Chore Chart

Brody is really into to helping around the house! He loves to help me with any tasks I am doing and he always does it so cheerfully. I decided to jump at the opportunity and try a chore chart with him while he was  wanting to help and not being forced to help!

I printed off a chore chart this weekend and chose 3 chores (since Brody is 3 years old) for him to work at accomplishing every day this week. I will probably rotate through a list of several chores so that he has 3 new chores to work on each week. I just don’t want him to get bored and become uninterested with the same 3 over and over each week.

Chart is from here.

This week we are going to work on…

1. Unloading the silverware tray from the dishwasher. (Only spoons and forks. This is one job he already LOVES to help with! I posted a video almost a year ago of him doing this.)
2. Take his plate to the sink when he is finished eating.
3. Pick-up his toys before going to bed. (This is something he has been doing for over a year, but it never hurts to have a reminder.)

I also have a place for Extra. This is for anything he does around the house without me asking him to do it. He always does things to be helpful without being asked, so I wanted to make sure we are acknowledging the extra things he is doing to help.

I keep this chart posted on the refrigerator with the stickers near it so that we can immediately put a sticker on the chart when he completes a chore. At the end of each week, we will see how many he has completed and then reward him with something small like some candy or maybe a trip to the dollar section at Target!

This isn’t about making Brody ‘work’ around the house. I don’t care if he completes all 3 each day or none at all. He is 3 and I understand that. We just want to begin to teach him, even at 3, about responsibility. Hopefully, this is a fun way for him to learn! And as of right now, he is having a lot of fun with this…can you tell? :)

Hope y’all are having a great week!

Cyber Monday Deal

Have you heard of E-mealz? I did a review of one of their meal plans this summer and absolutely loved the ease and convenience of their program! Seriously, no one is making me say this! :) They truly have a great program that allows you to prepare healthy, home-cooked meals for your family while staying on a budget. Here is a link to the review I did in case you missed it.

I received an email  that E-mealz in offering a great special for Cyber Monday as well as another special for the holidays and I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss out! An E-mealz subscription would be a GREAT Christmas gift for the busy wife or mom on your Christmas list. Make sure you check out these promotions and hop over to their site to take a look at all their meal plans.

Get the Biggest E-Mealz Discount today on Cyber Monday 

  Sign-up for E-Mealz and get the Holiday Plan for free and 30% off of your new subscription. Another option is purchasing gift certificates for 30% off for all your friends and family. Use the code CYBER to take advantage of these deals. Start checking people off your gift list early and get ahead of the game!

 

Join E-Mealz During November and December and Get a Holiday Plan for Free

E-Mealz has a traditional Holiday Menu Plan available for Thanksgiving and Christmas. There are two new additional versions of our Holiday Plan for 2011: Gluten Free Holiday Plan and Low Carb Holiday Plan. E-Mealz knows it can be daunting to enter the kitchen to cook for your family during this time of the year, so take this as your easy way out!

As you prepare for the holidays this year be good to yourself and let E-Mealz be your game plan!

Happy Cyber Monday!

Happy Birthday, Big Daddy!

Yesterday was my dad’s birthday! To celebrate, our family met for dinner, then headed to a nearby bowling alley to bowl!

I told Brody on Friday that we needed to get something for my dad for his birthday and Brody insisted he get to pick out a gift. We went to Target and Brody told me he thought Big Daddy would like a new toy, so we walked-up and down every toy aisle until he found the perfect gift. Brody was so excited for my dad to open his gift. He bought him a Diego play set. I know it was what my dad had been wishing he would get for his birthday! Ha! Brody was so excited and so proud of his gift!

Jillian Kate was so excited to be at the bowling ally! I loved her little outfit! This was one of shirts I got her at H&M when we were in Chicago.

This was Brody’s first time to bowl and he looked so big in his bowling shoes!

We are a crazy bunch!

Where’s Jillian?

Jill and Brandon-It was so fun that our entire family went bowling together! We have never done that until last night.

Brody bowled a strike! We couldn’t believe it! We were not using any bumper pads so this was extra impressive. I love this picture because he is looking at us trying to figure out why we are all going crazy!

The strike on the score board!

After bowling, we headed back to our house for cookie cake. Brody told my mom that he thought my dad needed a golf themed cake, so that’s what she ordered. Obviously, he loves a golf-themed party! :)

Happy Birthday, Big Daddy! We love you and are so thankful for you!

Hope you all have  a great Sunday!

Thankful

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Our family did! We have so much to be thankful for this year!

We started our morning with homemade pancakes, courtesy of Josh, while we watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. Jillian loved her pancakes…can you tell? :)

Our sweet boy loved them as well!

We headed over to my parent’s house for lunch! It was such a beautiful day that we spent a little time outside while the last few side items were cooking.

I told Brody that I couldn’t believe this was his 4th Thanksgiving! I feel like we were just celebrating with our 8 week old baby boy! :)

Brody and Big Daddy

Brody kept trying to climb this tree and when he couldn’t climb it he said, “I sure wish I had sticky toes and fingers like a frog so I could climb!” I have no idea where that came from, but it was really funny!

My dad helped him climb the tree and Brody was very happy to have made it up the tree!

Our littlest turkey on her 2nd Thanksgiving!

She wore squeakers shoes and would walk and then sit down and look at her feet! She couldn’t figure out where the noise was coming from and why it stopped every time she sat down!

Daddy and his girl!

Jilly Kate and mommy

The girls

I took about 25 pictures of the kids together and these were 2 of the better ones! Getting to little ones to look and smile at the camera is sometimes near impossible!

A little sibling love!

Our little family! I am SO thankful I get to be a wife and mom! I couldn’t love these 3 more!

And just for fun…a picture from Thanksgiving last year! Haha! Happy little family! :)

When we were putting Brody to bed last night, I told him I was so thankful for him and so thankful that I got to be his mommy. He didn’t miss a beat and said, “Your welcome, Mom.” Ha!

Hope you all are having a great day eating leftovers, watching football and recovering from Black Friday shopping! :)

Flashback Friday

I love going back through picture files on my computer and seeing what our life looked like a year ago! It’s always fun to see how much the kids have grown and changed, and it’s fun to think back on events and memories we made at that time.

These pictures were taken this exact same weekend last year. It was our first time to travel with 2 kids and we went to Branson with Josh’s parents to Christmas shop. It was the first time Jillian had stayed anywhere but our house. It was the first time I had packed for a family of 4, and it was the first time we had all been on a long car ride together. It was such a fun weekend! And I had no idea how little our sweeties were at the time. Jillian had just turned 2 months old and Brody was 25 months old. I remember being one busy, tired, but very happy, mommy at the time!

She didn’t love Brody as much then as she does now! :)

Brody still had such a baby look to him! I cannot believe how much he has changed in a year!

Hope y’all have a great weekend!

Walk This Way

Here is a video of Jillian walking! This was when we were at Josh’s parents before our trip last week. Yes, bribed her with gold fish. Josh held them in his hand and she walked to him. Whatever it takes, right? :)

I cannot believe our baby girl is walking! We are so proud of her!

Weekend in Chicago

This post is crazy long with lots of pictures! Good luck getting through it! :)

We arrived in Chicago on Thursday afternoon and headed straight to our hotel. We stayed at the Dana Hotel. It was really neat and contemporary, and was only a couple of blocks from Michigan Avenue. It was a great location for us to walk everywhere we needed to go all weekend!

The lobby is all glass so we had a great view of the city!

We quickly changed clothes and headed to eat at Giordano's. It was about a 3 minute walk from our hotel, so we got there quickly, which was good since we were starving! It was definitely the best pizza we have ever eaten! I’m not just saying that…I seriously mean it! It was SO good!!

After dinner we headed back to our room. We wanted to walk around more, but it was freezing and so windy, so I knew it would be pretty miserable. We had a great view from our room, so we still got to enjoy Chicago at night from our warm room.

We slept-in a little on Friday morning, which was amazing! Then, we got ready and headed out for the day!

I was bundled-up for our fun day out shopping!

We spent the entire day shopping at all the fun stores on Michigan including Water Tower Place! Such a neat mall! We also spent a good amount of time at H&M! Loved that place!

Josh took a little break from shopping! :)

We got to see this lovely statue of Marilyn Monroe on Michigan as we walked later that afternoon. It’s huge and seems so out of place, in my opinion!

We had to head back to our room early that evening so we could change and go to mk The Restaurant. My dad told us about this great little place, so we made reservations there for Friday night a few days before we headed to Chicago. They had fantastic food and it has such a great dining environment! And they seriously have the best fries.  We enjoyed getting the chance to eat there.

Saturday morning, we slept in, then we watched Game Day, because if it’s Saturday, Josh is watching it! :) We got ready and headed to the John Hancock Center.

We hung out there for a little while and ate lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, which is at the bottom of the center.

After lunch we did a lot of walking! We stopped at Millennium Park.

Lots of neat architecture there!

Cloud Gate…I was slightly obsessed with taking pictures of us with this thing! It’s just so fun!

 

We walked to several more places that afternoon, including the Children’s Museum/Navy Pier!

Navy Pier wasn’t too busy when we were there, but I imagine it’s such a fun places during the warmer months!

We walked and walked and walked some more and saw lots of other neat places! We went back to our room at 5 to watch the first half of the Razorback game! We had sold our tickets for the game since we were going to be gone, so it seemed so strange to be watching a home game on TV. At half time we left and went back to do a little more walking and shopping and eating!

Sunday morning we took a taxi back to the airport and flew back home! Our flight was only an hour and a half so we were home pretty quickly and back to see our babies!

This is the only picture of the 2 of us together from the weekend! It was when we were leaving our hotel Sunday morning.

We had such a wonderful, much-needed weekend away! Chicago is such a fun city, especially this time of year. I’m ready to go back again! :)