Eating Healthfully and Working Out = Great Day

Call it whatever you want, I think I had a pretty good day with even less cheating than yesterday.  I had another Smoothie with Arbonne Chocolate Protein Powder (first ingredient: Sugar), and another coffee from the coffee shop, (small and skinny...not very yummy), but other than those, no cheating. Oh wait, dinner had to be quick because of Running Club so I baked some frozen (greasy) sweet potato fries and fish nuggets (real fish, not scary fishstick fish) that had some kind of breading on them, but really, considering the standard Western alternatives, not bad.  I drank more water today and am actually feeling great now after running club.

Running Club was my WOD, a run/walk of 2 miles to set up the route and then guessing about another 2.5 actually with the club (the route is sort of 'invisible hare' and hounds format, with a mystery route at every corner).

The kids are loving the pre-dinner veggie snack tray system.  Dip. dip. dip.

Busy day, time for bed. Good Night!!!

Super Hero Capes

Back in May, I made a super hero cape for a friend's birthday gift. I didn't want to blog until I had made one for my own son, Sharkboy. Now, almost 4 months later, I've finally finished Sharkboy's cape.

Happy Mother's Day!!!!

I've forgotten to do anything for my own mom for about as many years as I've been alive. Somehow, now that I am a mom myself, and I sit around wondering/hoping/expecting something from the hubby for the hallmark holiday, I manage to remember my own mom, and MIL too.

I was inspired by a craft I saw on Grace Violet. Here are the results:

And on the backs, Tyler wrote these and they glued them:

I got the dotted words from here. There are a few different sites that you can make your own handwriting sheets. This site wouldn't make them very big, so I printed them and then magnified them on our copy machine, since Tyler prefers to write BIG. 

Each grandma got one of these, and some other random artwork from recent weeks.

Kids' Room Curtains.

Remember when I said this blog is about experimental homemaking? Well, it really is.

Sharkboy (3) and Lavagirl (2) share a room. It's had a yellow and sage green bumblebee curtain up since we moved in about 18 months ago, but now that they are getting a bit older, that just seemed wrong. Wal-Mart had some awesome Disney Cars fabric, so I set out on a mission to find some Princess fabric that would coordinate. The black background was key. I wound up finding it on Etsy, and ordering from JAPAN! Add some coordinating borders and tabs, and in my head, this was awesome!!

Guess what? I managed to make the borders different sizes AND the green panel has 7 tabs, while the purple panel has 8 tabs. Seriously! I wasn't drinking or anything. It was such a simple project, and my inability to focus made it just not work. Oh well. Luckily, Sharkboy and Lavagirl are not paying customers!

Oh, and to top it off, when I cut the section of the Disney Cars fabric, I managed to cut it right below where Lightning McQueen is, so it's Cars WITHOUT LIGHTNING MCQUEEN.

When dreaming this up, I also forgot that that wall in the kids' room is green. Had I actually been thinking, I would have made the green border red. or yellow, or blue, or something other than a 2nd green.

Sincerely, The Experimental Homemaker.

Restaurant charged a Kid-Fee!!!

Seriously? a "mandatory gratuity" at a restaurant for a group of 5? Isn't that a low number, especially when the 5th is a 5-month-old? plus, it wasn't even 20%, and the server (who we know and like) would have gotten at least 20% from us. So, this silly policy actually screwed the poor server. When questioned about it, the owner of Ken and Dale's basically said it's a kid fee because kids make messes and they have to clean them up. SERIOUSLY? This is what I get for not wanting to cook dinner tonight.  We'll stick with Wendy at the Chinese Buffet from now on.  She loves kids, even when they are insane. Our kids were AWESOME tonight.  We leave 2x the pigsty anywhere we go usually.

It's not like this is a fancy dinner place with white tablecloths and candelabras.  It IS the fanciest place in town, but that's not saying much. It's more like a diner with all booths,  pie slices in a glass case, and a "bar" that looks like it's straight out of a Shiny, Silver, Trailer-type 50's style diner.

I'm not arguing that a place can't have a policy on gratuity for standard group sizes. I didn't even have a problem with the group of 5 policy, although I do find that to be a LOW number. My problem is with the owner's statement that they should have charged the baby double! No, he wasn't joking.

It's a good thing Wyatt didn't get hungry while we were there. If he had, I probably would have started nursing him, and the owner probably would have asked us to leave or quit nursing or something.  As it was, Wyatt was the perfect example of a good baby in a restaurant. He sat there quietly munching on his high-chair cover the whole time. Never made a squeak. Ok, so he did reach his claw out and pull a salad plate onto the floor--but that is OUR fault for not realizing he could do that. It didn't even break! The older kids have broken plenty of plates in lots of restaurants --better restaurants than this, with a group of 5  (3 adults and 2 little kids), and haven't been treated like kids are the worst possible customers.

Well, this was going to be a status update, but I guess it's turning into a blog post.

It's not news to me that this little town isn't toddler-friendly. It's not news to me that the Aloha Spirit is severely lacking from Nebraska. It's not news to me that the old "The customer is always right" policy is long gone from America, but come on, how stupid. Counting a 5-month-old as a part of a "party of 5?"

Now, instead of sewing tonight, I'm going to go find lots of restaurant review sites! whoo hoo! fun!  This town thinks it is a "tourism destination."   So, people must go online looking for reviews and recommendations of where to take their FAMILIES on vacation.