Christmas Decor

I usually decorate for Christmas the weekend after Thanksgiving. This year though I wanted my house decorated before my sister arrived a week before Thanksgiving. I think going forward I am going to decorate before Thanksgiving. I LOVE having the decorations up. It just makes things so much more festive. G helped me decorate the tree! He has a blast putting the ornaments on the tree! 

G did a great job helping me put the ribbon around the tree! 

A lot of the ornaments were put in one place. I had to move a couple, so we didn't have clumps of ornaments. lol I tried to just let him do it himself or suggest other areas so they were spread out. Next year I would like to put a little tree up in his room. I will let him do all the decorating himself, however he wants it done. 

I bought this white Santa after the holidays one year. It is one of my favorite items. I just love that it is one solid color. The little white house on my shelf came from the dollar bin at Target. Depending on the Target some had a lot and others had none. I had to hunt for these. 

I added a few decorations above the toys. 

G knows we don't touch the decorations. One of his friends was playing with a bell. He said C that is a decoration we don't play with those. YES! I am glad he knows he shouldn't play with them and tells others not to play with decorations too!

When do you decorate your house for the holidays? 

Happy Thanksgiving from our Little Indian!!!!

Grandparents Gift Guide

One of the best things ever invented was the Amazon Wish Lists!!!! My side of the family we all have a running wish list. It's wonderful to be able to go to the list and buy something the person actually wants. It's also fun to just send them a gift expectantly too! 

What do you buy grandparents for Christmas? I am all about not buying "stuff" people are going to end up throwing in a corner or in a closet until they decide to donate it. 

Have the grand kids make a video for the grandparents. You could do one for each. Here are some cute questions you could ask the kids to answer. 

• What makes Grandma/Grandpa happy?
• What is Grandma/Grandpa favorite food?
• How old is Grandma/Grandpa?
• What does Grandma/Grandpa do when you aren't at their house?
• What makes Grandma/Grandpa laugh?
• What do you and Grandma/Grandpa do together?
• What do you love most about Grandma/Grandpa?

My mother in law loves the Shutterfly calendars. I take pictures from over the past year and make her one every year. This helps because it is one item I know she will love it!

Who doesn't love a wonderful massage? Most people do! A spa day would be amazing. A massage, pedicure and/or facial. Everyone needs to relax and especially after the holidays!!!

Gift Cards! 

• Amazon Gift Cards!!! These are great for everyone! That way they can buy what they want. Some grandparents love their Kindle, so they can buy more books. Amazon offers every thing imaginable, so this is a great idea for anyone. 
• My dad always needs things and wants things from Tractor Supply. We bought him a gift card for his birthday. He called to tell us everything he bought with it. He liked being able to buy what he wanted and getting deals on things. If you know of your families favorite store this would be a great option.
• Coffee or restaurant gift cards

The possibilities are endless when it comes to gift cards! 

I hope this gives you some different ideas for your parents. Start making your list to get your Christmas shopping completed! 

Monday Thrive - October 30

1) There are things as a mother I never imagined saying. 

 - If you decide to pick your nose and eat your boogers I am going to have to take the ipad away from you. 
- No, I do not smell, the smell is from the porta-potty. After my toddler announced to the entire pumpkin patch that I stunk!
- Please do not eat that donut off the floor of Dunkin Donuts that you just dropped. 
- We do not take our shoes off at the play ground to run around. You need to leave your shoes on until we get to the car. 

There are so many other things I say that I just can't think of right now. I need to start writing these things down. lol

2) Life has been crazy lately. I actually have traveled a lot this fall. I don't travel much anymore since I stopped working. G and I went to visit my cousin in Texas for a long weekend. Then I went on a girls trip which was absolutely amazing! Art, G and I are getting ready to go on vacation. We planned this trip long before I went on all these others mini trips. I am really excited for our vacation. The 3 of us haven't ever gone on vacation alone. We have gone on lots of trips to see people or taken people with us. It's going to be very nice for the 3 of us to just relax on the beach. 

3) I haven't been posting menu ideas for awhile because I feel like we have been eating the same things every other week. I go to Costco, buy whatever veggies they have, grab meat from Amazon or Costco and throw it together. My energy level has been awful lately. Part of this was because I went off paleo for a few days a month or so ago. I suffered for weeks trying to get back on track. In the future I will have 1 cheat item instead of a cheat days. Wow it really is not good for my MS. I had so many issues after not eating paleo. Also I realized every year for the past 4 years in October I really battle MS. My 2 major attacks were in October. The other 2 years when I didn't have an attack I just struggle with things terribly. I can't figure out why. My vitamin d level is good. October has been warm for us, so it isn't the lack of sunshine. I have actually gotten more sun in the past month than I do in like December or January. Our vacation is coming at a great time. Hopefully the rest and relaxation will really help me. 

4) I am looking forward to the holidays! My sister and her fiance` are coming for Thanksgiving. We are going to celebrate Christmas with her while she is here. It will just be so nice to have her here. Packages keep arriving from Amazon that my sister has ordered. G thinks he needs to open them and check what auntie has sent. Trying to explain to a toddler the boxes can't be open aren't going well. 

I am going to put up my tree before Thanksgiving this year. :::gasp:::: I know before Thanksgiving!!! I want it up before my sister comes and I don't want to do it while she is here. We have way too much tourist activities to be attending. 

5) Last week we lost one of MTC friends. I met her last year at the conference. It's hard to believe one year later she is gone. This is what gets me with MTC. One day people are working, functioning normal life and the next day they are in hospice. If you don't use Smile Amazon please consider it! Each purchase Amazon will donate money to a charity. Medullary Thyroid Cancer really could use the money for research. There is such little research that has been done for MTC. We really need to find a cure. Right now more research is being done than has probably ever been done. I donated some of my tumor tissues recently to help with the research. I am not sure if they will find a cure during my lifetime, but any way I can help to hopefully one day find a cure is so important to me. 

I hope everyone has a spooky Halloween tomorrow!!! G is LOVING Halloween this year! I love that he is so into holidays! 

Halloween Wreath

A friend posted a Halloween wreath online that was soooo cute! She mentioned she paid $60 for someone to make it for her. I sent the picture to some of my friends and asked them if they thought we could make the wreaths! Everyone was game. I think all the supplies to make the wreaths were about $20 each. We had a fun afternoon chatting, eating some yummy food and crafting! 

All our supplies came from Hobby Lobby and Michael's. We made big bows, tied on little chalkboards, wrapped some lights around the wreath and added different little touches. I stuck some tiny little colorful spiders and some whispy black feather type things. G is REALLY into ghosts, so I added a ghost bulb. 

I really love how it turned out! 

Monday Thrive June 5

Happy Monday! 

1) This is our last week before preschool starts and vacations begin. G is enrolled in preschool for 2 days a week this fall. They suggested to enroll him in a session of summer school, so he would get use to things. Summer school is every day for 3 hours a day. I was hesitant to enroll him at first. Every day is a lot to me, but it is only for 4 weeks. Then we will be going to my parents for a month. When we come home we will have about a month before preschool starts up 2 days a week. 

I have plans to paint the trim in our house and go to hot yoga while he is in school every day. I am going to feel lost, so I felt I needed to find some activities to keep me busy. We will have our afternoons free to go to the zoo or other activities. I think we are both going to like the little change for a month.

2) Cinemark is offering $1 movies or $5 for 10 movies in select theaters near you. Click on the link to see if any movies are playing near you. G loves The Secret Life of Pets. They are playing that a couple times at different theaters new us this summer. I am planning to take him to a couple of these movies. I figure if he sits for 30 minutes for $2 it's no big deal. It will be something fun for us to do together and with friends. I am not sure how he will like a dark theater. 

3) Later this week I have a gift guide for Father's Day posts. My sister and I usually go in on a gift for our dad together. If you ask my mom what to get my dad she will say get him black jeans. If you ask my dad he will say DO NOT BUY ME BLACK JEANS I HAVE 100 PAIRS. It's a running joke between Lacey and I now. Hey it's dad's birthday do you want to buy the jeans or should I? He does have a ton of them! I need to figure out what to get him and have it sent, so it doesn't arrive 2 weeks after Father's Day. He is an easy person to buy for since he likes almost anything other than black jeans. lol

4) I recently read an article about a mother who started parenting like a Danish for a week. I really loved the article. I try to parent partially like this. I don't hover around G. I have always felt it was important that he should play independently. I also will let him run around the house without me following him around. I keep doors shut to rooms I feel he could get hurt or I put things up. I have noticed lately that he is playing better alone and his imagination is really growing. He was playing with his pets the other day with different voices pretending they were putting out fires. He is REALLY into fire trucks, fire poles, putting out fires etc. He still loves garbage trucks, but firemen/trucks are right up there with them now. What do you think of this article? 

5) Tomer Kosher recently sent me a variety pack of their beef jerky. I love jerky! The problem now that I am Paleo is trying to find jerky with ingredients that I don't cringe over or make me sick. They sent me the original, pepper, Cajun, hot and jalapeno. When I see hot jerky that is what I go for first. I love spicy things! My palette for spicy things is high I guess because this didn't seem hot to me at all. I have tried the original and Cajun. Art and I both really liked the Cajun. It has a kick to it! 

I really appreciate Tomer Kosher sending me the jerky. We have only ate 3 of them. I am trying to enjoy them as we eat them. lol I will purchase these in the future. These are something I would much rather my family eat then others on the market loaded with questionable ingredients. G loves jerky! Tomer Kosher mini beef sticks would be awesome because G would love them. =) 


Disclaimer: All thoughts and opinions are my own. The post Monday Thrive appeared first on Because Chocolate Can't Get You Pregnant.  

Easter Egg Hunt!

We had planned to go to an Easter egg hunt last week. G ended up getting a fever on Wednesday and was sick through Friday. We missed our egg hunt. I was sad. I was so looking forward to it and I thought G would have so much fun. I decided to do an egg hunt in the backyard. I filled some eggs with change, gummy candy, and other little things I got at the dollar store. 

I am so glad I did it because G had a BLAST! We ended up doing the egg hunt twice. He found almost all the eggs. I sent him back inside the house with Art, I hid all the eggs again and he came running out to search for them. He was so excited! It was just adorable! 

When he first started the egg hunt he would open each egg to see what was inside. The pictures above he has a mouth full of candy. I finally was able to convince him to find all the eggs then open them. 

He dumped them all out on the patio furniture and opened them all up. 

He was sooooo excited to find a dollar.

Later after the egg hunt we went to the park to burn off some of the candy! He had a lot of fun 

He is really into climbing up ladders lately. He does such a good job being very careful, but not afraid of the height. 

Disclaimer: All thoughts and opinions are my own. The post Easter Egg Hunt appeared first on Because Chocolate Can't Get You Pregnant.  

Easter Fun!

We had a lot of fun celebrating Easter this weekend. G loved dying Easter eggs! He was upset there weren't more. Each egg was dyed at least 3 times possibly 6 or 7. He even took a taste of the dye ugh! 

This was right when we started. He had a blast! 

Purple and green were his favorite colors. Every egg was put in blue and green even if they were yellow or orange. lol Such a silly kid. 

The Easter bunny left some baskets for a cute little toddler and husband. G wasn't happy he didn't have a container of Pringles in his basket. Next year I will have to add some chips. My mom use to let us eat our Easter candy as soon as we got our baskets. I have tried to do the same with G for Easter and Christmas stockings. He ate 3 of the 5 Annie's gummy candies immediately. 

Opening their baskets showing each other the loot they received! 

This was the look I received when I told him that he had to eat some breakfast after his 3 packages of gummies. He had a lip sticking out for a little bit. It's hard not to laugh at him when he gets upset and folds his arms. 

He was spoiled by all his grandparents this weekend. His Nana brought over this big basket. His Nonna bought him a tent and sleeping bag. He loved everything! 

Hope you had a wonderful Easter Weekend! 

Disclaimer: All thoughts and opinions are my own. The post Easter Fun appeared first on Because Chocolate Can't Get You Pregnant.  

Valentine's Play Date

I had a little Valentine play date party for G and a few of his friends. It turned out to be a lot of fun and really cute. I bought donuts from Krispy Kreme. Finding donuts that were not fried in peanut oil became my mission. I did not want to make donuts. I knew Dunkin Donuts didn't use peanut oil; however, they are over an hour away from me. 

I checked with our local little donut shop. They use peanut oil. I called Krispy Kreme headquarters to verify what type of oil they used. They use a vegetable oil to fry their donuts right on site. Perfect! There is a Krispy Kreme not far from our house. 

G and I headed there early before his party started. He of course needed to eat some of the donut as soon as we got into the car. I made a fritta and sausage to go with the donuts. I figured everyone would need something other than donuts. G wanted nothing to do with the other food. He just chowed down on donuts. 

I made cute little crafts for us to do. I bought some canvas from Michael's. I used painters tape for the LOVE. The plan was for the kids to paint the canvases, take the tape off and see LOVE. 

I bought the valentine plates and napkins at the Dollar Tree. 

After everyone enjoyed some food we pulled out the paints. The kids had so much fun painting on the plates and canvas. 

Then it was time to start to burn off some of those surgary treats! The kids played for a good 2 hours. Around 1pm G told everyone nite nite and headed to bed. He crashed for about 3 hours. Once he told everyone nite nite everyone decided to head home for nap time. It really was a cute day and a lot of fun!