliette and Matt raced each other in the Pizza Hut "server relay." (Juliette won.) And Juliette went through the life size Candyland game twice since they were giving out candy all through it!

The last thing she did was kick some soccer goals. Look at her cool little action shot:
We left around 3 and decided to go to the new grocery store by the Cajundome to get the refrigerated items that I couldn't get at Super Target yesterday. This new store, Rouse's, is a local, South Louisiana chain and Matt hadn't been yet, so he wanted to go check out their meat section. He ended up buying some shark to pan sear some time next week. (He's more adventurous with his eating than I am. Not so sure about eating shark...) After that, we came back by the apartment so I could put the groceries up, and then we headed back to Target so I could get my refund from the overcharge yesterday. On the way home, I had Matt stop at JoAnn's Fabrics so I could get some magnet strips to finish the project Juliette and I are working on.

Once we got home, we were pretty tired, but after resting for a little bit while Matt went to the bedroom to read, we got our second wind and Juliette went to her room to play and I got out my Silhouette machine to cut out some stuff for our special dinner tomorrow night. We ate a late dinner and then I did some laundry and now Juliette is in the tub and I'm quickly writing this. I'll probably have to stay up a little while longer to change the clothes out, but I don't have to work check-in at church tomorrow, so Juliette and I will get to sleep in and go to the late service. Matt, however, is already in bed because he has to work sound tomorrow and has to be at church at 6:45 am because the band/praise team rehearses at that time. (Crazy, huh?) Glad it's him and not me! :)

I didn't want to get up this morning, but it helped knowing that it was almost the start of the weekend. I LOVE Fridays...not only because it's the last day of the work week, but also because I get off at Noon on Fridays! It's wonderful...I would totally cry if they changed our work schedule!

At work, I got that middle school librarian list finished and wrapped up some loose ends and emails, and even played for a little bit with my boss's 3 year old who was there with his daddy. (He is adorable...and he seemed to love me!)

Usually on Fridays after work, Juliette and I go grocery shopping, but we did something different today. I had one of those daily deals for the restaurant at Vermilionville (a cajun heritage living history museum here in town) that was about to expire, so we needed to use it. I had been to a retirement party there for my old boss and loved their food, which is why I bought the deal, but the restaurant is only open for lunch, so that's why we haven't been yet. So, we went and it was great! Juliette and I shared fried catfish and jambalaya and Matt had their lunch buffet, complete with bread pudding with praline sauce. Yummy! (And, since I had bought the deal months ago, it only cost us $3.80 today, plus a tip!)

After lunch, we came back home and I sat down and planned out meals and lunches for next week and made out a grocery list. Juliette decided to stay home with Matt, so I went by myself. On the way, I stopped at the Hershey's Ice Cream Store here in town, but not for ice cream, though. The Great American Cookie Company is part of their store, and I had a daily deal for it as well that I've been saving to use for Juliette's birthday (and our special "back to school dinner" that we're having Sunday night). I ordered a little square cookie cake with apples and 1, 2, 3 and A, B, C on it for our dinner (which I will blog about Sunday night) and a larger round one for us to have for her birthday on Wednesday. Then, on the way to Super Target, I stopped off at Old Navy to see if they had any school uniform shorts left in Juliette's size (I prefer the way the Old Navy ones look on her, but we only were able to get one pair of them.) They didn't have any, but I did get Juliette and me new, really cute Saints shirts!

I finally made it to Super Target and since I didn't have Juliette with me, I took my time looking around the store and all the time thinking, "Man, it's hot in here!" When I got over to the food side to get the groceries, I realized that they were having some electrical issues, as all the refrigerated cases where blocked off with boxes (trying to keep the cold air in I guess), so I wasn't able to get any of the "cold" stuff that I needed to. After I got home and put everything away, I realized that I was double charged for a $13 item, but at this point it was after 5 and I didn't want to go back and get it corrected (will have to go back tomorrow). I felt pretty frustrated about my whole shopping trip at this point!

I can't really remember what we did between then and about 8...I know Juliette and I ate some pretzels and took turns biting off pieces of them to turn them into letters and numbers. And, I took a bath in that time frame too. I didn't cook dinner since we weren't hungry...we just snacked. Juliette added some raisins and a granola bar to her pretzels and called it dinner.

At 8, we went across the parking lot to our friends Brad and Christine's apartment, as they had invited us over to meet Christine's sisters who were in town and have birthday cake (it was one of her sisters' birthday). We stayed over there until after 10 (Juliette and Christine played with the balloons pretty much the whole time) and then we came home (with a garbage bag of balloons) and went to bed way too late!

We slept in until 7:30 (since Juliette didn't have to be at school until 9:30 and I had taken the morning off). Juliette got up when I did and the first thing she said was, "Zero days until I go to kindergarten!" She wanted to get dressed right away, so I let her and then we ate breakfast together. She watched some cartoons while I got ready and we had just enough time left to snap the very-important first day of school pictures.

When we arrived at school, the first thing we had to do was go to the cafeteria where the art program was explained (she'll be rotating between the seven different areas every 3 weeks, visiting most of them twice within the year). While there we had to pay her art fee as well. Juliette was very anxious to get to her classroom and kept asking, "When is this going to be over" and saying, "I'm ready to go!" When we got to her classroom (the theme in it is nautical), we unpacked her school supplies and put them in their proper locations around the classroom. The teacher (who is new this year; she taught for 8 years in Mississippi) explained about the folder that will be coming home daily and we had to pay our classroom fee, as well as write down how our child was getting home today. As soon as we got the school supplies put up, Juliette sat down in her seat and asked me, "Am I going to learn to read today?" Have I mentioned how excited she is to be going to kindergarten and learning to read?

I had no problems leaving her and she was fine with me leaving as well, which was good. I knew we wouldn't have a problem because of her going to preschool and daycare and being so independent. (By the way, she wouldn't let me hold her hand as we were walking to the cafeteria or her classroom. She didn't say anything...just kept dropping my hand when I took hers, so I "got the hint" sadly.)

I came home and went to work, but I'll admit I had a little trouble concentrating or being productive today because I couldn't wait to hear how Juliette's day went. Matt couldn't go with me this morning as he had a meeting, so he was anxious to pick her up and hear about her day as well. Her school is on a different schedule then the rest of the public elementary schools here (8:30-3:30 is her school hours), so Matt left around 2:45 to get in the car pick-up line (and to check out how crowded it was so he can figure out when to go next week). He called me at 3:00 to say that it was already packed and he was the last person next to the road in the line. He took a book and read while he waited the 30 minutes for school to let out, and he called me at about 3:45 when he finally got her, so I foresee LONG car pick-up lines and wait times in Matt's future! He tells me that next week he's not going to get there until 3:30 since the line moved pretty quickly once it got going.

Pretty much the only thing Matt got out of Juliette about her day was this (that he posted to Facebook): "I asked Juliette if she made any friends today. She said she made one. She did not know the girl's name, though. However, she said, 'She's my new best friend. She had a ponytail and a brown face. I don't care if she had a brown face.' That's my girl."

After work, I came home to hear about Juliette's day and it was like pulling teeth! She said it was a good day, but I had to ask A LOT of questions in order to get anything out of her. She told me that she ate her beef tips and rice and gravy and strawberries for lunch and drank strawberry milk. (She said, "I like lima beans, but they looked yucky so I didn't try them, and I licked my roll but I didn't like the way it tasted." I had given her the choice of taking her lunch or eating what was being served and she told me she would try the food there.) She told me that there were no snacks today because the parents have to bring them, that the teacher made them go to the bathroom twice today and that the door was stuck one time and she couldn't get it open so another girl crawled under the stall and helped her, that she took a nap (and "I CAN bring a blanket, Mommy, the teacher doesn't care!"), and that she needs $10 for a t-shirt (but I didn't find that information anywhere in the folder she brought home!). And, just now, as I'm sitting here typing this, Juliette just told me (without my asking) what they did today after I left: "After you left, we had to stand up and push our chairs under the table and stand behind them and wait for our table's name to be called (mine is #2), then we had story time, then we went to the bathroom, then we went to lunch, then we played outside, came back and had story time again, then we went to the bathroom again and went to the 'exercise room' where we played soccer. After that, we came back and took a nap." (Today was orientation day for the girls, so there was no actual teaching time...that will start next week.)

After I got as many details from Juliette as I could (which now that she told me that last part I feel pretty informed), we had dinner (whatever-you-want night). I usually have my women's Bible study on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of the month, but I was tired and so I decided to just stay home tonight. While I was eating a sandwich, Juliette got out her sight word flash cards (she had already eaten) and so we worked on separating them into the ones that were on the list we were given and the ones that weren't. (I made her find them on the list and check them off while I was eating and make the two separate piles.) After that, Juliette and I worked on a little project that I'm going to blog about later next week, as I think it deserves it's own post. Then, at 7:30, Juliette decided she was ready for bed and went and got ready without me even telling her. (Since she doesn't have school tomorrow, she can just take a bath in the morning.) She wanted to watch some more of the movie she was watching the other night, so I put her to bed and I WAS all by myself in the living room (Matt was taking a bath), but now it's after 9 and everybody is back in here. It started storming, so Juliette came running.

And that was our night...just a lazy one at home. Since it's storming, though, I'm going to head to bed now...I love sleeping while it's raining! :)

I made it to work today on time (only because I put my hair in a ponytail and didn't blow dry it). Wednesdays are really busy shipping days for me, as majority of our distributors place their reorders on Tuesdays and I try to get their orders out by the time UPS runs at 10 am on Wednesday mornings. So I spent half the morning in the mail area. Before lunch, I also looked through and gave my thoughts on the images for an art book we are doing on New Orleans, and I copy edited the introduction to another book. While all that was going on, Juliette attended Graduate School Orientation (for new graduate students) with Matt, as he had to give a presentation since he is the English department's representative for one of the graduate organizations (or something like that). Matt also took Juliette along with him to the lunch they had for everybody, and I'm a tad jealous because Juliette told me she had jambalaya and it was "yummy." (I love the jambalaya here!)

This afternoon after the mail run, I worked some more on the middle school librarian list (halfway done now!) while Juliette joined me in my office for about an hour. (Matt had a study group.) After Juliette and I walked home from work, we packed her school supplies in her backpack (or repacked them...she had already crammed it full that afternoon after Matt and she had picked her backpack and lunchbox up from the embroidery place).

After we did that, I coaxed Juliette into trying on a few variations of her school uniforms so I could post pictures tonight. (I promised her an M&M McFlurry after dinner!)

You can click on any of these pictures to see them larger. There are actually probably 7 more combinations we could do (I figured it up walking to work the other day), but I did good to get her to try this many. Something we learned in this process: the buttons on some of these bottoms are hard for Juliette to snap! I made her sit down with one of the skorts and practice after we got through taking pictures, but I just don't think her hands are strong enough. (It's the skorts that are giving her problems.) Thankfully, those skorts have the adjustable waist, so we'll just wear them loose so she can pull them up and down without having to unbutton and button them. She did get the hang of tucking her shirt in on the first try (and even got all the back in as well) This would be so much easier if she just had elastic waistbands and didn't have to tuck in her shirt, but I know she needs to grow up and learn these things! (Oh, and she fastened her belt with no problem as well.) My favorite outfit out of all of these is the white shirt and khaki pants, but she will not be wearing this often! (I just bought one white shirt, mainly for if there is a school program and they ask for them to wear white shirts.) Oh, and I think we have all the color combinations covered in our bow supply too:

Right after we finished taking pictures, Matt came home from his study group and heavily hinted at wanting pizza for dinner. I wasn't going to cook and it was just going to be a "whatever you can find to eat" night, but I caved and let Matt go get Papa John's. (Right now, if you've read my posts over the last few days, you're thinking 1) I never cook and 2) We eat out all the time, especially since we ate out all weekend, but this isn't the norm. I might not cook every night, but we usually don't eat out this often. We typically eat out once a week and may pick up pizza or fast food one other time during the week...although I realize that is probably more than most people eat out. We just enjoy eating out, so I always budget it in and ever since these Daily Deal websites have started, it's easy to find deals here in Lafayette for half off at a restaurant!)

Anyway, after we ate, Juliette and I went and got snack size McFlurries from McDonalds (like I had promised) and now I'm typing this and she is cleaning up her room. Matt already has headed to bed and when he told Juliette goodnight, she said, "Daddy, I'm so proud of you." He said, "Why?" She said, "Because you are going to bed early!" (He has been going to bed really, really late all summer and is trying to get back into routine this week since classes start back next week.)

And now, I'm going to get off here and finish up our bedtime routine, complete with a reading of another chapter or two of The Boxcar Children. Juliette doesn't have to be at school tomorrow until 9:30 am, but I went ahead and took the whole morning off (again), so we don't have to worry about getting up too early! I can't even tell you how excited this girl is about going to school! Maybe I can get her on video in the morning!