Thanksgiving Leftovers Day 1: Leftover Turkey Pot Pie

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Every year Keith's work gives us a free turkey and luckily every year my dad fries the turkey for us.  So this year I wanted to try some new recipes to use the turkey.  I cut up all of the turkey meat and found out we had 14cups of meat that is after we had a couple turkey sandwiches.  We also have ham and a ham bone from the O'Meara Thanksgiving on Saturday.  

Our first dinner was The Pioneer Woman's Leftover Turkey Pot Pie! (I just used a refrigerated pie crust) It was great but next time I want to try it will biscuits on top instead of crust.  Grady would not even try this but Reece ate as much as Keith and I did.

Family Photos

Here are some of the photos my friend from high school Melissa Breedlove took of us a couple weekends ago.

  

We had a wonderful mini session and got 15-20 high res images & rights.  You can check out the rest of our pictures here. 

Reece's 2nd Birthday

On Reece's birthday I had planned to put the balloons in Reece room in the morning but after I got out of the shower I heard Reece in Grady's room.  Grady told me he was trying to be helpful so he went and woke reece up at 6:30am, I dont normally get Reece up till 7am.  After pancakes for breakfast Reece opened the gift Grady got him.

The balloons have been a HUGE hit everyone has enjoyed kicking them around the house. They are still out today.

Cupcakes after supper.

Sunday we had Reece's Dirt Party!! (my sister designed and made the invitations)

I used pictures of Reece to make a 2 (I found this on pinterest).

Working with the pulley.

Cloud Dough (flour & baby oil).  I got the idea from my friend Kate.   Reece LOVED playing in this.

Dirt cupcakes with worms.

Making a tunnel.

I set up a photo booth for the party with some dress up props.

 Reece had a wonderful time.  Thanks to everyone who helped us celebrate his special day.

Big Boy Bed

This post is almost a month late but on October 22 we converted Reece crib/cage (what Grady calls it) to a toddler bed.  Reece has done amazing.  He did wake up us one morning by standing by our bed, that means he opened his door and walked down the steps alone in the dark.  So we installed a child proof door knob locks.  

"Kidscape" your backyard

After looking around on this Montessori website I found information about Natural Playgrounds.  They say Natural Playgrounds allow for open-ended, multi-age, sensorial play. It allows for children to explore nature (watch birds and bugs build homes), as well as plant, nurture and harvest living things (flowers and vegetable gardens).    

I fell in LOVE with the idea and knew it would be prefect for the clubhouse that the previous owners built in the back yard.  

all images found on Pinterest 

After researching it more and finding more inspiration on Pinterest I came up with this photo college of things I want in our Natural Playground.  

Here is the clubhouse before we started with some of the logs and table I asked Keith pick up on the side of the road.  The logs are going to be our border for our dirt pit.  

These are the stumps I picked up from the side of the road.  I did this alone one day I filled my SUV with as much as would fit and then the next day I drove Keith's truck for the day so I could get another load.

Then I asked friends and family for Loose parts like buckets, baskets, crates, stones, dishes, pots, and pans & kitchen utensils.   I also started looking at antique shops for baskets, wire baskets and other loose parts.

Then we made a HUGE trip to HomeDepot to buy supplies, just FYI lumber is pricy.  We maded a wall to hang tools.

Here are the boys starting to explore the logs and stumps while we were working.

Wall is up and the border for our dirt pit.

While we were working on clubhouse we decided it would be a good idea to extend the steps to the wall so they would not have the big space that we were worried the boys would fall from.

Here are the updated steps.

Dirty boys after "helping" us all day and this was before we even got the dirt for the dirt pit.

Then we started to put up a wall inside of the clubhouse so we could paint it.  Here is the before.

After we primed the wall.  Then the boys and I painted the wall on day when Grady was off school.

 These colors are some the colors our house was painted when we bought it.  We left Grady choose which colors to paint each wall.

The completed natural playground and mudpie kitchen.

We picked up two loads of dirt in Keith's truck.

Always Safety First!!                             Before we added the slide.

The slide Reece got for his 2nd Birthday from my parents!!  The boys are LOVING it and it goes fast.

We added a pulley yesterday... will post picture soon.